I'd like to pick up on one of the themes in this post's list: the counterproductivity of invoking shame in interactions with diehard MAGA voters, and extend it to the ways of interacting with members of the extreme progressive Left as well.
There's a ton of research showing that membership in delimited social and political groups can provide individuals with senses of identity, belonging, and self-worth that are for them critical needs, arising from a variety of emotional or social backgrounds. People who become deeply involved with well demarcated groups very often either find deep personal rewards in commitment to the group identity or reinforce the rewards of deep commitment to other individuals who are fully invested in the goals of the group. To the degree that the draw of group membership and identity is strong, the specific content of the group ideology is unimportant.
"Normie" politics -- the broad traditional center in the US, including both "liberals" and "conservatives" -- doesn't provide membership and identity in the same way. It's like comparing humans who are water-drinkers (everyone) to humans who drink only filtered water from specific mountain springs; there's no membership component to the first. But from the standpoint of the filtered water drinkers, "tap-water" drinkers appear to belong to a demarcated group that can be a threat to their own.
When people whose views and information sources are located in the broad center of the US political spectrum think they can persuade neighbors who have committed to some version of the extreme, either through simple argument or through verbal attacks, they generally fail to realize they are threatening to destroy the rewards of clear personal identity, social membership, personal family and support networks, as well as cognitive certainty. *None* of us, when caught up in a socialized belief-network, will open our minds and emotions to that sort of approach.
To put it more simply: there is no way to extricate someone from a cult other than to leave the door open for them to exit and wait for internal dynamics of the cult to create a need for them to find a way out. Extreme political faction membership isn’t quite a cult, but it has cult-like features that make this dynamic relevant. Interacting and disagreeing with members of both the extreme Right and Left with the affect of low-stakes friendliness that reflects continued recognition of their non-political normality and humanity will always have greater long-term payoff than challenging them with outrage, anger, or scolding, even when those reactions are completely normal and justifiable. (Of course, there may be action contexts where conflicts threaten safety and this sort of model simply doesn’t apply.)
The most difficult problem I see for the American middle, Left and Right (I’m on the Left), is forming a common approach that will help us reintegrate fellow citizens who have crossed a line towards an extreme, because the Center – political tap-water drinkers – is not a faction in the same sense of having a demarcated ideology and social membership network. Not only doesn't it provide the same type of rewards, but it's also really hard to organize the center to adopt common strategies. But if the doors are left open, the Center actually provides plenty of room for those now on the edges to leave their demarcated networks and represent the basic Left or Right political orientations (often family based) they are comfortable with, without wearing the absolutist blinders that fringe-group membership generally requires.
If Dems truly wish to understand Trump voters, perhaps they should consider the hubris required to assume Trump voters feel shame for their political positions and reminding them of their morally indefensible beliefs, will simply make matters worse.
Like most Reps or Dems, I found the deaths of the Minnesota protesters a tragedy. I also found them, like nearly every other sort of death associated with the Open Border, all the more enraging because both were easily and entirely preventable.
Better trained ICE agents would have likely saved the Protester's lives. Likewise, had the Protesters been Red State residents, both would likely both be alive today. Local LEOs present at prior protests, would have arrested both prior to their lethal interactions. Moreover, had Dems never dissolved the border, both Protesters would still be alive.
I understand entirely why Dems are so incensed, so am I. What I do not understand is why so many Dems are not equally enraged for the legions of crime victims that either perished or forever had their lives altered, as a result of Biden's Open Border.
Their deaths, due to crime or vehicles, are also equally tragic, and also entirely preventable. I do not understand how anyone can shrug off preventable child sexual assault, rape or murder by unvetted Biden migrants. I especially do not understand Mothers, whose concern always seems to prioritize the well being of adults who chose to illegally relocate to the US, over child crime victims, whose only sin is often being poor and minority, in a US that lacked borders for 4 years.
