"The Democrats onstage saw themselves as morally courageous. American voters, it turned out, saw a group of politicians hopelessly out of touch."

"Standing side by side at a primary debate in June 2019, nine of the party’s candidates for president were asked to raise their hand if they wanted to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Only one of them held still. Six years later, the party remains haunted by that tableau. It stands both as a vivid demonstration of a leftward policy shift on immigration that many prominent Democratic lawmakers and strategists now say they deeply regret, and as a marker of how sharply the country was moving in the other direction."

I'm reading "Can Democrats Find Their Way on Immigration? The party’s leftward shift in the Biden administration arguably laid the groundwork for President Trump’s aggressive approach. Deciding the next move won’t be easy" (NYT)(free-access link).

"The next move" = it's a game. You can't win the confidence of the people if they can see it's a game. 

What can you do to demonstrate/fake sincerity? The old plan was to denounce Trump as a racist, and there are still prominent Democrats like Ayanna Pressley, who's quoted saying: "Democrats have to stop talking about the issue of immigration within a Republican frame. This has nothing to do with law and order. This is about power, control, terror, and it is about racism and xenophobia. Donald Trump wants to make America Jim Crow again, and then some."

French police "charged into the water with knives to slash a rigid inflatable boat (rib), which migrants were scrambling to board."

I'm reading "French police use knives to puncture migrant dinghies in the sea/The tactic, used for the first time, is a ‘precursor’ to a change of French maritime law that will allow officers greater powers to prevent Channel crossings" (London Times).

"A prolific criminal who threatened to behead Aled Jones and attacked a Bridgerton actress was not deported back to Algeria as he was under 18, the Home Office has said."

"Zacariah Boulares admitted stealing a phone from Genevieve Chenneour, 27, and assaulting another customer when he appeared at Westminster magistrates’ court last month. The Algerian, now 18, has 12 previous convictions relating to 28 offences, magistrates heard, which include stealing a Rolex watch worth £20,000 from a 78-year-old man at Paddington station in May 2023. In July 2023 Boulares threatened to behead Jones, 54, the Songs of Praise presenter, and cut off his arm when he stole his Rolex Daytona watch in Chiswick, west London. He pleaded guilty to robbery and possession of an offensive weapon and was given a 24-month detention and training order. He was released after 14 months...."

I'm reading "Thief who attacked Bridgerton actress was too young to be deported/Zacariah Boulares, who stole from the actress Genevieve Chenneour, has 12 convictions but was not returned to Algeria as he was under 18" in The London Times.

The "Oh no, not work!" guy is so repulsive that I had to wonder if he is an actor deliberately evoking our disgust.

"Oh no, not work!"pic.twitter.com/RSfBNl90j9

— Stephen Knight 🎙️ (@GSpellchecker) June 12, 2025

The lovely black woman also seems perfectly cast.

But I'll assume they are real people in a real confrontation. Somebody's there with the camera, and they know it, but everything's in front of cameras these days. Human behavior is behavior for the camera now. Is this scene real? It's real in today's terms — real and very viral.

The scene is so perfect: The ordinary person, burdened in her daily life, is so reasonable, so appealing, and the man, cocksure in his cause, is so enragingly and hilariously awful. His cause is, to him, so obviously more important than her work. But what is his cause? It is, ironically, persons of color getting to work in the United States of America.

"[Geert] Wilders’s party — which has advocated banning the Quran, closing Islamic schools and entirely halting the acceptance of asylum seekers..."

"... won the largest number of seats in November 2023 elections, sending shock waves through the Dutch political system. Mr. Wilders was able to form a government with three other right-wing parties... after more than six months of wrangling.... Mr. Wilders had aimed to bring the 'strictest migration policy ever' to the Netherlands, something his governing partners had said they agreed with. In May 2024, the four parties reached a deal that included 'the strictest asylum admission policy and the most comprehensive migration control package ever.' But Mr. Wilders said that implementation was not going quickly enough. Last week he said he wanted to add 10 more proposals... includ[ing] calls for a complete halt to asylum, a temporary stop to family reunions for asylum seekers who had been granted refugee status and the return of all Syrians who had applied for asylum or were in the Netherlands on temporary visas. The leaders of the other coalition parties said that while they did not oppose Mr. Wilders’s plans, they wanted him to propose them in the House of Representatives. That would have taken longer and would not have guaranteed implementation...."

From "Dutch Government Collapses Over Migration Dispute/The populist Geert Wilders withdrew his right-wing party from the ruling coalition, saying partners were stalling plans for the Netherlands’ 'strictest migration policy ever'" (NYT).

About that proposal to ban the Quran — as reported in January 2024, after the election and before the formation of the coalition — "Dutch anti-Islam lawmaker Geert Wilders has withdrawn a 2018 proposal to ban mosques and the Quran" (Independent). The proposal denounced Islam as a "violent, totalitarian ideology."

