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Both tribes think the enemy is united while their own team is involved in constant internecine conflict. I think there is something to this, that both observations are half right, but that the apparent symmetry is merely a lack of distinction between where enforcement occurs, where the lines are drawn.
Trump demands absolute loyalty from his servants. His will is absolute. You may disagree, but nonetheless must carry out his commands. Even a whiff of disloyalty is punished swiftly with a removal from power. But people on the right are permitted to believe almost anything at all. There is no ideological coherence in the movement. Trump himself believes in almost nothing. Whore mongering pimps, psychopathic industrialists, and cultural Muslims will break bread with techno feudalists, orthodox Christians, and entho nationalists.
Democrats get absolutely no loyalty from their servants. Bernie Sanders can have his rally commandeered by random loud black women. Obama and Biden can be decried as war criminals for carrying out ordinary presidential duties. Biden can have his entire presidency undermined by professional staff who think they know better than him. He can have the entire blue team apparatus flagellate him for exercising the presidential pardon for his own son. But a New York Times journalist needs to put a five paragraph prostration that they totally don't hate trans people before an article suggesting that maybe the particular style of affirmative care currently used to treat dysphoria is causing patients some harm. A member in good standing on the left must believe all the right things and endorse them full-throatedly or they shall be forever removed from polite society.
The right demands submission of the will. The left demands submission of the self.
This is true and succinctly put in a way it often isn’t, but I agree with the others that it’s more a temporary feature than a permanent one.
The right got so tired of losing that to some extent it redefined winning to mean “a Republican president doing anything”. Fuentes was cheering on the US regime change op in Venezuela, relative economic libcons were begrudgingly saying well tariffs on China are probably necessary etc.
The left is still in the wilderness. Part of it is that Trump hasn’t actually done anything to hurt upper-middle class progressives yet. The Roe reversal doesn’t affect them because they live in blue states. Tariffs were limited / chickened out of pretty quickly, at least the ones with the potential for the most serious impact. Few illegal maids and housekeepers and gardeners have been deported yet. The economy is fine, markets are strong. What is the message from the left? ICE shot someone in Minnesota? Most Americans don’t care.
Republican victories post-Trump that would have been seen as Republican victories pre-Trump:
These aren't even ambiguous, these don't require us to argue about complex economic data, these are not things that would have happened under a Democratic president, and these are (mostly) things that did not happen under the last Republican president. If you want to argue that Republicans gave up on their old ideas because nobody ten years ago cared about Greenland or tariffs, you have an unconvincing argument. You might not be a Republican, but Republicans are happy with Trump, have consistently awarded him very high approval ratings among Republicans throughout both of Trump's terms. What's the argument? Republicans don't know their own interests?
Where is the evidence of this?
I assumed these facts were common enough to not need citation.
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/07/02/dhs-shatters-nationwide-border-records-once-again-delivering-most-secure-border
Trump's deportation numbers are trivially higher when you remember that Obama and Biden counted "turnbacks" at the border as deportations
I don't put a lot of stock in the government publishing a press piece that says "We're doing great!"
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/02/02/migrant-encounters-at-the-us-mexico-border-are-at-their-lowest-level-in-more-than-50-years/
https://www.theglobalstatistics.com/border-patrol-statistics-on-illegal-crossings/
Skepticism about basic observable reality -- I can clearly remember a year ago when Biden's administration had a monumental border crisis -- is a little tiring. It's a simple google search, it's not a complicated question, unless the theory is that the Trump admin is systematically covering up a crisis at the border, come on. Who really denies that the border is more stable now than it was under Biden? Is this under dispute?
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This claims there were "fewer encounters and apprehensions" but says nothing about deportations.
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