Horrible white man concludes that giving a horrible white man his way is the Only Path Forward

Due to an exciting series of events that resulted in my eyeglasses tumbling around somewhere in the Potomac River, my eyes have been bothering me quite a bit. And when I made them read Andrew Sullivan’s latest, they threatened to file for a divorce.

It contains everything one expects from the man:

• Lots of words.
• More words.
• Extreme po-facery.
• Bothsiderism.
• Words.
• Assertions! Assertions! Assertions!
• A conclusion that doing what the horrible bigots want is the only possible option because its what horrible bigots want.

As in everything, Trump makes things worse. His rhetoric, his callousness, his wanton lies all make a compromise harder.

Wrong. It’s not possible to compromise with someone like 45 because compromise requires  that the compromising parties deal in good faith. I assume Sullivan is aware of this, just as I assume Sullivan couldn’t argue in good faith even if anyone did ever try paying him to do so.

There’s something deeply wrong, it seems to me, with expressing the view that what the government is doing is barbaric and yet allowing the underlying cause of it to continue for political reasons. If that’s the case, then Trump is not the only one using kids as pawns. Chuck Schumer is too.

The party that isn’t in power wants to stop separating children and parents and has introduced legislation that would do so.

The party that controls the White House and both houses of Congress has been separating children from parents and has said that separating children from parents was an policy designed to frighten would-be immigrants into staying out of the country.

Both sides are barbaric because the first group won’t vote Yes on funding for Trumpkin’s wall.

Also, per Mr. Sullivan, the party that didn’t win the presidential election has to obey the side that did. Let’s take this in slow motion.

The Democrats need to accept that they lost the last presidential election for a reason,

What reason?

and that their opponent’s main campaign pledge was to tackle illegal immigration, with a wall at the southern border as the centerpiece.

This is how Sullivan summarizes some of the more offensive rhetoric to fall out of 45’s denture hole during the campaign, but moving on:

Completely resisting a legitimate agenda based on a clear campaign promise — well, it reminds me of the Republicans with Obamacare.

I suppose that if I didn’t think Sullivan is an overrated blowhard, I’d feel worried for him. Here’s an intelligent human being who is arguing not just that DOPUS’ immigration plan is legitimate, not just that there’s some magical combination of clear campaign promise and legitimate agenda — however that’s defined — that means the people must submit to it, but that a xenophobic immigration policy is the same as a policy to give millions more Americans access to affordable health care?

However, I know he’s an overrated blowhard so: Bwahahaha, why the hell did NYM coax this hack out of retirement?

And did I mention he’s a racist?

And there is clearly an adamant, persistent segment of the public that sees the crisis of illegal immigration as a vital one.

Yes, xenophobes and racists. Because these adamant, persistent members of the public Sullivan is so concerned about are not worried about illegal immigrants unless they’re entering the country from the south.

Finding the right balance between reason and compassion is essential if we are not going to further tear this country apart, or witness ever more humanitarian catastrophes, or see what’s left of the West go under.

I wasn’t aware that this country was being torn apart. Perhaps I couldn’t hear it over the sound of Sullivan rending his shirt over the fate of “what’s left of the West.” Good Christ, what a disgusting person.

Oh well, time to bluntly restate the earlier unsupported assertion and toss a few more into the fray.

So give him his fucking wall. He won the election. He is owed this. It may never be completed; it may not work, as hoped. But it is now the only way to reassure a critical mass of Americans that mass immigration is under control, and the only way to make any progress under this president. And until the white working and middle classes are reassured, we will get nowhere.

There are two possibilities here:

Possibility One: Sullivan is so fucking stupid that he really believes that the Bigot-in-Chief will shut up about something that works the base into a gratifying frenzy and play nice with Democrats once he gets funding for his Wall.

Possibility Deux: Sullivan is a lying piece of shit who is trying to convince readers that the B-i-C will shut up about illegal immigration from Central and South America and cooperate with Democrats, once he gets funding his Wall.

I don’t think he’s that dumb.

If all this sounds like appeasing a bigot, I understand.

But really he wants to appease a lot of bigots. And that’s much better.

But better to see it, I think, as a way to address the legitimate concerns, fears, and worries of a large number of Americans who feel like strangers in their own land, and whose emotional response to that has been to empower the white nationalist right.

Legitimate is doing so much work in the above sentence I hope it got paid time and a half.

It’s not uncommon for well-to-do whites to use poorer whites like this. People like Sullivan will claim that they think bigotry is nasty bad awful, but Deep Sigh their country cousins are creating a fuss.

And then, they will really give the game away by saying their country cousins do have a point. Apparently the trauma of hearing “Para Español, marque el numero dos” when they call a company that uses an automated phone system and the eight-year nightmare of a black president was just too much for their tiny minds.

Needless to say, if you’re starting to feel like a stranger in your own land because Republicans have spent a few decades telling their voters that you’re to blame for all the bad things that are happening and have finally succeeded in putting someone who shouts the quiet parts into a PA system in the White House, too bad.

And stop all that protesting, it upsets the country cousins, and you know how they get.