"I really do think that social solidarity is destroyed when you have too much migration too quickly."

"And so that's not because I hate the migrants or I'm motivated by grievance, that's because I'm trying to preserve something in my own country where we are a unified nation. And I don't think that can happen if you have too much immigration too quickly."

Said JD Vance on the new episode of Ross Douthat's "Interesting Times" podcast — audio and transcript at Podscribe.

Douthat was challenging him to coordinate his political thinking with his Catholicism. To quote a bit more of what Vance said:

"The world’s first modern art museum celebrating migration opens on Thursday in the Dutch port of Rotterdam...."

"Dominated by a giant, futuristic, silver staircase at its centre — to symbolise movement — the Fenix museum is in the eye of a political storm and a populist backlash against mass immigration in Europe and across the Atlantic in the US. The museum is housed in what was once the world’s biggest warehouse next to the port’s famous 'Holland-Amerika' pier, where millions of European migrants left Europe for America in the 19th and 20th centuries.... 'These docks witness the departures of millions, including among them iconic figures like Albert Einstein, the actor Johnny Weissmuller and artists Willem de Kooning and Max Beckmann — and welcomed just as many arrivals, shaping the vibrant, multicultural city that is Rotterdam today,' [said Anne Kremers, the museum’s director]."

From "Tornado-shaped museum invites political storm with art of migration/As Geert Wilders’ government clamps down on immigration, the Fenix museum in Rotterdam aims to show that the movement of people ‘has always been there’" (London Times).

You can see some pictures of the architecture here (at Archipanic). It's ugly from some angles, kind of cool from others, but doesn't seem to relate to the desperation of mass migration. It's coldly abstract and design-y. You may like it if you're the sort of person who wishes Frank Lloyd Wright's Guggenheim Museum had been built out of stainless steel.

It's kind of funny to see Johnny Weissmuller extolled alongside Albert Einstein and Willem de Kooning, but I am not the arbiter of icons, and I wandered off into the Wikipedia article on Weissmuller:

"Vance in Rome trying to meet the Pope? What a theatrical performance. Hypocrite. Viper."

That's the 3rd most highly rated comment at the WaPo article "Vance meets with pope as Francis’s Easter message decries ‘logic of fear’/The visit at the Vatican brought together the ailing head of the Catholic church and a high-profile convert who has criticized the pope’s social teachings."

Second most highly rated comment: "I’m surprised Vance didn’t burst into flames."

Most highly rated: "Vance is just one of many fake religious politicians. They run around boasting of their faith, but practice none of the Christian values Jesus and the bible preached."

And here's the "logic of fear" statement in the Pope's Easter message: "How much contempt is stirred up at times towards the vulnerable, the marginalized and migrants. I appeal to all those in positions of political responsibility in our world not to yield to the logic of fear which only leads to isolation from others, but rather to use the resources available to help the needy, to fight hunger and to encourage initiatives that promote development. These are the ‘weapons’ of peace: weapons that build the future, instead of sowing seeds of death."

"Wealthy residents of the Hamptons demand perfection"... and live in fear of Trump's deportation agenda.

The NYT drums up sympathy for completely unsympathetic rich people who've been relying on illegal immigration to serve their various needs!

The rich are not the "They" in the headline, "They Help Make the Hamptons the Hamptons, and Now They’re Living in Fear/Latino immigrants care for some of America’s most lavish beachside mansions. Their disappearance would affect the wealthy, too."

Heavens! Affecting the wealthy too. Oh, my!

Maybe the NYT is mocking these people? Nope! The article is well larded with empathy for the migrants who face deportation, but the travails of the rich are presented soberly:

"Our ethical judgments, he suggests, are governed not by a complex of modules but by one overriding emotion."

"Untold generations of cowering have written fear into our genes, rendering us hypersensitive to threats of harm. 'If you want to know what someone sees as wrong, your best bet is to figure out what they see as harmful,' [writes Kurt Gray, the director of the Deepest Beliefs Lab]. At another point: 'All people share a harm-based moral mind.' At still another: 'Harm is the master key of morality.'..."

Writes Elizabeth Kolbert, in "Does One Emotion Rule All Our Ethical Judgments? When prehistoric predators abounded, the ability to perceive harm helped our ancestors survive. Some researchers wonder whether it fuels our greatest fights today" (The New Yorker).

Listen to the Dalai Lama giggle at the idea of open immigration.

An Indlan reporter is given the opportunity to interview the Dalai Lama about a number of things, but chooses to focus on lmmlgratlon to The West and asks...

Reporter: People from Afghanistan or Africa who want to stay in Europe, shouldn't they be allowed to?

