Trump just cannot understand that ordinary citizens are totally self-motivated to object to his thugs abusing immigrants and people that look like immigrants. The only way he can explain it to himself is that they MUST be paid (by who is never clear unless it's the usual right wing Jewish paymasters) to do it, because ordinary people wouldn't go and put themselves between the thugs and their victims because there is nothing in it for them unless they got paid for it. This is yet another one of his many delusions. It might be a good idea for someone like the NYT to actually debunk his fantasy by looking for the paymaster and finding out everybody is doing it because they WANT to do it.
RIGHT ON, JVL! GO - GO - GO GRASSROOTS ARMY - FORWARD MARCH & COME ALONG WITH US ALL DEMOCRATIC OFFICE HOLDERS! NOW IS THE BEST TIME FOR ALL TRUE PATRIOTS TO SAVE AMERICANS & REMOVE ALL TRAITOROUS TRUMPIANS FROM POWER!
I wish more people would read Project 2025 and see how these steps are part of a systematic plan toward a police state; they are not incidental events even though some actions are clumsily executed or ill-timed. The Pres. may be mouthy, cognitively compromised, impulsive and ill-informed, but Steve Miller and the other Project planners are none of those. Read the steps toward using detention camps as forced labor camps to remedy the coming labor shortage from deportation. Of developing lists not just of our voting and SS data, but of Jews, of people with disabilities, of those with autism, of homosexuals. Does this not sound familiar to even casual students of history? Europe just commemorated HolocaustRemembrance Day but not here. Is legislation for extra funding for more ICE to allow permanently occupying secret police in population centers even after there are no immigrants left to deport?
It's easy to figure out why Minnesota: Racism, plain and simple. And that is what drives ICE, who's agents don't care about anything but busting brown and black people. And they'll bust anybody who gets in their way. Say or do something they don't like and they go into a "feeding" frenzy, just like those who assaulted our Capitol. Some may be those pardoned by the Orange Menace, so they "know" they will get a preemptive pardon. They're too stupid to grasp that nobody's going to pardon them from state charges. BTW, I'd love to see State and Local charges issued.
JVL, interesting that the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie has also published an oped that connects the Minneapolis tragedy to Gettysburg. You wrote it better.
It is not lost on me that, tragic as this horrific event was, Alex Pretti was the perfect foil for contrasting the brutality of the ICE/CBP thugs. A literal Boy Scout and choir boy. An ICU nurse at the VETERANS ADMINISTRATION. A gun owner with a permit to carry. If this had been a movie instead of real life, people would have considered the possibility too contrived. He died much too soon, and didn't deserve what happened to him, but his memory will be etched in history as the embodiment of a pivotal moment in the history of this insane period. RIP, Alex Pretti. We thank and honor you for your sacrifice.
JVL, thank you. Your newsletters are the reason that I became a paying member of the Bulwark, instead of just watching on YouTube. As a historian, trained by the best Rutgers has to offer, I often get upset with people trying to marry a historical event with a current moment. When you began speaking of the implications of the battle of Gettysburg, I was skeptical. But you did it flawlessly and in a way I hadn’t considered before. Thank you for this triad, for you and all of your colleagues at the Bulwark, and for taking on your own political party that has betrayed what you and many others spent a lifetime working for. While very liberal myself, I am happy to listen to real Republicans be honest about their current party and the state of our nation. I would encourage you to keep up the fight, but I know I don’t need to. Sorry to go on, but I felt that a “Thank You!” from me was necessary.
"And House Democrats should get themselves to Minneapolis. Immediately. They should be on the street themselves, cameras out and recording, observing and putting their bodies on the line. They should be standing in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Demanding the attention of every American to what is happening. Daring the regime to assault them, too."
And where do we find such Democrats???
The Democratic party is woefully, W O E F U L L Y, unequipped to deal with the situation we now find ourselves in. Yet I find my email and text messages bombarded with histrionic and hyperbolic pleas for funds.
When I see someone with stones actually standing up to this criminal regime, I will bury them with money. Every cent I can spare. But these pathetic fundraising campaigns are not it.
We are those brave, strong and dedicated enough to protecting our Democracy as those that are dedicated to destroying it?
