Saturday, June 23, 2018

Overpowering

So why did Trump try to continue to keep immigrant children detained apart from their parents and doubling down on the policy while blaming the Democrats for it, even that the legislation he cited as their responsibility has nothing to do with the policy, which was concocted by his anti-immigrant adviser Stephen Miller?
Very simple: He's been trying to energize his base.  He wants to excite them enough to get them to come out and vote in November to overpower Democratic enthusiasm.
Trump reversed the policy of separating children from parents in an executive order when the negative publicity got too bad, but he will still detain families together in atrocious conditions while trying to get Congress to pass unpopular legislation that won't really solve the problem . . . to allow him to keep deflecting blame to others for his own policy.  Children who have already been separated from their parents are still separates, and many of them are becoming unaccounted for.  Trump's overall objective is to look as if he's securing the border while playing up the concerns of "natives" at the expense of people coming here from Latin America and denying the most basic human rights.  Detaining children apart from their parents was meant to send a message,  and it was part of the strategy of ultra-conservative nationalist Steve Bannon.  He hopes to help Trump in the midterms by pushing the idea that America comes first, we don't need or want the rest of the world, and any form of internationalism - not to mention support of the Democratic Party - is tantamount to treason.  He will push it so hard that the Trump base shows up at the polls to punish the Democrats into total irrelevance, if not outright extinction.
In other words, something that should finally bring Trump down is only going to be used in an attempt to cripple the opposition.
And if this ploy works, God help us.

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