Tarred Governors
More than a political stunt. Republican Governors go ‘rogue.’
And the rogues are applauded by Republican leaders.
The aimless, seething white behemoths have found their prey and predator target: blue states and “stateless” asylum seekers. (1) Embarras Democrats by busing border crossers to Democrat-controlled states and releasing them with no protections set aside for their arrival.
Hardened ideology accomplishes little except to hinder the evolution of ideas; scales protect and limit cognitive growth. Evolution prefers fur, feathers and fins.
The border patrol model of migrant justice is failing. Physical boundaries harden; immanent boundaries fail to protect.
Volunteer social workers serving migrant communities are the latest kidnapping victims. Neighborhoods are fertile grounds for recruiting teenager drug runners.
And yet ‘the solution’ coming from DC is no solution or rather a null solution, a vacuum, a modern-day version of the La Brea Tar Pits. Where prehistoric creatures succumb by the weight of their extra armor and die. (2)
“The immigration system is broken.”
-Sen. Chris Coons, Del. (3)
Despite his misinterpretation of systemic social collapse, Sen. Coons is far from wrong. So far in fact his opinion is meaningless. Or so obvious even to the casual observer, that Coons’ opinion lacks compassion. It is the opinion of a technocrat: society needs a tweak, not an overhaul. Or at least this is as far as his thinking has taken him: the present is a mess and the future… well, we’ll see.
Like we have a choice. (4)
What is broken is compassion. What the Republican Governors who, to score political points and outrage Democrats are shipping asylum seekers to blue states, conclude is that ‘the show’ must go on.
If it’s illegal, we have corrupt judges to cover our backs with reduced sentences and adjournments. If it’s angering Independents, we’ll just double down and scare more of them. It’s an open field and its fun watching liberals twitch with outrage.
But the oozing outrage — the tar, to force a metaphor — takes time to do its work. There are five years of sweat and tears between the largest global women’s protest in 2017 and the abortion rights protests of last spring. If Republicans lose Congress and this loss would fly in the face of tradition if they did, we can thank women and youth solidarity for the flip.
Over the sweep of history, the American government has tended to become more democratic, through women’s suffrage, civil rights laws, the direct election of senators and more. The exceptions, like the post-Reconstruction period, when Black Southerners lost rights, have been rare. The current period is so striking partly because it is one of those exceptions…
…The makeup of the federal government reflects public opinion less closely than it once did. And the chance of a true constitutional crisis — in which the rightful winner of an election cannot take office — has risen substantially. That combination shows that American democracy has never faced a threat quite like the current one.
David Leonhardt et.al., “Democracy Challenged: Twin Threats to Governing Ideals Put America in Uncharted Territory,’ NYTimes, Sept. 18. (3)
Sept. 21
Notes
1- The term “stateless,” referring to and distinguishing refugees from migrants was first used by Hannah Arendt. For a complete quote, read, Masha Gessen’s essay in a recent New Yorker, “Why DeSantis Thinks Weaponizing Asylum Seekers Is a Winning Strategy, ” September 22.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/why-ron-desantis-thinks-weaponizing-asylum-seekers-is-a-winning-strategy
2-The popular misperception that scaled dinosaurs can be found at La Brea Tar Pits reveals a fantasy twist. Los Angeles, the home of the La Brea Tar Pits, was under water at the time of the dinosaurs. One has to move inland to Utah where fossil remains of extinct scaled dinosaurs can be found. Prehistoric elephant-like creature remains can be found at the La Brea tar pits. A prime reason of the ‘dino demise’ was probably climate change and failure to adapt. The seas receded and tar pits were exposed.
3-Interview, “White House Report with Nicole Wallace, MSNBC, Sept. 20
4-”Abbott, DeSantis, and their supporters are indeed calling the Democrats’ bluff. They may well succeed in fomenting tension and resentment, not unlike what Putin and Lukashenka have done in Europe. It’s not so much that residents of Massachusetts, New York, and Washington, D.C., will quickly tire of people seeking protection; it’s that the fundamental inhumanity of existing refugee and asylum policies suggests that they — that we — are indeed hypocritical to the core.” Gessen, op cit.
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