It has indeed taken too long for the Democratic party to respond as a unified voice They are now, in the Senate, risking another government shutdown to make ICE pay for its police state actions. I can name any number of Democrats in Congress and state/local office who are standing up, boldly. Please don't mistake the AI fundraising BS for what's happening. I hate that too! But resistance movements have always started and prevailed from the bottom up, from ordinary people. They are us, they are teachers, nurses, housewives, veterans, people acting in community. We need to be the change, not stand apart grieving what doesn't meet our own standards of righteousness.
I gotta push back against y'all taking JVL's Gettysburg metaphor too literally and framing MAGA as the legacy of the CSA, and the battle of Minneapolis as some continuation of the Civil War. That's not TOTALLY wrong, but it misses a lot. Most notably: 1) this is not a conflict between armies representing separate governments, and 2) MAGA is huge in rural Minnesota, where the population is closer to descendants of the Minnesota First than to Lost Cause Southerners.
If you're not from the 'Great Northwest' MN, WI, IA, ND, SD, I doubt you can comprehend how totally the tone of outstate areas has changed there over the last 40-50 years, and how utterly Kafka-esque that is to a lot of natives like me. (I spent the vast majority of my first 45 years in MN, WI, and IA, receiving degrees from the unis in each state - but Ski-U-Mah forever). Obama and Jesse Jackson did really well in Iowa caucusses... with support from farmers. Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern and the Non-Partisan League came from the Dakotas. I'd drive through so many small towns and find people friendly, welcoming, chill, and not much at all into politics beyond town or county business.
I don't have an easy answer to how and why things flipped so dramatically, though I'm pretty sure the transformations in the agricultural economy had a lot to do with it, and the great scourge of social media toxins, and other usual suspects figure as well.
I might say people in cities are used to both certain measures of diversity and more importantly perhaps a certain presence of change and transition, where rural cultures are, conceptually at least, more homogenous and traditional.
It's impolitic to suggest that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery, but as the cliche goes 'two things can be true'. The plantation system was the end stage of feudalism, and the North was moving the national economy into industrial capitalism. The plantations weren't replaced as means of production by 'good union jobs' but by the Triangle Waist Company, the McCormick factory, and company towns like Pullman.
The agricultural midwest though was marked by family farms, co-operative silos, and populist hostility to the Eastern Bankers and their Cross of Gold. (or yellow brick road, in the fable). That was still the norm in the 50s and 60s, a kind of semi-holdover of the Jeffersonian imagining of a nation of gentleman farmers. As it happened, I arrived at the University of Iowa for doctoral studies in 1984, around the onset of the first big farm crisis, Farm Aid, Blood on the Scarecrow...
Industrial corporate capitalism was swallowing agriculture, and not to be vulgar re: base/superstructure, I was seeing the first signs of that turning the vibrant small town culture of Iowa into shit. I didn't see where it was going to wind up then, and I still don't know exactly how it got where it is now, but looking back I think that was definitely the beginning.
Anyway, for historical precedents to Minneapolis, I don't see the Civil War as much as I see the Vietnam era anti-war movement and ( perhaps too obviously and disturbingly) Kent State. Popular non-violent grass-roots opposition to a federal government.
I follow your argument. I lived in Iowa from August 1974 to August 2023. I was quite proud of my adopted state for quite a while. I point my finger at industrial corporate agriculture and its tax laundering ways.
JVL: I think it's time to "officially" coordinate with as many free media sources and democratic orgs as possible. I assume there's some of this happening already... I'm thinking of The Bulwark, TPM, The Atlantic, Indivisible, etc. Some kind of mutual platforming, no idea what that looks like, but some kind of cross pollinating, federated media umbrella organization. A 501(c)3? I don't know, but as y'all are full aware this country desperately needs a new media landscape, and a cooperative org to me sounds future oriented with a lot of (ethical) potential.
