Another Banner Week for White Supremacists

New York Times reports that the Trump administration is considering proposals to radically overhaul the U.S. refugee system, barring entry to black and brown refugees from around the world while opening borders to white people from South Africa and Europe who say they are being politically persecuted. Trump plans to cut the number of refugees admitted into the country each year to 7,500, a sharp decline from the 125,000 admitted under the Biden administration's policy last year. Apparently those few spots are now reserved for white people who profess Nazi beliefs, since both Trump and Vance have made a point of protecting neo-Nazis in Germany and apparently planned to bring them here.

None of this surprises anyone who has actually listened to what Trump and his MAGA supporters have been saying for years. The Trump administration is an open regime of white supremacists, and they have acted the same, both in word and in deed, since he returned to office. These people are terrified browning Americas, terrified that white people will lose their numerical majority in this country in the coming decades, and terrified by the decline in the white birth rate.

Welcoming white refugees is a big deal. This fits nicely with bombing boats full of innocent brown people, sanctioning Gestapo style tactics by ICE, stripping birthright citizenship from people actually born here, sending the military to police brown cities, disenfranchising non-white people, and trying to turn white women into brood mothers by stripping them of their reproductive rights. If you believe that America exists for the benefit and glory of white people, and if you believe that non-white people don't “deserve” to be here unless they work to increase white people's profits, then everything the Trump administration does makes sense. This is how you restore the white supremacists' power over this country if white supremacy is your only true calling.

I've almost lost the ability to be horrified by it all. It's not that I'm indifferent to this. Instead, like Django said: “I’m just more used to Americans.” This is what most white people do. This is what most white people have. always ready whenever their power remains unchecked. And the only reason they are afraid of losing their majority is because they assume that other people will do to them what they have done to everyone else as soon as we get the chance.

We won't, of course. Because we're better than that.

The bad and the ugly

• The government is still closed. Trump is proposing to help the country with $40 billion in federal spending. Wait, no, this is Argentina.
• Florida Representative Corey Mills has a restraining order filed against him by his ex-girlfriend. Mills has long been problematic. But so did voters in Florida.
• “The Washington Post is running out of readers willing to pay.” reports Forbes. I'm not talking about this as a newspaper plug. I'm just putting this here to remind people to unsubscribe from Washington Post (and maybe subscribe to Nation instead of).
• Alleged assassination attempt on rapist Brett Kavanaugh endorses racial profiling – September issue shadow list solution in which he affirmed the government's ability to stop any black person speaking Spanish. on suspicion being an immigrant – Sheriff Joe Arpaio sense of justification. He must. His racism was both behind and ahead of its time.
• Speaking about the Kavanaugh decision on racial profiling, ProPublica reported that more ICE detained 170 US citizens. In his decision, Kavanaugh suggested that such illegal abductions would be a minor inconvenience, but the actual facts show that Kavanaugh, as usual, lied.

Inspired takes

• Like everyone else, I fucking read it. Nation piece o evolution of the cybertruck.
• IN NationKeith Wagner explains why the University of Chicago stopped accepting Ph.D.s in the humanities.
• Liz Dye, one of my favorite legal writers, does a deep dive to all the shortcomings of the indictment in the Comey case.
• This podcast has a really good point. on why the No Kings protest (another one will take place on Saturday) MAGU is so worried. Essentially, they thought that black people would be on the front lines of the protests—black people whom they could brutalize while white people looked on with satisfaction. It's a little different when the Trump administration has to beat up someone's white grandmother.

Worst argument of the week

Politician gained access to a text message chain of “young” Republican leaders (some of them were 40 years old) where they said this… Republicans speak when they think only other Republicans are listening. They used racial slurs against non-white people and Jews. Denigrated women and the LGBT community. And, as is customary these days, he praised Hitler.

Vice President J.D. Vance, who once compared Trump to Hitler but now decided that was a good thing, defended his young Republican brothers. Vance called all the sexism and bigotry “sharp jokes” and said, “I refuse to engage in pearl-clutching.”

I… don't have pearls. Like I said, I'm no longer horrified when white people act like white people. But giving these people license to be hateful and vitriol is over the top. This is a non-defensive position; it's just racist.

I was going to dance a whole tarantella on Vance's head, but NationJoan Walsh beat me to it. I'm subscribing everything she said here. Joan noted that Vance's wife, Usha, is Indian, and Vance defends people who say the worst things about Indian women, like his wife.

But here's the thing: Vance knows what Trump knows, and what Mitt Romney and John McCain and every other Republican since Richard Nixon knew: They can't win without these people. They can't make the numbers work any other way. And so every Republican, every single one, must play nice with these hateful neo-Nazis if they want to win the political fight.

Vance is willing to throw his wife under the bus to make sure there is no distance between him and his body. base support. The thing is… just like his wife. Usha was not captured. She's a partner in this. They both decided that they would rather side with the racists and win than oppose them and lose.

It couldn't be me. I have such a thing as “self-respect.” Apparently, this is the burden of American politics.

What did I write

• Well, the Supreme Court appears almost ready to strike down Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act and allow white state legislatures to manipulate black political power. I spent two and a half hours listening to their oral arguments. and then wrote about it so that other good people don't have to do this.
• I've also written about Trump. Expedited withdrawal times for food stamps. I think the thought of people having enough to eat this Thanksgiving only made the ketchup guy angry.

In news unrelated to the current chaos

If you've ever wondered why I don't stream or have a YouTube channel and instead just try to do my job and go home, just take a look at what's going on with Hasan Picker right now.

The popular YouTube personality ended up embroiled in controversy when his dog yelped during the video. Without further information, it appeared that the dog had been put on a shock collar (I believe shock collars are very harmful and should not be used).

Piker later clarified that he does not use a shock collar on his dog. He uses a vibrating collar (that's a different matter) for long walks, but didn't use it that day. I haven't considered vibrating collars (my dog ​​mostly stays home, sits on my legs, criticizes my sentence structure, and wonders if I can work as a professional writer). I understand that they are fine and accept Piker's explanations at face value.

I am, of course, a normal, rational person. Many don't. The girl reports that after the incident he received death threats and threats to kidnap his dog.

I understand that there is a lot of money to be made and an impact on the streaming network. But at least for now, I just can't. Writing on the Internet is bad enough. But at least I have an editor. At least I have time and rest to consider the words I speak into the world and how I shape them and myself. Streaming is just… raw. Unprotected. And you expose yourself to a group of people who are willing to take everything you say out of context, while your enemies hunt around in bad faith.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go and train my dog ​​to stop barking at the squirrels outside our window using my favorite training method: telling him to “Shut the hell up.” Then I'll feed my kids nutritious pizza and mozzarella sticks. I'll do all this while drinking brown liquor and playing a video game where you shoot enemies with a pistol. But millions of people won't watch me and judge me while I do these things.

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