Lama: No, Europe… pic.twitter.com/sNE0nVAlHr

— Dane (@UltraDane) January 5, 2025

People from Afghanistan or Africa who want to stay in Europe, shouldn't they be allowed to? No, Europe will become like Afghanistan or Africa... he he he he he. Like my parents came to The UK from India, that's ok too isn't it? England is small island, 90% become lndian he he he he he he....

The interview is from 2019.

It's funny because the Dalai Lama is world-famous as an icon of compassion, and the idea he's openly experiencing as too silly to deserve anything more than giggling is an idea that we in blue America have been made to feel that we must embrace with great seriousness or we will become social pariahs because of our complete lack of compassion.

"We are implementing what we describe as a paradigm shift in Swedish migration policy.... This is not because we don’t like these people..."

"... or because we don’t understand that many of them might face a very difficult situation... but because of the fact that we will never be able to manage the enormous task of integration in the right way if you continue to have such a high influx of immigrants every year. It’s impossible.... What happened during the refugee crisis was that all these very nice words, all this open-heart policy, met a very tough reality.... This turned out to be much more difficult than many people had anticipated. I believe many Swedes knew this already from the beginning but... the questions regarding this were portrayed as being very small-minded."

 

Said Johan Forssell, 45, who has headed Sweden's migration department since September, quoted in "Why ‘open-hearted’ Sweden brought in a wholesale crackdown on asylum/After the 2015 refugee crisis, years of liberal migration policies met the tough reality of gangs, riots and failed integration" (London Times).

"The next big project is to require foreigners to take language and integration tests when applying for citizenship. Most European countries introduced similar requirements many years ago, but Sweden’s exceptionalism on this front was once a source of pride. 'I think it’s stupid. Most people in Sweden also think it’s stupid,' Forssell said. 'I have talked to many people coming here from other nations, applying for citizenship, and they find this very odd. How are you going to be a Swedish citizen if you don’t know anything about Sweden or you can’t speak Swedish?'"

"The accused firebug, who has not yet been charged, first entered the US illegally at the Arizona border in 2018, but was nabbed just days later and shipped back home."

That's the New York Post, using the cutesy word "firebug," in "Fiend accused of burning woman to death on NYC subway is illegal migrant from Guatemala who sneaked into US after he was deported."

I guess that's the way the New York Post has been talking for a long time. "Fiend" is another example.

By the way, the word "firebug" was originally used to refer to a firefly — AKA lightning bug — but it became a slang word for "arsonist" in the mid-19th century. I note that it would be highly abnormal to use "arsonist" to refer to a person who murdered someone with fire — not unless a building were set on fire and the death happened as an unintended consequence.

"Firebug" connotes pyromania — a crazy fascination with fire. The New York Post unwittingly helps this accused man with his insanity defense.

Much more could be said about the practice of likening a human being to an insect — a bug — but I will stop here... out of respect for the dead.

"The Progressive Moment Is Over/Four reasons their era has come to an end."

Writes Ruy Teixeira (at Liberal Patriot).

The 4 reasons:

1. Loosening restrictions on illegal immigration was a terrible idea and voters hate it...

2. Promoting lax law enforcement and tolerance of social disorder was a terrible idea and voters hate it....

3. Insisting that everyone should look at all issues through the lens of identity politics was a terrible idea and voters hate it....

4. Telling people fossil fuels are evil and they must stop using them was a terrible idea and voters hate it....

That made me think of this TikTok I saw today, a woman describing what she thinks is "a new breed of conservatives": 

"There were way too many kids and it seemed to her that since they didn’t speak the language, or didn’t understand what was going on, they were getting more attention."

"And so she and the other kids who grew up here who were having issues or struggling in certain things weren’t able to get the attention that they needed — the help they needed from the school.... You can’t just focus all your resources on one group of children and everybody else is falling behind...."

Said the mother of a 16-year-old who dropped out of public school and enrolled in an "online homeschool," quoted in "In Logansport, Indiana, kids are being pushed out of schools after migrants swelled county’s population by 30%:/'Everybody else is falling behind'" (NY Post).

The numbers are confusing. We're told that 2,000 Haitian migrants may have been added to a city of 18,000 and also that 11,000 may have been added to a county of 38,000. There are also claims of being "verbally accosted" and stared at ("It’s not safe. They just stare at you and won’t talk to you. They stand there staring at my house with cameras on their phones. I don’t know if they’re recording, what they’re doing"). The mayor objects to the attention: "Stop playing politics with the smaller communities. We don’t like this. We don’t appreciate this. We would rather you do your job and actually do something instead of talking about this."

"Roy finds deculturation everywhere: in viral controversies over whether emotional-support animals belong on airplanes..."

