02-03-2017, 10:15 AM
(01-31-2017, 05:06 PM)Odin Wrote:(01-30-2017, 02:51 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Nearly 20 years ago, in the throes of Clinton Derangement Syndrome, I would drive a few blocks from the office with my lunch, and park on a quiet street at the edge of the San Francisco Bay salt marshes. I would tune my radio to 560 KSFO and listen to Michael Savage. It must have been around 1998 that I first heard his slogan: "Borders, Language, Culture."
It seemed innocent enough. Obviously, maintaining border control is a good thing. We need customs and immigration officers to maintain orderly processing in of people coming into the country. Language is important - competence in the lingua franca is obviously a key to success. A shared culture helps us to norm on commonly understood and agreed principles of ethics, law and ways of doing business. It's all good.
Unfortunately, demagogues can take these concepts out of context, marry them with resentments held by various identity groups, spin them for political gain, or even, use them to fuel the fires of chaos.
From the seemingly innocent "Borders, Language and Culture" of the late 20th Century we have moved to "your papers please" and God forbid you don't have the correct type of name or national origin.
This is going to go badly. There are now VIPs and high status people caught up in the travel ban, some of them well regarded Resident Aliens. It's one thing to catch Joe Wetback doing a crime and deporting him, it's quite another to tell some advance degreed corporate senior management person they are not allowed to hop on the shuttle to get home to his wife and kids. It is DEPLORABLE.
And now with Steve Bannon we have an actual Neo-Nazi whispering into the ear of an easily manipulated president. There is no way this cannot end badly.
I agree that Bannon is whispering, but Trump is less manipuable than suggestable. Like Bannon, he likes the narrative, but, in Trump's case, it's all about the impresson he's making. He's a drama queen. Get him a tiara.
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