American conservatives fundamentally lament the country they “wish to preserve” is the child of enlightenment, and therefore their project’s natural endpoint is to create a new, “National America” to preserve, paradoxically.
Excellent post. Citizenship is a creature of law, but it gives a legal and localized existence to something that precedes or exceeds law––something like human worthiness. Trump is overtly making law a mere handmaiden to his own power to unveil and reward worthiness (approximated by things like whiteness, wealth, alpha masculinity, celebrity) and banish or harm the unworthy.
All of this is happening while whole branches of critical thought that could bring the stakes of this development into meaningful focus are being ridiculed, defamed, defunded, or banned. We are losing frames for thinking about this right at the moment when we most need them. Instead, even platforms like the NYT are boosting crackpot prophets and sophomoric thinkers.
The conservative SC justices just demonstrated their own willingness to downgrade law and empower the project imposing a quasi-mystical "greatness."
The impulse to destroy is at the core of trumpism. Certainly it manifests first and foremost in the targeted destruction of certain groups, but destruction and devastation en masse are the only real aims. This is what connects attacking citizenship, crippling cancer research, kneecapping renewable energy. A burning core of resentment that will lash out at and seek to destroy anything that mankind values.
I think Trumpism has always warranted the epithet “totalitarian” - at least in aspiration - because it has always made clear that Trump’s utterances, his intuitions, his “feelings” themselves carry the force of law. The systems, the institutions around him are then expected to adjust accordingly, and so far most of them have done so.
Nobody in the administration even pretends to put forward legal/constitutional arguments about anything - they just routinely and robotically default to “the president’s will”. It’s the common thread in every outrage - including now the birthright citizenship problem - and I’ve never understood people who don’t like the fascism argument not taking it more seriously.
Bush/Cheney’s unitary executive doesn’t even begin to capture this.
The word that recurs in my mind is 'infantile'. That makes it all the more disipiriting, there can be some dignity in persecution by _adults_.
If there is still civilisation in a century, and still master's theses, I should fully expect one carelessly describing the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life", or better still Jerome Bixby's original story, in which young Anthony is perpetually perinatal, as being obvious satires on the current age.
Sadly, the USA is over The end of citizenship is a decisive marker. There is no constitutional path back from the disaster created when a majority either votes for dictatorship or fails to vote against it. Hopefully, a new and better state will emerge from the ashes of the old one.
Great post! When reading it I thought about the practice of "outlawing", the most severe punishment you could get in the middle age (among the vikings in Norway - my country of residence). A punishment from the middle age, but without the "due process" they were able to administer a 1000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
To put it simplest, and perhaps stupidliest, once birthright citizenship is gone, the tests for citizenship can devolve into ideological acceptability and Blut-und-Boden.
(Perhaps the latter can act akin to the old Grandfather Clauses for those who embrace that which were, _officially_, excluded, e.g. esp. Nazism, but which are winked-at, if only to make Trumpism look less extreme.)
Thoughtful inclusion of Earl Warren on banishment. Nifty to note how the Administration links birtherism, citizenship whether naturalized or birthright, extradition, and the state in the struggle to define one’s existence. He reveals the death, not only of America, but of human society via these nationalistic dictates of the leader. Evokes the Latina worker in John Sayles’s Silver City. She always carries her papers. But Pilager’s campaign erased her compadre, the chef.
This of a piece with what might be called 'Truth==Trump', the transvaluation of all values, including truth and falsity, according to how Mr Trump feels about them at that moment, and its implementation in a system in which brutality is the only measure of sincerity.
So you or I might 'really' be a citizen or not, depending on how well we please Mr Trump—as he was reëlected with a majority of umpteen-milliion-billion percent, anything else would be undemocratic. (…and Mr Trump says that that's bad, right now.)
The 9-11 plotters were always much ideologically closer ideologicially to this fascist set than either group would like to admit. Even if the cockpit is charged, they would rather crash America with no survivors then let anyone else other than their dear Donald flourish. If Donald is wrong, they don't want to be right... come what may. If the world melts because it couldn't accept Donald, some of his voters might say "the world" should be ended for that. I do hope many resist this anyway, or at least have the sense to not comply.
American conservatives fundamentally lament the country they “wish to preserve” is the child of enlightenment, and therefore their project’s natural endpoint is to create a new, “National America” to preserve, paradoxically.
