"And then, a slow hardening into the new normal. The victims’ surviving families will remember them. Will we? Will our children?"
Our children will remember all right when members of the victim's families commit acts of retaliatory terror in the US or abroad against American citizens.
Who are the 8% of Dems who don't think Trump admin should follow court rulings when they go against him? WTF? Still, that poll gives me a sliver of hope. That could easily change though with a proper full force attack and propaganda campaign against the courts and judges by the administration and MAGA media.
"Last year, as many as 70 percent of Venezuelan American voters backed Trump. Many of those voters now feel cheated and betrayed."
Well then I don't feel sorry for them. Trump was constantly railing against immigrants, yet many Hispanic men supported him. For two reasons, 1st they didn't think that he was going to deport immigrants like them, just other immigrants, which they were fine with. 2nd reason, they would never want woman to be President. So now that they realize what a vicious President Trump is, they are shocked. If he was deporting Nigerians back to Nigeria, I bet they would be fine with it.
Americans may not remember what is being done (although I'm sure the majority here at the Bulwark will), but the world will remember. All this will have far reaching effects well beyond your borders, and in areas many Americans might not think about. Travelling as an American tourist to countries where the cuts to USAID have caused irreperable harm may not be as comfortable an experience as it was just a year ago. It might be the same travelling to countries that have no link to USAID or Ukraine, but are disgusted by what is going on and know that the current administration did not get in power by force, but was chosen by the American people.
Like it or not, in November 2024 the American voters sent the message to the world that this is what they wanted. The MAGA party was not shy about what it wanted to do in the campaign, and the voters said yes please Donald, and here have the Senate and the House as well! Unfortunately even though the vast majority of people reading this did not vote for Trump (an educated assumption lol), no-one will be checking voter registration when throwing disdain at Americans.
Facts do matter, and the fact is the majority of the American voters who decide your leader elected the felon who represents the American people. Pretty sure the American system only allows the American people to vote, but correct me if I'm wrong. If our Australian Prime Minister wishes to make a deal with the American people, he does not approach a bartender in Queens as the American people's representative, even though the bartender would probably make more sense than the current White House lunatic.
Or is your issue barely more than half means it wasn't a majority? Election is over, votes have been counted, America chose, math says it was a majority. I'd be pissed off too if I was a sane American, I'm pissed off as an Aussie lol. But your fellow citizens decided democracy shouldn't be a thing anymore and voted accordingly.
Makes you more grateful for our voting system doesn't it. Although imperfect, an independent Electoral Commission to prevent gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, preferential voting and the ability to remove an inefficient/bad PM does have benefits.
Also, compulsory voting, whether you agree with it or not, means everyone has a role in influencing the outcome, and owning the consequences of whatever result ensues.
I just read an article by a Canadian woman who was detained by immigration for absolutely no reason. She was able to contact a friend who was able to work with attorneys and the media to get her released after 2 weeks, but her account is harrowing. I'm afraid the "enemies of humanity" are running America now. No one is safe here, none of us.
And the most chilling part of her account was that she finally realized her detention was being extended as long as possible because the private, for-profit prisons were making money off of her and other people arrested on flimsy charges about visa irregularities.
Trump is the thin-skinned snowflake-in-chief. Wah wah wah - criticism! Can anyone even imagine this crap occurring under any other president - either party?
Well, G.H.W. Bush occasionally teared up when he talked about the terrible, horrible insults he had to endure from speakers at the Democratic convention in 1988. When challenged by Dan Rather about his role in the Iran Contra affair, Bush drowned him out with his shrieking about how it wasn't fair to try to judge his whole career by just one incident (although the one incident happened to be treason). He was nowhere near as bad as Trump, but he was one of the Republicans who started us down this path.
When webpages on Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers, et al. are disappeared, Trumpers have piously offered this explanation: "We don't view things through a racial lens, because that's divisive." In itself, that principle has merit, but they want to erase the fact that there ever was a color barrier that Robinson needed to cross, and that Native Americans have been treated brutally in the nation's history, and so on. It isn't that white Americans should all be made to feel personally guilty about that history, but there's some distance between perpetual guilt and enforced historical amnesia.
The incident involving the French scientist who was forbidden entry to the U.S. is more than just bullying. His phone was searched.
Over many years of travel to Europe, I have been selected a handful of times for random searches at airports. Never has an official asked to inspect the contents of my phone.
