Plenty of previous presidential administrations have broken the law, many in worse ways. I guess what is so jarring about this one is that they aren't even pretending that there is any legal pretext for this, there are no fake charges, no secrecy--just loudly and openly declaring that the rule of law isn't something they have to even pretend to follow anymore. It really feels like we're in a very dark era now.
I'll stick with Simon Rosenberg on this one, regaridng any comparisons to privious administrations, as posted by TCinLA, "I’ll give Simon Rosenberg today’s First Word: “Every American is getting hurt by Trump’s reckless economic agenda. Our country is far weaker. Poorer. How can any American every trust him to do anything ever again? For what Trump is doing to our economy right now is without question the greatest fuckup by an American leader in our history. He is now, today, without question the greatest fuckup and worst leader this country has ever known. “
I'm not sure that right-wing Jews are political idiots. What they are is OLD. Old people have some mental advantages. They've "seen everything before," and can easily match patterns. Young folk have to work it out more slowly. For instance, I'm an old guy, and the moment I saw my first kheffiyah at Columbia, I remembered Che Guevara berets and Jefferson Airplane lyrics. I knew it wouldn't end well.
When pattern-matching works, it works well. But sometimes, it doesn't. The alter kocker Jews looked back to their youth, when there was no significant anti-semitism in the US. Yes, there were a few Nazis and David Duke. But they really didn't count, unless your name was Alan Berg. As old guys, the alter kockers retconned the present on the past. They still can't take antisemitism seriously, although things have changed. (My old guy sin fwiw: underestimating the student debt problem. However, I timely grokked resurgent antisemitism because I read both Ann Coulter and the Protocols in the 1990's, and couldn't tell the difference.)
Right-wing Jews are not so much political idiots, as they are too old and too cynical. In their model of the world (which predates Ann Coulter,) antisemitism did not exist in America, and anti-antisemitism was strong. Why not conflate opposition to Bibi with antisemitism? In the long run, it may be political idiocy. But even if so, it is a form of political idiocy consistent with very effective political tactics.
old guy here as well, and what you're saying is absolutely true. in my case, a little MORE true insofar as I'm an old NEW YORK JEW. and to compound THAT, I grew up in a neighborhood that was, like 95% Jewish in the 50s and 60s (now, it's almost completely Orthodox, with a significant Lubavitcher presence). anybody with the smallest presence of mind around me realized sometime around 1960 that to be a NY Jew raised during the 50s and 60s was to be a King of the Universe. this sort of imprinting is not easily undone. I think my first encounter with anybody remotely antisemitic was when I was working as a private chauffeur in the early 80s. these two middle-aged ladies were "discussing" the best private school to send their respective sons to. one of them said "Collegiate" but was answered with a second woman nixing Collegiate "because of all those Bern-STINES and Finkel-STIMES." a third woman chimed in with a tone mixing some seriously goyische aggression with a simultaneous sense of surrender to the inevitable. her comment (which seemed to end this phase of the conversation) was "darling, don't you now they're EVERYWHERE?"
this really happened. and in 1983! at the time, my solution was to create panic by claiming we were nearly out of gas and that I doubted we'd make a downtown station before we ran out. it was one of the few acts I can remember executing well enough that it had the desired effect, which was to give them a sense of sudden existential threat for a good fifteen minutes. the best part of it was how JEWISH it felt at the time. I got a good hour or so of being able to consider myself some kind of Maccabee (this setting aside the fact that the Maccabees were probably as aggressively intransigent as any of the crazies on the West Bank.
which is, once again, to demonstrate my alter kocker qualifications.
I'm willing to bet that many--if not most--of us could use a little more information about how easily antisemitism (or anti-Judaism, which is probably a more accurate term) catches on in places with demographics that mirror reality a lot more accurately than anywhere I might have grown up.
but I'm sticking with the whole King of the Universe thing because, let's say, it's more work than it's reasonable to demand of anybody late in his eighth decade.
or something like that.
and since I'm here, I want to thank John for having one of the best available Substacks.
I have been tracking your efforts to carefully identify parallels between today and 1933. Your focus on the interaction between the mob and law enforcement is one that we need to keep an eye on. I’m sure you have seen the photos from 1933 showing SA and Prussian police patrolling together in Berlin. When Nazis detained people, prosecutors and judges either could not or would not intervene. So the next “firewall” is the “resistance” by federal judges. Once they can be pressured into inaction, then it is Katie-bar-the-door time!
The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil is a metaphor, analogue, model, whatever you want to call it — for how this regime is abducting our democracy. It’s the way a mob boss and his cartel move into a region, having already dispatched consiglieres to intimidate and control the ‘authorities.’ My theory is that the Trump/Muskreants intend to move-in on ‘The Americas’ (hence the posturing about Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the Panama Canal, etc., and turn this entire region into their syndicate’s territory, while facilitating Putin’s consolidation of his European territory and Xi’s consolidation of his Asian territory. Then the three ‘authoritarian cartels/regimes’ can lord it over their respective ganglands, working out accommodations over Africa and the Middle East.
