General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThey're going to come for all of us
The narrative of the Trump administration's deportation policy stated with "violent criminals", the worst of the worst. Then it was just "criminals", and yes, if you were undocumented, you were a criminal. Never mind that this was all bullshit, that ICE was snatching anybody, including citizens, this was the narrative.
Then the administration has decided to step into another narrative, ending birthright citizenship, because, I don't know, brown anchor babies or some such crap.
I keep tabs on these people, forewarned is forearmsed, etc. The other day I ran across a couple of articles in The Federalist that set alarm bells to ringing.
"Not Everyone With U.S. Citizenship Is Actually An American"
"Liberals today and not a few self-described conservatives would decry much of this as racist and bigoted. The entire idea of an American identity has been rejected in favor of the flimsy notion that America is merely an idea. Anyone from any part of the world, goes the thinking, can become an American so long as he assents to a set of abstract propositions about individual rights and goes through a neutral administrative process.
According to this attenuated view of American identity, being an American doesnt mean loyalty to this country, gratitude for its glorious history, reverence for its founders and heroes, or love for its people and land. It certainly doesnt mean adherence to a common morality, language, or way of life. It simply means securing a set of documents that confer citizenship, or even just legal status. For such people, it doesnt really matter what you love or where your loyalties lie; all that matters is that you have sufficiently engaged the relevant bureaucracies.
This of course is how you destroy a nation. As Aristotle explained at the beginning of his Politics, the nation comes into being through the civic comity and natural affection that arise from a common language, morality, and culture, which he calls philia. From this arises telos, which is the natural end or purpose of a thing. In American political terms, we might say that our national telos is life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness understanding that last phrase, pursuit of happiness, to mean what the founders meant: not a relativistic seeking after pleasure or fulfillment, but the acquisition of moral virtue."
https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/02/not-everyone-with-u-s-citizenship-is-actually-an-american/
"It Should Be Obvious By Now That Not Everyone Can Become An American"
"I wrote last week that in America today not everyone with citizenship is actually an American. To some, this might sound incendiary or extreme. Certainly it violates the tenets of multiculturalism that have been ascendent in America for decades now. But its actually just a straightforward observation of reality so long as we understand that being an American means something more than merely securing legal documents or going through a neutral administrative process. Doing so might confer citizenship, but it will not make someone an American."
snip
"But beyond immigration, Vance is touching on something essential about America that has been largely lost, suppressed really, for more than a generation: America is not just a propositional nation, not just an idea but a people. Thats why you cannot export the Constitution to some random country and expect the same kind of government or suddenly import millions of people from foreign lands and expect America to survive. We are not a set of abstract propositions to which anyone from any part of the world can assent and suddenly become an American. We are a people with a common language, culture, history, customs, and so on.
About 20 years ago, Pat Buchanan had a more pugnacious version of what Vance said: It is not true that all creeds and cultures are equally assimilable in a First World nation born of England, Christianity, and Western civilization. Race, faith, ethnicity and history leave genetic fingerprints no proposition nation can erase.
This is an important point, and it has to be asserted even at the risk of being falsely accused of racism or xenophobia. A nation requires a certain amount of cultural cohesion common language, customs, morality, and way of life. That means some cultures and creeds are simply not compatible with American civilization. Multiculturalism, in other words, is a dangerous delusion that, combined with mass immigration, is a nation-destroyer."
https://thefederalist.com/2025/07/11/it-should-be-obvious-by-now-that-not-everyone-can-become-an-american/
I find this attitude chilling, it is essentially, and not so subtly, saying that if you don't believe in America as a God fearing, conservative, straight, white, christian nation, you don't belong here, whether you're a citizen or not, whether you were just naturalized or your family goes back generations, you are not a "real" American, and you need to be, at the least, kicked out of the country.
This is why they're pushing so hard for ending birthright citizenship, for the ability to denaturalize citizens. They want the capabi,its to kick out anyone who doesn't fit their definition of a real citizen.
Expect more propaganda like this, softening up both their supporters and the public at large. Expect even worse than this, for once you make your fellow human being an "other" or "not a real" whatever, you open the door to all kind of atrocities.
Forewarned, forearmed, etc. This is coming.

moniss
(7,705 posts)C_U_L8R
(47,694 posts)Be prepared.
JohnnyRingo
(20,066 posts)I fear those words will be used more frequently in the near future as all protests against the administration become an "illegal assembly" that needs dealt with by armed forces.