We don't need to hear Schumer or Jeffires or any Democrat telling Americans what they already know. We saw it. What Dems need to do is tell Americans WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT, and then DO IT. This is an emergency that requires emergency measures, meaning the use of every available level of power, to wit:
Stop any and all DHS funding in its tracks. Period. Conditions for continued funding:
1. Stop ICE field operations immediately. 2. All ICE hiring stopped, all 2026 ICE hires dismissed. 3. Assign ICE duties to other agencies. 4. Eliminate ICE entirely.
No money for CBP until major reforms in place. CBP operates only on the legal, national border of the US.
Until reforms are in place, all immigration operations will coordinate beforehand with state officials. Legal, and Constitutional requirements for immigration operations - warrants, reasonable suspicion, no racial profiling, etc. - will be validated by state officials.
The obvious - no masks, badges showing, no entry without a judicial warrant, etc.
That's to 'stop the bleeding.' But here’s how Dems take complete control of this issue: House and Senate Dems need to immediately and very publicly coordinate with state officials - red and blue - to create a plan for immigration management that makes sense which they present to the American people - i.e., 1. strong enforcement at borders (the appearance and reality of toughness here are both critical), 2. swift, certain, and targeted deportation of violent criminals, 3. expedited citizenship for undocumented residents of good standing. Very important: in that order. Very important: move quickly. No consultants. No lobbyists. No focus groups. No caucusing. Don’t make some big announcement of what you’re ‘going’ to do. Make a big announcement of what you’re DOING, as you do it. GO. MOVE. NOW.
Dems should invite any good faith Congressional Republicans to participate, but this is NOT an effort at 'bipartisanship.' It's a show of ability and strength that welcomes, but is not contingent on, like minded Republicans. Contact your Reps and Senators and pass this along, or something like it. We have a lot of influence right now. Use it.
Trump just cannot understand that ordinary citizens are totally self-motivated to object to his thugs abusing immigrants and people that look like immigrants. The only way he can explain it to himself is that they MUST be paid (by who is never clear unless it's the usual right wing Jewish paymasters) to do it, because ordinary people wouldn't go and put themselves between the thugs and their victims because there is nothing in it for them unless they got paid for it. This is yet another one of his many delusions. It might be a good idea for someone like the NYT to actually debunk his fantasy by looking for the paymaster and finding out everybody is doing it because they WANT to do it.
Amen amen amen to part 2. And especially the Prescription by Timothy Snyder for what to do about the Fascists.
RIGHT ON, JVL! GO - GO - GO GRASSROOTS ARMY - FORWARD MARCH & COME ALONG WITH US ALL DEMOCRATIC OFFICE HOLDERS! NOW IS THE BEST TIME FOR ALL TRUE PATRIOTS TO SAVE AMERICANS & REMOVE ALL TRAITOROUS TRUMPIANS FROM POWER!
I wish more people would read Project 2025 and see how these steps are part of a systematic plan toward a police state; they are not incidental events even though some actions are clumsily executed or ill-timed. The Pres. may be mouthy, cognitively compromised, impulsive and ill-informed, but Steve Miller and the other Project planners are none of those. Read the steps toward using detention camps as forced labor camps to remedy the coming labor shortage from deportation. Of developing lists not just of our voting and SS data, but of Jews, of people with disabilities, of those with autism, of homosexuals. Does this not sound familiar to even casual students of history? Europe just commemorated HolocaustRemembrance Day but not here. Is legislation for extra funding for more ICE to allow permanently occupying secret police in population centers even after there are no immigrants left to deport?
America turns a weary eye towards Tom Nichols and says “Now can we call it fascistic?”
It's easy to figure out why Minnesota: Racism, plain and simple. And that is what drives ICE, who's agents don't care about anything but busting brown and black people. And they'll bust anybody who gets in their way. Say or do something they don't like and they go into a "feeding" frenzy, just like those who assaulted our Capitol. Some may be those pardoned by the Orange Menace, so they "know" they will get a preemptive pardon. They're too stupid to grasp that nobody's going to pardon them from state charges. BTW, I'd love to see State and Local charges issued.
JVL, interesting that the New York Times’ Jamelle Bouie has also published an oped that connects the Minneapolis tragedy to Gettysburg. You wrote it better.
