BASTA!

BASTA! 

Trump is the poster boy for Marcuse's criticism of modern societal systems as one-dimensional. He gives thin excuses for engagement, takes synaptic leaps in the consideration of weighty and complicated issues - the economy is linked to tariffs...the border and immigration is linked to drug trafficking...is linked to the border and crime, and immigration...is linked to drug trafficking...is linked to Venezuela...Greenland...NATO...etc. - as somehow binary and easily addressed without upsetting stasis. The immigration issue right now is somehow tied to Minnesota supposedly because of fraud and it being a sanctuary city.

To be clear, the blame - for the immigration issue in general and the border problem specifically - can rightfully be placed on the inaction of both sides (as well as other complicating factors such as armed conflicts elsewhere, economic problems, migration flows, COVID, etc.). The solutions are so complicated and problematic that even when folks on my side of the calculus try to deal with it, we have issues. I've lived through two or three of these roundups. I was a very strong critic of Obama's deportation policies, primarily as a tribal thing because I felt like he was being much too cruel. 

For years, those of us that consider ourselves moderate on this issue would argue that it was  well past time to address the immigration issue. Reagan was the last one to truly attempt to do it. We would argue what is essentially a laches concept: that "hey, you're just waking up to the fact that there's 12 million people here?"; that you can't sit on a problem and all of a sudden decide that you're going to fix it without taking some responsibility for the fact that you've been a willing consumer; and that throughout you have delayed dealing with the problem. You are complicit and have actually worked against solving the problem without any legitimate explanation for the delay. 

It's unjust. That, that is the rub. It's just not fair that after 10, 20, 30 years, you're all of a sudden going to decide in this brutality. While you are "putting on your big boy pants" you engage not just in a shock treatment against people - them and us - but also to the economy as well as to the whole concept of this country's rightful sense of justice and dignity.

Whether Obama's approach was right or wrong, some folks now use him as a justification for what is happening now in our major cities. They are woefully missing the point. And it's well past style points. Trump is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It takes a certain type of arrogance, brazenness, imperviousness to this cruelty and to what these politicians are doing to the concept of truth. That's why you get to the point where the folks that for years haven't wanted to deal with the veteran's homelessness, runaway corporations, health care or any of the other social problems get to talk about solutions that are not helpful. The most brazen example of the arrogance of power - what was feckless power politik - was when Trump told the GOP to scuttle the solution that Biden and other GOP senators had arrived at but now uses it to justify this jackboot behavior.

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