That aside, I simultaneously hold several thoughts about this.
The first is: The TSA probably doesn't need to exist at all in its current form; I'm not aware of any evidence they actually do anything to stop actual threats.
The second is: I have sympathy for the folks who work there, who probably are in it mostly to have a stable and non-controversial government job. I'm sure they're going through it, for political reasons that are not their fault.
The third is: There is zero political incentive for either side to cave on this, that I can see, and as somebody who is generally opposed to the behavior of ICE, I think we as the American public will just have to eat it until they are reined in. I'm including myself in that; this has messed with my travel plans and will continue to do so.
But if I were on the other side of the issue, I think I'd hold the exact same opinion: There is no incentive not to continue the shutdown.
Apparently Sea-Tac has a very low TSA absentee rate:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/sea-tac-bucks-national-...
surely not because ICE unlawfully executed two US citizens on tape in broad daylight
that didn't happen under Obama or Biden. wonder why.
Because immigrants and their foreign-culture socialized kids are the only reason Democrats can win national elections?
If a party can only win by people who are zero or only one generations away from countries that aren’t very well governed—who are steeped in the culture and values and civic sense of those not so nice countries—well that’s legal. But that’s all it is.
Let me put it this way. If the GOP somehow figured out how to flood your city with people from rural Alabama, would you be happy? They would be legal voters, would they not? (The deeply ironic thing is that democrats understand perfectly well that rural Alabama is a product of the culture of the people who built it. But they think that phenomenon somehow ends right at the U.S. border.)
like it or not, those immigrants are your countrymen now. they have an equal vote to you. learn to coexist and compromise. that's the spirit of this country. i don't see any degradation of America here.
should've known better than to engage. that type is always in bad faith (sartre quote blah blah blah)
When you do pick one, do you at least stick with it for the whole day? Or do you switch between them from thread to thread?
On the other hand they have been trending Republican in the Trump era, and Trump probably won them narrowly: https://www.cato.org/blog/naturalized-immigrants-probably-vo.... But the same analysis says Biden won them by 27 points in 2020.
Both facts are true, both facts are bad. In the long run, immigrants will culturally change both parties just as they change the whole country. What will happen, and is already happening, is that American politics will begin to resemble Latin American politics. People voting for who promises more free stuff most of the time, punctuated by periods of right-wing authoritarian reaction.
But responding to your new goal posts - if immigration is so central to this dynamic, then why is most of the support for the current authoritarian reactionary promising more free stuff still coming from non-immigrants? Shouldn't the noble non-immigrants see the populism trap and heartily reject it? And since they aren't, wouldn't a better explanation just be that politics in general is decaying towards simplistic populism? And that this focus on immigrants is merely another simplistic populist narrative (from both parties really, even though only one has made it central to their platform).
Wait, hold on. That’s a purely factual statement. Immigrants are 10% of the electorate. If they support one party 2:1, that’s enough to swing many presidential elections. In fact, half of Trump’s win in 2024 is attributable to immigrants going from Biden +27 to Trump +1. Without immigrants (and their kids), it would be very hard for Democrats, in their current form, to win a national election. That’s just a factual statement.
I don’t think being a party that can only win with immigrant support is a “deliberate pillar” of the party. It’s just a consequence of traditional American culture being very different from the cultures in other countries when it comes to views about government.
> then why is most of the support for the current authoritarian reactionary promising more free stuff still coming from non-immigrants?
Because most people are non-immigrants.
You used to have interesting, if tediously contrarian things to say. But now it's just strawmans and weird takes like the above.
Do you think Democrats can’t Google these statistics? Or do you think it’s an insignificant share of the electorate? (Foreign-born is 10% and children raised and socialized by foreign born parents is even higher.) Or do you think Democrats’ immigration viewpoints have nothing to do with what’s good for their electoral prospects?
Or do you think Democrats do know all this. But it’s “unhinged” to notice because you think people from Bangladesh will participate in civic governance the same way as a sixth generation Vermonter? Or do you realize they won’t and you’re actually okay with that?
These are genuine questions. I’m struggling to understand your ideological priors here.
They want to (barely) gut the ability of the administration to disappear citizens and to have any sort of training before shooting folks in the face. But fascism gonna fasc.