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Notes -
Ezra Klein in the pages of the NYT on why the Democrats need to Shutdown the government.
TLDR: Trump is an authoritarian.
Back in March, Democrats justified keeping the government open by saying that the courts were restraining Trump, that a shutdown would only accelerate his executive power, and that markets were already punishing his recklessness re tarrifs. But now with Trump firing dissenters, using federal agencies against political enemies, and enriching himself and his allies through foreign investments and unchecked power, Klein says that none of those arguments hold anymore. The Supreme Court is now backing Trump on key issues, DOGE’s chaotic dismantling of the bureaucracy has slowed because Trump loyalists are running it, and the markets have largely adapted to the new normal.
Maybe the markets have normalized, but we shouldn't according to Klein. Democrats are politically and morally failing by continuing to fund a government that has become an instrument of authoritarianism. He outlines how Democrats could frame a compelling message around corruption and abuse of power, citing Senator Jon Ossoff’s July speech as an example of effective messaging that ties everyday struggles (like high medical costs and housing insecurity) to elite corruption. Specific examples the firing of agency heads like those at the Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Defense Intelligence Agency for political reasons, targeted investigations into critics such as Senator Adam Schiff and Attorney General Tish James, the FBI’s raid on Bolton’s home, masked ICE agents now conducting raids without identification or warrants, and National Guard troops being deployed to cities LA and DC.
Remember when Joe Biden deliberately let in and imported 10 million people for no other reason than he wanted to? Yeah and the republican house just sat there and funded it all over and over.
The house did try to negotiate a "deal" and got somewhere but unfortunately Biden wouldn't budge on the "inport millions of people" part so the deal dieded.
If the democrats shut down the government without even a list of concrete demands that they want, they're going to look like absolute clowns and take all the blame. The only way to win a shutdown or win threatening a shutdown is to makde demands so reasonable and commonsense that the other party will look bad not giving in.
I'm annoyed by the "imported" framing. Biden didn't wake up one day and go out of his way to coax ten million people into coming to the US. These ten million people wanted to come, and Biden's government elected to not use violence to stop them. This is how any pro-immigration Left-winger thinks of the issue, and you are asking the wrong question at a very deep level if you wonder why they "want" to bring in millions of people. It's simply liberalism taken to its furthest extreme. These people want to come, therefore what right have we to infringe on their freedom by stopping them? How could any amount of missing paperwork justify bringing lethal force to bear against a human being? That's the impulse, and it is a fundamentally moral, compassionate one.
Let this not be mistaken for a pro-open-borders argument on my part. I obviously think America can't afford to let in literally everyone who wants in, for the same reason a private person can't afford to let all the homeless people in town crash on their couch. It's just not reasonable. But it is obvious why someone would "want" to do it - would feel a moral impetus to do it - and the "imported for no clear reason" framing obscures this, which is at once uncharitable to the decision-makers, and obscures the underlying issue of naivete which needs to be confronted head-on if anyone's minds are going to be changed.
I don't believe Biden was unwilling to use force to stop border hoppers- he is, after all, a very moderate democrat with few firm convictions. I suspect that instead he wanted the workers. America, like most other advanced economies, has functionally full employment and a lot of blue collar jobs left unfilled. Japan, Poland, etc are doing the same thing.
Why would that mean anything, let alone that the decisions is justify on material / economic grounds? World elites have remarkably narrow worldviews. Do you think gender self-ID was implemented in a good chunk of Europe for material reasons? Do you think there were BLM marches there because of how badly black people were treated?
Iran and Russia also have economic migrants.
Draw an ideological throughline between Japan, the USA, Russia, Poland, France, Japan, Iran, Germany, etc.
Just once I'd like to see an example of a country that didn't follow suit and suffered some horrible negative consequences.
Also: sure, I think the leaders of most of these countries are on board for the world depopulation train.
I mean... the communist block arguably qualifies.
Yes, they totally didn't do a whole bunch of other things that are more likely to be responsible for their outcome.
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