Wounded Bear
(62,534 posts)dlk
(12,792 posts)And you are right, they will eventually come for us all.
Martin68
(26,182 posts)OhioTim
(350 posts)is calling ICE agents, Trump's secret police. If everyone does this, it will make an impact.
Grim Chieftain
(411 posts)They can only push "we the people" so far. It is our country, all of us, not just the maga cult.
ananda
(32,608 posts)The Republicans like to speak in code, for white male
supremacy.
perdita9
(1,279 posts)It's a little bulky
Ellen Forradalom
(16,180 posts)Just as my Mayflower forebear was the O.G. illegal: no passport, no visa, uninvited, and to establish an outpost of a foreign power.
Prof. Toru Tanaka
(2,735 posts)It is a word I never hear or see anyone from the right utter, post or write anymore.
That word is FREEDOM. The word our nation was built on.
MLWR
(414 posts)of deciding who is and who isn't an American?
FakeNoose
(37,937 posts)And what's his obsession with locking people up anyway?
Remember the chant that Michael Flynn started ... "Lock her up"?
Oh my God, they are out of their minds.
calimary
(87,116 posts)Johnny2X2X
(23,083 posts)ICE is the secret police and theyre already arresting and ejecting American citizens. Before long their main focus will simply be anyone liberal.
FakeNoose
(37,937 posts)... and that includes about two-thirds of the country.
Be The Light
(109 posts)The Administration,
I think we should start calling them the occupiers. Because they are occupying
our country by force.
LiberalArkie
(18,621 posts)early in this term. He tried it in the Jan 6 event. But is was only his people and the left did not riot like he wanted.
So he moved it to LA with the same? goons as on Jan 6. Why? Well doesn't everyone know that LA is always rioting? Look at Watts and others. They are so easy to provoke.
He so wants the martial law. He believes it will stop the federal election next year. He forgot that the U.S. had elections during WW1 and WW2. I think he hopes that the supremes will side with him and postpone elections. They do have the history of stopping the vote counting and changing the outcome and know that no one protested.
FakeNoose
(37,937 posts)All Chump is doing is pissing his own people off. I really don't think they'll put up with Chump for much longer. Once the Epstein files come out, he's done for. It will time for Article 25 (finally). Even Moscow Mitch can't save him when that happens.
LiberalArkie
(18,621 posts)ok quick military tribunals to try and execute the immigrants a couple days after apprehension. They will run it to the supremes and be quickly ok'd. The congress will be a 1 day trial and a bullet as far cheaper than transportation to a foreign land and a great object lesson for future immigrants.
jgmiller
(589 posts)They have existed since the birth of the US. Native Americans and Blacks were in this group then (and still are), then the Irish and so on. Every wave of immigration, whether forced or voluntary has resulted in the rise of some form of "They aren't really Americans".
The thing that scares me is that many times in the last 250 years when this has happened the thing that has pulled us back from the abyss is an event that has forced us to pull together and pretty much all of those events have been a war. Everytime I think about this I think of Steven Bannon's obsession with "The 4th Turning" and bringing it about. He's crazy and extremely dangerous but the general concept of that book can feel eerily correct. America (and the world) does go through cycles, we never learn from history and are always doome to repeat it. I'm afraid we are once again repeating it and the grifters in charge and blindly heading us towards the abyss. The question is what pulls us out this time.
MorbidButterflyTat
(3,342 posts)From the Federalist.
indusurb
(166 posts)You've got to read, or hear, what they're saying.
The Federalist is a very influential group, after all they brought us the last three Supreme Court judges that Trump nominated. You don't have to like them, personally I find them abhorrent, but it is wise to pay attention to them. What they are saying today could very well be our reality tomorrow. Dismiss them at your peril.
Irish_Dem
(72,509 posts)First rule of combat: KNOW YOUR ENEMY.
MorbidButterflyTat
(3,342 posts)I KNOW MY ENEMY, as I'm sure everyone else on DU does.
It's been asserted here many times, anyone associated with The Federalist IS the enemy.
H2O Man
(77,383 posts)In fact, we are coming after them in the mid-term elections.
yellow dahlia
(2,613 posts)Qutzupalotl
(15,440 posts)and so is almost everything else they do. Projection.
LudwigPastorius
(12,971 posts)thrown them out of the country.