"... in the recent, charged debate over whether Israeli or Lebanese people invented hummus; in Disney’s 'remixing' of traditional fairy tales into profitable mega-franchises; in the struggles of universities to attract humanities majors. What unifies these phenomena, he thinks, is that they unfold in a cultural vacuum. In the past, a society could rely on 'a shared system of language, signs, symbols, representations of the world, body language, behavioural codes, and so on' to govern all sorts of situations. Today, in the absence of that shared background, we must constantly renegotiate what’s normal, acceptable, and part of 'us.' ... [Roy writes] 'Here we are on a terrain in which culture has no positive aspect, since the old culture has been delegitimized and the new one does not meet the necessary condition of any culture, which is the presence of implicit, shared understandings'.... Around the world, cultures aren’t being replaced by other cultures; the idea of 'Westernization' is a red herring, he suggests, because, despite the worldwide popularity of pizza and 'Succession,' what’s actually ascendant are 'weak identities' constructed through that 'collection of tokens.' It’s a bit like moving from a place where your family has lived for generations to a faceless suburb. You could adopt your neighbors’ traditions, if they have any, but they don’t—they’re just a random collection of people who happen to live near one another. 'You do you,' they say...."

From "Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that 'deculturation' is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences." The article, by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, reviews Oliver Roy's book "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."

Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!! I'm one of those people who remember when The New Yorker had a noble tradition of meticulous editing. Has that degenerated into a nonculture of if it sounds good, write it? But we've already analyzed this grammar issue and come up with the answer. It's a rule. If you don't follow it, your venerable institution is crumbling. You're just a random collection of scribblers who happen to publish under the same cover.

Rothman's last paragraph gestures at the struggle over immigration that's roiled American politics:

"We cannot get myopic or get focused based upon a knee-jerk reaction to something that is very titillating or very out there in the public right now."

Said Todd Chamberlain, the police chief in Aurora, Colorado, quoted in "How the False Story of a Gang 'Takeover' in Colorado Reached Trump/The claim that Aurora, Colo., has been overrun by gun-toting migrants stemmed from the city’s fight with a landlord. Now it is central to one of former President Donald J. Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign promises" (NYT).

That's a free-access link, because there are more details to absorb than I can summarize here. The quotes around "takeover" are a clue.

I thought it was rich that the police chief was taking a stand against getting focused.

"Like other immigrant groups, [Haitians] hear about opportunities by word of mouth.... In this case, they were drawn by the availability of well-paying jobs."

"And they also heard that the cost of living was pretty low in Springfield. So soon, more and more Haitians arrived. And they were very attractive to employers because they had authorization to legally work in the United States. And what they have is something called temporary protected status. It’s a designation given to people from countries in turmoil, like Haiti.... So a city that had a population just under 60,000, now possibly has 80,000.... By most accounts, Springfield benefits from this influx of Haitians. They have come to work. I heard... that Haitians are coming to work on time. They’re reliable. They’re drama-free. ... They’re sending their kids to schools, schools that actually had been losing students because the city had been shrinking. And they’re leasing homes and apartments.... [N]ewly refurbished homes are sprucing up the neighborhood. They have manicured gardens, and they look a lot more cheerful than blocks where homes are still boarded up...."

From "The Story Behind 'They’re Eating the Pets'/A false claim made by Donald Trump in the presidential debate has its origins in an Ohio town," yesterday's episode of the NYT "Daily." Transcript and audio at the link (which goes to Podscribe). I'm excerpting one aspect of the story — how a city in decline revived itself by attracting businesses, which had labor needs beyond what could be supplied by the residents of the city.

But please listen to the whole thing (or at least skim the transcript) to see how the NYT presents the entire complicated problem of Springfield, Ohio, the small city that fell into the meat grinder of the American presidential election.

"How did members of Venezuelan gangs suddenly find themselves in suburban Colorado?"

"To answer this, we have conducted an exclusive investigation, which leads to a troubling conclusion: the Biden administration, in partnership with Denver authorities and publicly subsidized NGOs, provided the funding and logistics to place a large number of Venezuelan migrants in Aurora, creating a magnet for crime and gangs. And, worse, some of the nonprofits involved appear to be profiting handsomely from the situation."

From "Chaos in Aurora/How the federal government subsidized the migrant madness in suburban Colorado," by Christina Buttons and Christopher F. Rufo (City Journal).

"For some of the schools, the migrants coming here has been a godsend because we’ve lost so many other kids."

"Some schools were being threatened with whether we’re going to be able to keep the doors open. I push back on a lot of the kind of negative politics that people talk about with migrants. This is a city of immigrants. I mean, that’s the uniqueness of New York. We never make it easy for immigrants who are coming. But they find their way. And the same thing is going to happen here."

Said David C. Banks, quoted in "Migrants Have Been a ‘Godsend,’ New York Schools Chief Says/In an interview, Chancellor David C. Banks said migrants had helped schools that were bleeding students. He also promised a big new role for artificial intelligence" (NYT).