Is everyone with a non-U.S. passport--tourists, travelers on business--now subject to warrantless search of their phone's contents at our airports? Their laptop? Their e-reader?
Will such searches be extended to U.S. passport holders as well? Of course they will, if criticism of the president in text messages is sufficient to accuse someone of being a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
Given these incidents with French and German visitors I can’t see why any European would want to come to the U.S. now. I avoided South Africa until they got past apartheid and if I didn’t live here would avoid the U.S. too.
There are Australians I know that are changing/cancelling their travel plans now because of what is happening in the USA. The issues vary ranging from those that don't want to deal with a population that elected someone like Trump to the very real fear that as a tourist they will have no rights and could end up being sent somewhere like El Salvador for 'reasons'.
It's a sad state of affairs since America has much to see whatever your interest - history, environment, culture, etc.
I lived in Saudi Arabia as a kid, from 1963-1976. In fact, I was born there. Every day we saw what American soft power looked like, when we saw the lines of Saudis and other guest workers snaking around the clinic doors and down the sidewalk as people waited to see doctors paid for by Saudi riyals and American cash. We saw European soft power too, when we trick-or-treated for UNICEF, collecting spare change along with our candy. I never begrudged the qirsh or the halala because, again, we could see the need every time we stepped outside our houses.
I was 12 when we returned to the US. I’ve never trick-or-treated for UNICEF here, or even for the needy in my own community. Nor did my kids. You could blame our prosperity, I guess, or you could blame our selfishness. These days it looks more like hyper-individualism and greed. I guess Gordon Gecko won, after all.
I don’t like this version of America. It’s small, mean, and greedy.
A normally excellent newsletter exceeds its usual high standards this morning. Essential reading.
Racism is not unconscious.
I really abhor what our country is going through right now. Maybe we will have more adults in the future. This kiddie stuff is pathetic.
"And then, a slow hardening into the new normal. The victims’ surviving families will remember them. Will we? Will our children?"
Our children will remember all right when members of the victim's families commit acts of retaliatory terror in the US or abroad against American citizens.
Who are the 8% of Dems who don't think Trump admin should follow court rulings when they go against him? WTF? Still, that poll gives me a sliver of hope. That could easily change though with a proper full force attack and propaganda campaign against the courts and judges by the administration and MAGA media.
"Last year, as many as 70 percent of Venezuelan American voters backed Trump. Many of those voters now feel cheated and betrayed."
Well then I don't feel sorry for them. Trump was constantly railing against immigrants, yet many Hispanic men supported him. For two reasons, 1st they didn't think that he was going to deport immigrants like them, just other immigrants, which they were fine with. 2nd reason, they would never want woman to be President. So now that they realize what a vicious President Trump is, they are shocked. If he was deporting Nigerians back to Nigeria, I bet they would be fine with it.
Americans may not remember what is being done (although I'm sure the majority here at the Bulwark will), but the world will remember. All this will have far reaching effects well beyond your borders, and in areas many Americans might not think about. Travelling as an American tourist to countries where the cuts to USAID have caused irreperable harm may not be as comfortable an experience as it was just a year ago. It might be the same travelling to countries that have no link to USAID or Ukraine, but are disgusted by what is going on and know that the current administration did not get in power by force, but was chosen by the American people.
Like it or not, in November 2024 the American voters sent the message to the world that this is what they wanted. The MAGA party was not shy about what it wanted to do in the campaign, and the voters said yes please Donald, and here have the Senate and the House as well! Unfortunately even though the vast majority of people reading this did not vote for Trump (an educated assumption lol), no-one will be checking voter registration when throwing disdain at Americans.
Re "the American people" and "the American voters" - Barely more than half of those voting. Facts matter.
Facts do matter, and the fact is the majority of the American voters who decide your leader elected the felon who represents the American people. Pretty sure the American system only allows the American people to vote, but correct me if I'm wrong. If our Australian Prime Minister wishes to make a deal with the American people, he does not approach a bartender in Queens as the American people's representative, even though the bartender would probably make more sense than the current White House lunatic.
Or is your issue barely more than half means it wasn't a majority? Election is over, votes have been counted, America chose, math says it was a majority. I'd be pissed off too if I was a sane American, I'm pissed off as an Aussie lol. But your fellow citizens decided democracy shouldn't be a thing anymore and voted accordingly.