The 5 year old boy whose father abandoned him when fleeing ICE, was, undoubtedly, traumatized by days in a detention center with his Dad. So too was the CA 5 year old who missed Kindergarten to spend a year relearning to walk, talk and eat, after an illegally residing semi driver, lacking the ability to read English road signs, hit her family minivan on a So Cal freeway.
Why does the trauma of 5 year old Minnesota migrant count, but not the misery of a 5 year old Golden Stater, that will never fully recover from her injuries? Some of us find the nearly entire lack of concern for the latter and her ilk, shameful.
Hello, Ms. Ross. I appreciate your point about the factual cases of immigrants who come to America illegally and unvetted and commit crimes. Of course, their victims matter as much as victims of crimes by native Americans and legally documented immigrants. Innocent victims are the people who matter most when we consider crime, and this may often not seem to be the case because it is the offender who is subject to processes of justice, while victims rarely are subject to processes of restitution. Their stories are not generally told.
There are two lines of response that I think worth considering. One concerns the extent of the problem of criminal illegal immigrants. There are some, I'm sure, who would argue that if there were a single victim of a crime caused by one of the millions of immigrants it would demonstrate that every one of those immigrants should be apprehended and deported through whatever means the state chose, including through tactics such as those used by ICE. A single life is, after all, of unlimited value. In terms of government policy, we would more ordinarily ask what the extent of the problem is. Department of Justice investigated this through a study of Texas arrest records over a seven-year period and reached the conclusion that, "undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes." The report further shows that rates of arrest of vetted and documented immigrants are closer to those of native-born Americans than those of undocumented immigrants. (Here's the link: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD004.pdf)
This does not lower the importance of any single crime nor alter the fact that with effective and restrictive immigration in place *no* crimes by illegal immigrants would have occurred and all their victims would have been spared. What it does seem to show (to the degree those data are of value) is that apart from the legal violation of unauthorized entry into the US, criminal activity is not a characteristic typical of illegal immigrants. In 2024 we had the case of one impaired driver among a large legal Haitian immigrant community running into and killing a young girl in Springfield, Ohio. MAGA adherents, led by Trump and Vance, called for the expulsion of the entire community. That is the logic I want to highlight, independent of border policy concerning illegal immigrants. Anytime we allow new residents to live in America there will be some who commit crimes. Although individual victim lives are of infinite value, since we know we cannot eliminate all immigrant crime (just as we will never eliminate crime by all people), we must accept that unless we shut our doors entirely and forever there will be victims of immigrant crime. This does not mean Open the Borders! -- there's nothing we can do so do nothing! It just points to the limited significance for immigration policy of the tragedies you are pointing to.
The second approach is less theoretical. In pointing to the illegal immigrant rates of the Biden years as bad policy, when it comes to Centrists you are pushing on an open door. Of course those rates were out of control, and to the degree that the administration had tools to bring it under control and did not exercise them it made an egregious error, encouraged to do so by many in the progressive Left who do advocate for Open Borders. The point I was making above is that there are shared features of credulous devotion to ideological purity on both Left and Right extremes, and that argument or censure will more likely strengthen the devotion of those caught in an extremist perspective than lead them to reflect on the weaknesses of their positions.
I take the project of The Liberal Patriot to be trying to strengthen the ability of the Center Left to overcome the political damage that has been done to the Democratic Party by the most vocal and activist elements of the progressive Left. I do not think it constitutes hubris for those in the Center to want to find ways to lead progressives to recognize their responsibility for provoking the dysfunction of our current politics by the extremity of their views and their methods of advocacy, and to reconsider their commitments. And I don't think it constitutes hubris for the Center to want to find ways to lead those on the MAGA Right to reconsider their views in a similar way. Unfortunately, in both efforts the noise of the two sides shouting in self-satisfied anger tends to reduce or foreclose the chance of members of either side deciding it would be better to let go of group membership and walk through the open door to the less identity-bound Center.
I'd like to pick up on one of the themes in this post's list: the counterproductivity of invoking shame in interactions with diehard MAGA voters, and extend it to the ways of interacting with members of the extreme progressive Left as well.