I wish this didn't mirror my thoughts exactly. I wish this wouldn't keep me up at night. I wish I hadn't needed to fear this day, and I wish it wasn't here.
If there is a positive side to this, it's that the regime is afraid of criticism of Israel for its genocide and its apartheid. A backlash against Doge has definitely materialized and will grow. Opponents of the regime need to step up our actions and point out the connections. I appreciate your post as a rallying cry that these attacks on civil liberties will be countered.
Hi John. I appreciate this important post. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice (which interprets the INA for itself and DHS purposes) has adopted a different, atextual understanding of "material support" that includes any "act [that] has a logical
and reasonably foreseeable tendency to promote, sustain, or maintain the organization,
So they have said the literal definition of rhetorical support is material, lovely.
I have two semi conflicting thoughts about this. The first is that I'm angry again that all of this infrastructure and machinery was in place under Democratic administrations, and leftists (and a lot of liberals!) complained about it and said it could be abused even more than it was, and the liberals laughed and thought that was impossible. But the other concern is that they don't even need the rule of law anymore. They don't even need the fake justification.
Big time! BIA cases like this are why removal defense attorneys weren't as sad as other liberals when SCOTUS's Loper Bright Decision. An Article III court might disagree with this interpretation. But unless/until they do, it's binding on DOJ and DHS. (And even then, it'll depend on jurisdiction).
Thanks for those points. Seems to me these rules in the INA the regime is relying upon are subject to being ruled void for vagueness or being limited judicially. It's impossible to tell where the line on speech would be, outside standard First Amendment doctrine. And Khalil didn't violate that.
Can't help thinking, here, of the deportation of Emma Goldman and other left-wing organizers spearheaded by a young J. Edgar Hoover. Deportation as a tool of political suppression is both deeply un-American as a matter of ideals and deeply American as a matter of practice.
But you are right in using the concept, because we are in the midst of attempted régime change — and a form of it that, of course, reverses the usual hopes of liberal régimes to replace autocratic ones, and that is driven from within. Thanks.
Plenty of previous presidential administrations have broken the law, many in worse ways. I guess what is so jarring about this one is that they aren't even pretending that there is any legal pretext for this, there are no fake charges, no secrecy--just loudly and openly declaring that the rule of law isn't something they have to even pretend to follow anymore. It really feels like we're in a very dark era now.
I'll stick with Simon Rosenberg on this one, regaridng any comparisons to privious administrations, as posted by TCinLA, "I’ll give Simon Rosenberg today’s First Word: “Every American is getting hurt by Trump’s reckless economic agenda. Our country is far weaker. Poorer. How can any American every trust him to do anything ever again? For what Trump is doing to our economy right now is without question the greatest fuckup by an American leader in our history. He is now, today, without question the greatest fuckup and worst leader this country has ever known. “
Word. With an addition.
I'm not sure that right-wing Jews are political idiots. What they are is OLD. Old people have some mental advantages. They've "seen everything before," and can easily match patterns. Young folk have to work it out more slowly. For instance, I'm an old guy, and the moment I saw my first kheffiyah at Columbia, I remembered Che Guevara berets and Jefferson Airplane lyrics. I knew it wouldn't end well.
When pattern-matching works, it works well. But sometimes, it doesn't. The alter kocker Jews looked back to their youth, when there was no significant anti-semitism in the US. Yes, there were a few Nazis and David Duke. But they really didn't count, unless your name was Alan Berg. As old guys, the alter kockers retconned the present on the past. They still can't take antisemitism seriously, although things have changed. (My old guy sin fwiw: underestimating the student debt problem. However, I timely grokked resurgent antisemitism because I read both Ann Coulter and the Protocols in the 1990's, and couldn't tell the difference.)
Right-wing Jews are not so much political idiots, as they are too old and too cynical. In their model of the world (which predates Ann Coulter,) antisemitism did not exist in America, and anti-antisemitism was strong. Why not conflate opposition to Bibi with antisemitism? In the long run, it may be political idiocy. But even if so, it is a form of political idiocy consistent with very effective political tactics.
old guy here as well, and what you're saying is absolutely true. in my case, a little MORE true insofar as I'm an old NEW YORK JEW. and to compound THAT, I grew up in a neighborhood that was, like 95% Jewish in the 50s and 60s (now, it's almost completely Orthodox, with a significant Lubavitcher presence). anybody with the smallest presence of mind around me realized sometime around 1960 that to be a NY Jew raised during the 50s and 60s was to be a King of the Universe. this sort of imprinting is not easily undone. I think my first encounter with anybody remotely antisemitic was when I was working as a private chauffeur in the early 80s. these two middle-aged ladies were "discussing" the best private school to send their respective sons to. one of them said "Collegiate" but was answered with a second woman nixing Collegiate "because of all those Bern-STINES and Finkel-STIMES." a third woman chimed in with a tone mixing some seriously goyische aggression with a simultaneous sense of surrender to the inevitable. her comment (which seemed to end this phase of the conversation) was "darling, don't you now they're EVERYWHERE?"
this really happened. and in 1983! at the time, my solution was to create panic by claiming we were nearly out of gas and that I doubted we'd make a downtown station before we ran out. it was one of the few acts I can remember executing well enough that it had the desired effect, which was to give them a sense of sudden existential threat for a good fifteen minutes. the best part of it was how JEWISH it felt at the time. I got a good hour or so of being able to consider myself some kind of Maccabee (this setting aside the fact that the Maccabees were probably as aggressively intransigent as any of the crazies on the West Bank.
which is, once again, to demonstrate my alter kocker qualifications.
