The Snake at the Table

A month ago, thoughtful conservative Ross Douthat wrote a column, “The Necessity of Stephen Miller”, in which he argued that if liberals want a deal on immigration, they’re going to have to allow White House dude Stephen Miller a place at the table.

Yes, Ross acknowledges, El Stevo has views on immigration that are at variance with those of the Acela Class, but so what? There are lots of reasonable reasons why one might not agree with the Martha’s Vineyard set on this one:

“And there are various reasonable grounds on which one might favor a reduction. The foreign-born share of the U.S. population is near a record high, and increased diversity and the distrust it sows have clearly put stresses on our politics. There are questions about how fast the recent wave of low-skilled immigrants is assimilating, evidence that constant new immigration makes it harder for earlier arrivals to advance, and reasons to think that a native working class gripped by social crisis might benefit from a little less wage competition for a while. California, the model for a high-immigration future, is prosperous and dynamic — but also increasingly stratified by race, with the same inequality-measuring Gini coefficient as Honduras.”

Now, it’s true, Ross admits, that the hearts of the non-arugula crowd are not always pure on this issue: “it’s also clear that many immigration restrictionists are influenced by simple bigotry — with the president’s recent excrement-related remarks a noteworthy illustration.”

“Excrement-related”! Amusing, Ross! Well struck! But, I’m sorry, Ross, saying that “many immigration restrictionists are influenced by simple bigotry” is not just putting it mildly. That’s putting it too mildly. “Many” immigration restrictionists aren’t just “influenced” by simple bigotry”. They’re defined by grotesque bigotry. During his recent speech at CPAC, President Trump took a trip down memory lane, reciting a favorite from the 2016 campaign trail, the parable of “The Snake”,¹ the tale of a foolish, too kind-hearted woman who takes in a snake, nurtures it and then gets bitten and dies for her trouble. “You have to think of this in terms of immigration”, the president—the president of the United States—said by way of explication.

The problem, Ross, is not that we have to make room for Stephen Miller at the table. We have to make room for Donald Trump at the table. We have to make room for the snake at the table. And how do you negotiate with a snake?

Afterwords
We have to negotiate with Trump the way we had to negotiate with segregationists back in the day. About a third of America’s population laps up Trump’s racism. About half of the Acela Class Republicans—Ross Douthat Republicans, one might call them—are desperately trying to figure out how to stay aboard the Trump train without participating in the ritual murder of Mexican babies, with very little success. As Politico’s Tim Alberta reported, ritual murder of Mexican babies was the order of the day at CPAC every day. Most of the rest of the former non-Trumpers—the private jet Republicans, one might call them—are too busy counting their money to care.

Douthat, who could never find any real comfort in the confines of the furiously pro-choice Democratic Party, has lurched desperately back and forth on Trump, trying to pretend that he isn’t absolutely atrocious, or at least not absolutely atrocious all the time. The few—the not very happy few, one must say—who have left the Republican Party, or even “Conservatism”, are, for the most part, those who recognized from the beginning that Trump was corrupt through and through, that anyone tried to use him would be used. Use a useful monster, dude, and you’ll get eaten. But there isn’t much reason for us liberals to forgive all the lies that neocons like Bill Kristol told about Clinton and Iraq and Obama.² I guess they should have thought of that before.