There's a ton of research showing that membership in delimited social and political groups can provide individuals with senses of identity, belonging, and self-worth that are for them critical needs, arising from a variety of emotional or social backgrounds. People who become deeply involved with well demarcated groups very often either find deep personal rewards in commitment to the group identity or reinforce the rewards of deep commitment to other individuals who are fully invested in the goals of the group. To the degree that the draw of group membership and identity is strong, the specific content of the group ideology is unimportant.
"Normie" politics -- the broad traditional center in the US, including both "liberals" and "conservatives" -- doesn't provide membership and identity in the same way. It's like comparing humans who are water-drinkers (everyone) to humans who drink only filtered water from specific mountain springs; there's no membership component to the first. But from the standpoint of the filtered water drinkers, "tap-water" drinkers appear to belong to a demarcated group that can be a threat to their own.
When people whose views and information sources are located in the broad center of the US political spectrum think they can persuade neighbors who have committed to some version of the extreme, either through simple argument or through verbal attacks, they generally fail to realize they are threatening to destroy the rewards of clear personal identity, social membership, personal family and support networks, as well as cognitive certainty. *None* of us, when caught up in a socialized belief-network, will open our minds and emotions to that sort of approach.
To put it more simply: there is no way to extricate someone from a cult other than to leave the door open for them to exit and wait for internal dynamics of the cult to create a need for them to find a way out. Extreme political faction membership isn’t quite a cult, but it has cult-like features that make this dynamic relevant. Interacting and disagreeing with members of both the extreme Right and Left with the affect of low-stakes friendliness that reflects continued recognition of their non-political normality and humanity will always have greater long-term payoff than challenging them with outrage, anger, or scolding, even when those reactions are completely normal and justifiable. (Of course, there may be action contexts where conflicts threaten safety and this sort of model simply doesn’t apply.)
The most difficult problem I see for the American middle, Left and Right (I’m on the Left), is forming a common approach that will help us reintegrate fellow citizens who have crossed a line towards an extreme, because the Center – political tap-water drinkers – is not a faction in the same sense of having a demarcated ideology and social membership network. Not only doesn't it provide the same type of rewards, but it's also really hard to organize the center to adopt common strategies. But if the doors are left open, the Center actually provides plenty of room for those now on the edges to leave their demarcated networks and represent the basic Left or Right political orientations (often family based) they are comfortable with, without wearing the absolutist blinders that fringe-group membership generally requires.
If Dems truly wish to understand Trump voters, perhaps they should consider the hubris required to assume Trump voters feel shame for their political positions and reminding them of their morally indefensible beliefs, will simply make matters worse.
Like most Reps or Dems, I found the deaths of the Minnesota protesters a tragedy. I also found them, like nearly every other sort of death associated with the Open Border, all the more enraging because both were easily and entirely preventable.
Better trained ICE agents would have likely saved the Protester's lives. Likewise, had the Protesters been Red State residents, both would likely both be alive today. Local LEOs present at prior protests, would have arrested both prior to their lethal interactions. Moreover, had Dems never dissolved the border, both Protesters would still be alive.
I understand entirely why Dems are so incensed, so am I. What I do not understand is why so many Dems are not equally enraged for the legions of crime victims that either perished or forever had their lives altered, as a result of Biden's Open Border.
Their deaths, due to crime or vehicles, are also equally tragic, and also entirely preventable. I do not understand how anyone can shrug off preventable child sexual assault, rape or murder by unvetted Biden migrants. I especially do not understand Mothers, whose concern always seems to prioritize the well being of adults who chose to illegally relocate to the US, over child crime victims, whose only sin is often being poor and minority, in a US that lacked borders for 4 years.
The 5 year old boy whose father abandoned him when fleeing ICE, was, undoubtedly, traumatized by days in a detention center with his Dad. So too was the CA 5 year old who missed Kindergarten to spend a year relearning to walk, talk and eat, after an illegally residing semi driver, lacking the ability to read English road signs, hit her family minivan on a So Cal freeway.