It is not lost on me that, tragic as this horrific event was, Alex Pretti was the perfect foil for contrasting the brutality of the ICE/CBP thugs. A literal Boy Scout and choir boy. An ICU nurse at the VETERANS ADMINISTRATION. A gun owner with a permit to carry. If this had been a movie instead of real life, people would have considered the possibility too contrived. He died much too soon, and didn't deserve what happened to him, but his memory will be etched in history as the embodiment of a pivotal moment in the history of this insane period. RIP, Alex Pretti. We thank and honor you for your sacrifice.
Thank you JVL for posting the Good Samaritan article. It was what I needed to see in this moment in time.
JVL nails it, as usual.
JVL, thank you. Your newsletters are the reason that I became a paying member of the Bulwark, instead of just watching on YouTube. As a historian, trained by the best Rutgers has to offer, I often get upset with people trying to marry a historical event with a current moment. When you began speaking of the implications of the battle of Gettysburg, I was skeptical. But you did it flawlessly and in a way I hadn’t considered before. Thank you for this triad, for you and all of your colleagues at the Bulwark, and for taking on your own political party that has betrayed what you and many others spent a lifetime working for. While very liberal myself, I am happy to listen to real Republicans be honest about their current party and the state of our nation. I would encourage you to keep up the fight, but I know I don’t need to. Sorry to go on, but I felt that a “Thank You!” from me was necessary.
That is an insulting thing to say. They are more likely than you to realize the stakes.
What's the "that" -- and the "they?"
I was referring to the headline, the reference to others' inability to understand the stakes.
Got it. They DO know the stakes and are suffering & resisting in force daily to prove it.
I see the Bulwark trio is heading to Minneapolis end of February. Putting feet where the mouth is.
"And House Democrats should get themselves to Minneapolis. Immediately. They should be on the street themselves, cameras out and recording, observing and putting their bodies on the line. They should be standing in solidarity with the people of Minneapolis. Demanding the attention of every American to what is happening. Daring the regime to assault them, too."
And where do we find such Democrats???
The Democratic party is woefully, W O E F U L L Y, unequipped to deal with the situation we now find ourselves in. Yet I find my email and text messages bombarded with histrionic and hyperbolic pleas for funds.
When I see someone with stones actually standing up to this criminal regime, I will bury them with money. Every cent I can spare. But these pathetic fundraising campaigns are not it.
We are those brave, strong and dedicated enough to protecting our Democracy as those that are dedicated to destroying it?
I feel we have no place to turn.
It has indeed taken too long for the Democratic party to respond as a unified voice They are now, in the Senate, risking another government shutdown to make ICE pay for its police state actions. I can name any number of Democrats in Congress and state/local office who are standing up, boldly. Please don't mistake the AI fundraising BS for what's happening. I hate that too! But resistance movements have always started and prevailed from the bottom up, from ordinary people. They are us, they are teachers, nurses, housewives, veterans, people acting in community. We need to be the change, not stand apart grieving what doesn't meet our own standards of righteousness.
Well, where are you? Woe is you.
I’ve never been elected to represent the people of the United States. I don’t collect a salary and benefits from those same people to do so.
I gotta push back against y'all taking JVL's Gettysburg metaphor too literally and framing MAGA as the legacy of the CSA, and the battle of Minneapolis as some continuation of the Civil War. That's not TOTALLY wrong, but it misses a lot. Most notably: 1) this is not a conflict between armies representing separate governments, and 2) MAGA is huge in rural Minnesota, where the population is closer to descendants of the Minnesota First than to Lost Cause Southerners.
If you're not from the 'Great Northwest' MN, WI, IA, ND, SD, I doubt you can comprehend how totally the tone of outstate areas has changed there over the last 40-50 years, and how utterly Kafka-esque that is to a lot of natives like me. (I spent the vast majority of my first 45 years in MN, WI, and IA, receiving degrees from the unis in each state - but Ski-U-Mah forever). Obama and Jesse Jackson did really well in Iowa caucusses... with support from farmers. Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern and the Non-Partisan League came from the Dakotas. I'd drive through so many small towns and find people friendly, welcoming, chill, and not much at all into politics beyond town or county business.
