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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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the Dem response to immigration afterwards sure made it seem like they knew they fucked up and had dropped a grenade at their feet that they never intended.

When did you start seeing this response? I don't remember any biting policy changes up until election season began in earnest. I think there were some local actions in NY and Chicago (and memorably, Martha's Vineyard) to the migrant busing policies, but I will admit I don't follow politics that closely and I might have missed something.

The vibe I remember felt more like "all in on open borders and accepting any and all asylum claims, up until they saw how that polled with prospective voters 24 months later."

It grew in strength over time. Even in early 2021 there were some rumblings with Kamala Harris making her "do not come" speech (satirized by the right as "do not cum"). Then agreeing in principle on a conservative immigration package that I talked about. Biden doing stuff like trying to reimplement "remain in Mexico", and eventually cutting deals with the country to try to staunch the flow of immigrants without having aggressive enforcement at the border. There were always progressive groups chanting for open borders throughout the process, but the more centrist left realized they had an issue fairly early and gradually picked up steam.

satirized by the right as "do not cum"

This wasn’t a satirization — it was just a very silly meme, especially when juxtaposed with Trump saying “I’m gonna cum… woooah.” (And then brought to new levels of hilarious with “oh yeah, he did score!” from Boris Johnson, and “we must cum together” from Bernie Sanders.)

Obviously I don’t have statistics, but I’m guessing this was a meme that a fairly broad (if generally male) segment of the population found funny.

Not every joke about a thing a politician says is a form of political speech.

Sure. I remember the meme and found it funny.