Excellent post. Citizenship is a creature of law, but it gives a legal and localized existence to something that precedes or exceeds law––something like human worthiness. Trump is overtly making law a mere handmaiden to his own power to unveil and reward worthiness (approximated by things like whiteness, wealth, alpha masculinity, celebrity) and banish or harm the unworthy.
All of this is happening while whole branches of critical thought that could bring the stakes of this development into meaningful focus are being ridiculed, defamed, defunded, or banned. We are losing frames for thinking about this right at the moment when we most need them. Instead, even platforms like the NYT are boosting crackpot prophets and sophomoric thinkers.
The conservative SC justices just demonstrated their own willingness to downgrade law and empower the project imposing a quasi-mystical "greatness."
The impulse to destroy is at the core of trumpism. Certainly it manifests first and foremost in the targeted destruction of certain groups, but destruction and devastation en masse are the only real aims. This is what connects attacking citizenship, crippling cancer research, kneecapping renewable energy. A burning core of resentment that will lash out at and seek to destroy anything that mankind values.
I think Trumpism has always warranted the epithet “totalitarian” - at least in aspiration - because it has always made clear that Trump’s utterances, his intuitions, his “feelings” themselves carry the force of law. The systems, the institutions around him are then expected to adjust accordingly, and so far most of them have done so.
Nobody in the administration even pretends to put forward legal/constitutional arguments about anything - they just routinely and robotically default to “the president’s will”. It’s the common thread in every outrage - including now the birthright citizenship problem - and I’ve never understood people who don’t like the fascism argument not taking it more seriously.
Bush/Cheney’s unitary executive doesn’t even begin to capture this.
The word that recurs in my mind is 'infantile'. That makes it all the more disipiriting, there can be some dignity in persecution by _adults_.
If there is still civilisation in a century, and still master's theses, I should fully expect one carelessly describing the "Twilight Zone" episode "It's a Good Life", or better still Jerome Bixby's original story, in which young Anthony is perpetually perinatal, as being obvious satires on the current age.
trump is a family annihilator writ large, carrying out a household liquidation on the entire country
Sadly, the USA is over The end of citizenship is a decisive marker. There is no constitutional path back from the disaster created when a majority either votes for dictatorship or fails to vote against it. Hopefully, a new and better state will emerge from the ashes of the old one.
Great post! When reading it I thought about the practice of "outlawing", the most severe punishment you could get in the middle age (among the vikings in Norway - my country of residence). A punishment from the middle age, but without the "due process" they were able to administer a 1000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlaw
Great piece.
To put it simplest, and perhaps stupidliest, once birthright citizenship is gone, the tests for citizenship can devolve into ideological acceptability and Blut-und-Boden.
(Perhaps the latter can act akin to the old Grandfather Clauses for those who embrace that which were, _officially_, excluded, e.g. esp. Nazism, but which are winked-at, if only to make Trumpism look less extreme.)
Thoughtful inclusion of Earl Warren on banishment. Nifty to note how the Administration links birtherism, citizenship whether naturalized or birthright, extradition, and the state in the struggle to define one’s existence. He reveals the death, not only of America, but of human society via these nationalistic dictates of the leader. Evokes the Latina worker in John Sayles’s Silver City. She always carries her papers. But Pilager’s campaign erased her compadre, the chef.
#nationalism #citizenship #Deportation #BirthrightCitizenship
they are fundamentally anti-American in a way that is sacrilegious, for lack of a better term.
This of a piece with what might be called 'Truth==Trump', the transvaluation of all values, including truth and falsity, according to how Mr Trump feels about them at that moment, and its implementation in a system in which brutality is the only measure of sincerity.
So you or I might 'really' be a citizen or not, depending on how well we please Mr Trump—as he was reëlected with a majority of umpteen-milliion-billion percent, anything else would be undemocratic. (…and Mr Trump says that that's bad, right now.)
Perhaps essay title should be "Death to American" 😥
The 9-11 plotters were always much ideologically closer ideologicially to this fascist set than either group would like to admit. Even if the cockpit is charged, they would rather crash America with no survivors then let anyone else other than their dear Donald flourish. If Donald is wrong, they don't want to be right... come what may. If the world melts because it couldn't accept Donald, some of his voters might say "the world" should be ended for that. I do hope many resist this anyway, or at least have the sense to not comply.
Another banger. Thanks John. The quote from Warren made me think that we ought to start talking about these deportations as banishments.