Makes you more grateful for our voting system doesn't it. Although imperfect, an independent Electoral Commission to prevent gerrymandering of electoral boundaries, preferential voting and the ability to remove an inefficient/bad PM does have benefits.
Also, compulsory voting, whether you agree with it or not, means everyone has a role in influencing the outcome, and owning the consequences of whatever result ensues.
Always been my argument for keeping it, even though it can be aggravating lol
God help us if the "Trumpet of Patriots" gains traction !
Poor leaders, with bad policies, poorly implemented.
I remember this country when it was better; I'm going to preserve the memory by spending as little time in it as possible over the next four years.
I wish I had that option. Of course, if he strips me of citizenship and deports me, I might.
I just read an article by a Canadian woman who was detained by immigration for absolutely no reason. She was able to contact a friend who was able to work with attorneys and the media to get her released after 2 weeks, but her account is harrowing. I'm afraid the "enemies of humanity" are running America now. No one is safe here, none of us.
And the most chilling part of her account was that she finally realized her detention was being extended as long as possible because the private, for-profit prisons were making money off of her and other people arrested on flimsy charges about visa irregularities.
National Hands Off protest on Saturday, April 5th. https://handsoff2025.com/
Trump is the thin-skinned snowflake-in-chief. Wah wah wah - criticism! Can anyone even imagine this crap occurring under any other president - either party?
Well, G.H.W. Bush occasionally teared up when he talked about the terrible, horrible insults he had to endure from speakers at the Democratic convention in 1988. When challenged by Dan Rather about his role in the Iran Contra affair, Bush drowned him out with his shrieking about how it wasn't fair to try to judge his whole career by just one incident (although the one incident happened to be treason). He was nowhere near as bad as Trump, but he was one of the Republicans who started us down this path.
When webpages on Jackie Robinson, the Navajo Code Talkers, et al. are disappeared, Trumpers have piously offered this explanation: "We don't view things through a racial lens, because that's divisive." In itself, that principle has merit, but they want to erase the fact that there ever was a color barrier that Robinson needed to cross, and that Native Americans have been treated brutally in the nation's history, and so on. It isn't that white Americans should all be made to feel personally guilty about that history, but there's some distance between perpetual guilt and enforced historical amnesia.
RE: NO LIBS ALLOWED
The incident involving the French scientist who was forbidden entry to the U.S. is more than just bullying. His phone was searched.
Over many years of travel to Europe, I have been selected a handful of times for random searches at airports. Never has an official asked to inspect the contents of my phone.
Is everyone with a non-U.S. passport--tourists, travelers on business--now subject to warrantless search of their phone's contents at our airports? Their laptop? Their e-reader?
Will such searches be extended to U.S. passport holders as well? Of course they will, if criticism of the president in text messages is sufficient to accuse someone of being a threat to U.S. foreign policy.
Given these incidents with French and German visitors I can’t see why any European would want to come to the U.S. now. I avoided South Africa until they got past apartheid and if I didn’t live here would avoid the U.S. too.
There are Australians I know that are changing/cancelling their travel plans now because of what is happening in the USA. The issues vary ranging from those that don't want to deal with a population that elected someone like Trump to the very real fear that as a tourist they will have no rights and could end up being sent somewhere like El Salvador for 'reasons'.
It's a sad state of affairs since America has much to see whatever your interest - history, environment, culture, etc.
Bravo to Andrew.
I lived in Saudi Arabia as a kid, from 1963-1976. In fact, I was born there. Every day we saw what American soft power looked like, when we saw the lines of Saudis and other guest workers snaking around the clinic doors and down the sidewalk as people waited to see doctors paid for by Saudi riyals and American cash. We saw European soft power too, when we trick-or-treated for UNICEF, collecting spare change along with our candy. I never begrudged the qirsh or the halala because, again, we could see the need every time we stepped outside our houses.
I was 12 when we returned to the US. I’ve never trick-or-treated for UNICEF here, or even for the needy in my own community. Nor did my kids. You could blame our prosperity, I guess, or you could blame our selfishness. These days it looks more like hyper-individualism and greed. I guess Gordon Gecko won, after all.
I don’t like this version of America. It’s small, mean, and greedy.
You forgot foolish, stupid, and ungrateful, Tracey.
I will never understand how any Muslim could vote for someone who used the words Hussein and Palestinian as insults
Stupidity is egalitarian it seems.