I'm willing to bet that many--if not most--of us could use a little more information about how easily antisemitism (or anti-Judaism, which is probably a more accurate term) catches on in places with demographics that mirror reality a lot more accurately than anywhere I might have grown up.
but I'm sticking with the whole King of the Universe thing because, let's say, it's more work than it's reasonable to demand of anybody late in his eighth decade.
or something like that.
and since I'm here, I want to thank John for having one of the best available Substacks.
I have been tracking your efforts to carefully identify parallels between today and 1933. Your focus on the interaction between the mob and law enforcement is one that we need to keep an eye on. I’m sure you have seen the photos from 1933 showing SA and Prussian police patrolling together in Berlin. When Nazis detained people, prosecutors and judges either could not or would not intervene. So the next “firewall” is the “resistance” by federal judges. Once they can be pressured into inaction, then it is Katie-bar-the-door time!
The abduction of Mahmoud Khalil is a metaphor, analogue, model, whatever you want to call it — for how this regime is abducting our democracy. It’s the way a mob boss and his cartel move into a region, having already dispatched consiglieres to intimidate and control the ‘authorities.’ My theory is that the Trump/Muskreants intend to move-in on ‘The Americas’ (hence the posturing about Canada, Greenland, Mexico, the Panama Canal, etc., and turn this entire region into their syndicate’s territory, while facilitating Putin’s consolidation of his European territory and Xi’s consolidation of his Asian territory. Then the three ‘authoritarian cartels/regimes’ can lord it over their respective ganglands, working out accommodations over Africa and the Middle East.
Those three ganglands correspond pretty closely to Eurasia, Oceania, and Eastasia.
I wish this didn't mirror my thoughts exactly. I wish this wouldn't keep me up at night. I wish I hadn't needed to fear this day, and I wish it wasn't here.
If there is a positive side to this, it's that the regime is afraid of criticism of Israel for its genocide and its apartheid. A backlash against Doge has definitely materialized and will grow. Opponents of the regime need to step up our actions and point out the connections. I appreciate your post as a rallying cry that these attacks on civil liberties will be countered.
Hi John. I appreciate this important post. Unfortunately, the Department of Justice (which interprets the INA for itself and DHS purposes) has adopted a different, atextual understanding of "material support" that includes any "act [that] has a logical
and reasonably foreseeable tendency to promote, sustain, or maintain the organization,
even if only to a de minimis degree." (emphasis added). https://www.justice.gov/d9/2023-11/3928_0.pdf
Not especially relevant to this case, but DOJ's definition of "material support" also includes acts carried out under threat of death or other durress. https://www.justice.gov/eoir/file/865856/dl?inline=
So they have said the literal definition of rhetorical support is material, lovely.
I have two semi conflicting thoughts about this. The first is that I'm angry again that all of this infrastructure and machinery was in place under Democratic administrations, and leftists (and a lot of liberals!) complained about it and said it could be abused even more than it was, and the liberals laughed and thought that was impossible. But the other concern is that they don't even need the rule of law anymore. They don't even need the fake justification.
That is very scary.
Big time! BIA cases like this are why removal defense attorneys weren't as sad as other liberals when SCOTUS's Loper Bright Decision. An Article III court might disagree with this interpretation. But unless/until they do, it's binding on DOJ and DHS. (And even then, it'll depend on jurisdiction).
Thanks for those points. Seems to me these rules in the INA the regime is relying upon are subject to being ruled void for vagueness or being limited judicially. It's impossible to tell where the line on speech would be, outside standard First Amendment doctrine. And Khalil didn't violate that.
As I suspect you may have heard by now, Judge Maryanne Trump Barry agreed with you....and was reversed by Judge Alito for procedural/fed jur reasons.
This seems to follow what the Heritage Foundation was advocating, back in October?
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism
Can't help thinking, here, of the deportation of Emma Goldman and other left-wing organizers spearheaded by a young J. Edgar Hoover. Deportation as a tool of political suppression is both deeply un-American as a matter of ideals and deeply American as a matter of practice.
A side point: "régime" is a legitimate and neutral term in political science. Look it up in Philippe Schmitter and Marc Blecher, POLITICS AS A SCIENCE, available for free here: https://www.amazon.com/Politics-Science-Prolegomenon-Conceptualising-Comparative-ebook/dp/B08DBWD5NN/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Blecher+schmitter&qid=1598012911&sr=8-1
Yes I know that.
But you are right in using the concept, because we are in the midst of attempted régime change — and a form of it that, of course, reverses the usual hopes of liberal régimes to replace autocratic ones, and that is driven from within. Thanks.