By Jeffrey Blehar
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
Janus was the Roman god of transitions — of beginnings
and endings, whether they be seasons, wars, periods of religious observation,
or the like. His transitional aspect was usually represented physically by
doors and bridges, his essential duality anthropomorphized as a man with two
faces and aspects. What one opens, the other closes. What one starts, the other
stops. What one gives with his hand, the other takes away with his other hand.
In other words, Janus is quite a bit like Trump in all
his uneasy complexity. How fitting then that in January — the month named after
this double-aspected god of transitions — we have received the full force of
Trumpism in both its good and dismaying aspects, with imperfectly balanced
asymmetry. Just step back for a moment and ponder all the moves Trump made last
week if you wish to become dizzy.
Trump’s executive order eliminating diversity, equity,
and inclusion and affirmative action in the federal government last week was a truly sweeping victory that promises to have a longer-term
effect on our diseased civic culture. But in political terms, Trump’s decisive
action — and yes, effective theater — on the border crisis has been even more
important: The immediate resumption of deportations and ICE raids (about which
more below) has galvanized his supporters, infuriated his enemies, and received
a firm nod of approval from the minority voters who defected from the
Democratic coalition to put him in office. I cheered particularly emphatically
when Trump revoked the security clearances of all 49 living
signatories to the infamous “Hunter Biden Letter,” men and women who
prostituted their professional reputations for short-term political gain and in
so doing severely damaged the public credibility of the American intelligence
community. (I also appreciated his forcing all federal government employees to
return to in-person work, though I’m glad National
Review doesn’t enforce the same rule given that the office is 1,000 miles
away.)
And I marveled at the effectiveness of Trump’s retail
political touch — again, such a welcome change of tone after four years of an
invisible and incoherent Biden. He visited the long-forgotten victims of
Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina and promised immediate relief; then
he flew to California to get in Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass’s grill about
speeding up the permitting and rebuilding process as only an angry urban
developer could. In both situations you saw the best possible version of Trump:
kinetic, in command, impatient with delay.
But then with his other hand Trump takes away, or at
least hamstrings himself. His executive order trying to alter birthright
citizenship is the sort of wild overreach guaranteed to bog him down in endless
litigation before ultimately failing. (The idea that Wong Kim Ark will
be undone or even tweaked via backdoor judicial process in litigating the
executive order is a fantasy.) Trump’s executive order delaying the shuttering
of TikTok is even worse than that, a patently unlawful move for which there is
no effective constitutional remedy. Pardoning pro-life protesters praying
outside abortion clinics is one thing; pardoning all of the January 6 rioters
regardless of the crimes committed on that day is disgraceful. (I have never
been a maximalist about punishing every January 6 protester, but people who
actually clobbered cops while breaking into the U.S. Capitol do not deserve to
be pardoned for their crimes, unless you consider them merely political. Many
do; I never will.)
Revoking John Bolton’s security clearances was an
appropriate (and legal) move; revoking his security detail — along with those
of Mike Pompeo and Brian Hook, who also antagonized Trump after his first term
ended — was an act of petty spite and particularly appalling in that it exposes
these men to a danger they never would have incurred had they not served Trump
so well in his first term. It will backfire horribly should any harm befall
them. Speaking of ideas that seem likely to backfire horribly, Trump’s proposal
to condition further fire relief to California on the adoption of voter ID
laws, a completely unrelated issue, is a guaranteed disaster should it come to
pass. (Just wait until the next Democratic president tries the same stunt with
Louisiana or Florida after a hurricane.)
What does it all add up to? I’d be a fool to pretend I
know yet. But the explosion of energy is remarkable on its own terms. Remember
how, late in the 2024 campaign, the final attack line used by the Harris
campaign was “Donald Trump is old and tired”? (I bet you forgot; my God I
wish I could; let me sup from the murky waters of Lethe and forget all of
2024.) Well, he seems like a man in a hurry to me.
Keep Dr. Phil Away from ICE Raids, Please
Tomorrow marks the dark anniversary of that terrifying
day six years ago when Chicago briefly became “MAGA country.” The timing is eerily appropriate, for this
week Chicago is once again apparently MAGA country: With Trump newly restored
to office, that means that Tom Homan and ICE are in town and rounding up illegal
aliens with criminal records for deportation. (Homan came to personally oversee
several of the raids.) And of course I’m as pleased as the other 20 or so
Republicans living in the city, not just because it’s long overdue — the city
has been choked by a flood of illegals ever since Biden took office, with Mayor
Brandon Johnson both unwilling and unable to do anything to stem the
flow — but because it’s been so delightful watching everyone absolutely lose
their minds about it.
The “resistance” may be dead as a national brand, but it
assuredly lives on here in this deepest-blue enclave of the Midwest. So the
activists are on edge: On Friday, some government investigators visited a high school in southwest Chicago seeking to speak
with a student; the staff denied them entry and then Chicago Public Schools
immediately blared out like a warning klaxon across the city that “immigration
raids” were starting. As it turns out, the agents were from the Secret Service
— school staffers none-too-brightly assumed that because their credentials said
“Department of Homeland Security” that they were from ICE and didn’t bother to
inquire further before spreading the false rumor. (The sheepish apology email
sent to all parents of CPS students was worth it alone, but the real punch line
is that the Secret Service was there because the kid allegedly was making
violent threats over the TikTok ban.)
It really can’t be overstated how much the city’s
Democratic political class is hyperventilating about this. Tom Homan in
particular — a man who talks and carries himself like a retired cop who spent a
lot of years doing stuff that wouldn’t stand up to strict scrutiny from his
supervisors — might as well have been fashioned purely out of the nightmares
welling up within every Chicago progressive’s subconscious. He is triggering
to these people, and I would know because I spend time talking to them every
day. I’ve even learned how to wind them up more: I remind them that Homan was
the intellectual father of Trump’s “family separation” policy in his first
term.
The only thing that’s harshing my mellow is the presence of Dr. Phil amid all of this. That’s right, the
Dr. Phil. He’s riding around Chicago right now with Homan and ICE, videotaping
raids and interviewing arrested illegals on camera. Why is this man here?
Why must Republicans be plagued by ex-Oprah celebrity doctors? Was Dr. Oz not
enough for our poor party? More to the point: Deportations — especially when
the Trump administration moves past the low-hanging fruit of violent criminals
and on to illegal labor — are no joke. Anything that looks like the Trump
administration is “celebritizing” this business — and it is going to be nasty,
unpleasant business — is going to drive down support. Avoid easy missteps like
that. Avoid Dr. Phil.
No comments:
Post a Comment