I don't have an easy answer to how and why things flipped so dramatically, though I'm pretty sure the transformations in the agricultural economy had a lot to do with it, and the great scourge of social media toxins, and other usual suspects figure as well.
I might say people in cities are used to both certain measures of diversity and more importantly perhaps a certain presence of change and transition, where rural cultures are, conceptually at least, more homogenous and traditional.
It's impolitic to suggest that the Civil War was about anything other than slavery, but as the cliche goes 'two things can be true'. The plantation system was the end stage of feudalism, and the North was moving the national economy into industrial capitalism. The plantations weren't replaced as means of production by 'good union jobs' but by the Triangle Waist Company, the McCormick factory, and company towns like Pullman.
The agricultural midwest though was marked by family farms, co-operative silos, and populist hostility to the Eastern Bankers and their Cross of Gold. (or yellow brick road, in the fable). That was still the norm in the 50s and 60s, a kind of semi-holdover of the Jeffersonian imagining of a nation of gentleman farmers. As it happened, I arrived at the University of Iowa for doctoral studies in 1984, around the onset of the first big farm crisis, Farm Aid, Blood on the Scarecrow...
Industrial corporate capitalism was swallowing agriculture, and not to be vulgar re: base/superstructure, I was seeing the first signs of that turning the vibrant small town culture of Iowa into shit. I didn't see where it was going to wind up then, and I still don't know exactly how it got where it is now, but looking back I think that was definitely the beginning.
Anyway, for historical precedents to Minneapolis, I don't see the Civil War as much as I see the Vietnam era anti-war movement and ( perhaps too obviously and disturbingly) Kent State. Popular non-violent grass-roots opposition to a federal government.
I follow your argument. I lived in Iowa from August 1974 to August 2023. I was quite proud of my adopted state for quite a while. I point my finger at industrial corporate agriculture and its tax laundering ways.
JVL: I think it's time to "officially" coordinate with as many free media sources and democratic orgs as possible. I assume there's some of this happening already... I'm thinking of The Bulwark, TPM, The Atlantic, Indivisible, etc. Some kind of mutual platforming, no idea what that looks like, but some kind of cross pollinating, federated media umbrella organization. A 501(c)3? I don't know, but as y'all are full aware this country desperately needs a new media landscape, and a cooperative org to me sounds future oriented with a lot of (ethical) potential.
We don't need to hear Schumer or Jeffires or any Democrat telling Americans what they already know. We saw it. What Dems need to do is tell Americans WHAT THEY'RE GOING TO DO ABOUT IT, and then DO IT. This is an emergency that requires emergency measures, meaning the use of every available level of power, to wit:
Stop any and all DHS funding in its tracks. Period. Conditions for continued funding:
1. Stop ICE field operations immediately. 2. All ICE hiring stopped, all 2026 ICE hires dismissed. 3. Assign ICE duties to other agencies. 4. Eliminate ICE entirely.
No money for CBP until major reforms in place. CBP operates only on the legal, national border of the US.
Until reforms are in place, all immigration operations will coordinate beforehand with state officials. Legal, and Constitutional requirements for immigration operations - warrants, reasonable suspicion, no racial profiling, etc. - will be validated by state officials.
The obvious - no masks, badges showing, no entry without a judicial warrant, etc.
That's to 'stop the bleeding.' But here’s how Dems take complete control of this issue: House and Senate Dems need to immediately and very publicly coordinate with state officials - red and blue - to create a plan for immigration management that makes sense which they present to the American people - i.e., 1. strong enforcement at borders (the appearance and reality of toughness here are both critical), 2. swift, certain, and targeted deportation of violent criminals, 3. expedited citizenship for undocumented residents of good standing. Very important: in that order. Very important: move quickly. No consultants. No lobbyists. No focus groups. No caucusing. Don’t make some big announcement of what you’re ‘going’ to do. Make a big announcement of what you’re DOING, as you do it. GO. MOVE. NOW.
Dems should invite any good faith Congressional Republicans to participate, but this is NOT an effort at 'bipartisanship.' It's a show of ability and strength that welcomes, but is not contingent on, like minded Republicans. Contact your Reps and Senators and pass this along, or something like it. We have a lot of influence right now. Use it.