Why does the trauma of 5 year old Minnesota migrant count, but not the misery of a 5 year old Golden Stater, that will never fully recover from her injuries? Some of us find the nearly entire lack of concern for the latter and her ilk, shameful.
Hello, Ms. Ross. I appreciate your point about the factual cases of immigrants who come to America illegally and unvetted and commit crimes. Of course, their victims matter as much as victims of crimes by native Americans and legally documented immigrants. Innocent victims are the people who matter most when we consider crime, and this may often not seem to be the case because it is the offender who is subject to processes of justice, while victims rarely are subject to processes of restitution. Their stories are not generally told.
There are two lines of response that I think worth considering. One concerns the extent of the problem of criminal illegal immigrants. There are some, I'm sure, who would argue that if there were a single victim of a crime caused by one of the millions of immigrants it would demonstrate that every one of those immigrants should be apprehended and deported through whatever means the state chose, including through tactics such as those used by ICE. A single life is, after all, of unlimited value. In terms of government policy, we would more ordinarily ask what the extent of the problem is. Department of Justice investigated this through a study of Texas arrest records over a seven-year period and reached the conclusion that, "undocumented immigrants are arrested at less than half the rate of native-born U.S. citizens for violent and drug crimes and a quarter the rate of native-born citizens for property crimes." The report further shows that rates of arrest of vetted and documented immigrants are closer to those of native-born Americans than those of undocumented immigrants. (Here's the link: https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU01/20250122/117827/HHRG-119-JU01-20250122-SD004.pdf)
This does not lower the importance of any single crime nor alter the fact that with effective and restrictive immigration in place *no* crimes by illegal immigrants would have occurred and all their victims would have been spared. What it does seem to show (to the degree those data are of value) is that apart from the legal violation of unauthorized entry into the US, criminal activity is not a characteristic typical of illegal immigrants. In 2024 we had the case of one impaired driver among a large legal Haitian immigrant community running into and killing a young girl in Springfield, Ohio. MAGA adherents, led by Trump and Vance, called for the expulsion of the entire community. That is the logic I want to highlight, independent of border policy concerning illegal immigrants. Anytime we allow new residents to live in America there will be some who commit crimes. Although individual victim lives are of infinite value, since we know we cannot eliminate all immigrant crime (just as we will never eliminate crime by all people), we must accept that unless we shut our doors entirely and forever there will be victims of immigrant crime. This does not mean Open the Borders! -- there's nothing we can do so do nothing! It just points to the limited significance for immigration policy of the tragedies you are pointing to.
The second approach is less theoretical. In pointing to the illegal immigrant rates of the Biden years as bad policy, when it comes to Centrists you are pushing on an open door. Of course those rates were out of control, and to the degree that the administration had tools to bring it under control and did not exercise them it made an egregious error, encouraged to do so by many in the progressive Left who do advocate for Open Borders. The point I was making above is that there are shared features of credulous devotion to ideological purity on both Left and Right extremes, and that argument or censure will more likely strengthen the devotion of those caught in an extremist perspective than lead them to reflect on the weaknesses of their positions.
I take the project of The Liberal Patriot to be trying to strengthen the ability of the Center Left to overcome the political damage that has been done to the Democratic Party by the most vocal and activist elements of the progressive Left. I do not think it constitutes hubris for those in the Center to want to find ways to lead progressives to recognize their responsibility for provoking the dysfunction of our current politics by the extremity of their views and their methods of advocacy, and to reconsider their commitments. And I don't think it constitutes hubris for the Center to want to find ways to lead those on the MAGA Right to reconsider their views in a similar way. Unfortunately, in both efforts the noise of the two sides shouting in self-satisfied anger tends to reduce or foreclose the chance of members of either side deciding it would be better to let go of group membership and walk through the open door to the less identity-bound Center.
More of the same.
How they can regain power, keep power, etc.
Very little about how to actually govern and get an agenda (what is this agenda?) done efficiently.
Too many slogans, grand but totally impractical ideas, hating on their guy, not to mention the totally wacky ideas.
There really does need to be an alternative or two from the extreme right, but who's going to provide that option?