I am starting to realize exactly how powerless the Democrats are. It's worse than I thought. It's all worse than I thought.

...if this comes up for a vote. Aside from that, Dems need to continue to speak out, rather then accept this as normal.

The Republicans hold a majority in both houses of Congress. They control all the committees and the agenda.

This is what happens when we allow Republicans to win elections.

illegal? Because that's what it is.

That's where the action is

If we take this lying down, it will go unchallenged

But they aren't un-American. Bigotry and xenophobia are mainstream values in the United States.

It's true, American values are diverse. That can be a problem.

The "diversity makes us strong" has to be viewed through the correct political lens.

Often that particular diversity is skin deep. You can have trivial differences in preferences for food, language, clothing, music, but in the end cultural diversity is much, much more than that--and such trivial differences can change while the culture stays virtually unaffected. I can be thoroughly American in my outlook when speaking Russian. On the other hand, I "know" enough Russianness to have the proper gut reaction in circumstances that involve neither food, fashion, folklore, nor festivals. You can be an English-speaking McDonald's-scarfing Cold-Play-listening Baptist and still be Russian at your core--or vice-versa. It's a kick, for example, to run into a black who's through-and-through Czech (a sell-out for some, but in the 1920s Boas pointed out cogently that skin color, teeth shape, hair cross-section and properties, and epicanthic folds on the one hand, language on the other, and I guess language on the third, are unrelated in any important way).

Consider that cilantro, chicken, beef, wheat (as in "wheat flour&quot , rice and cheese aren't Mexican. Go to 1491 and you'll find none of them. But Mexican cultures have survived the change in diet and language in many ways. What counts is interpersonal relationships and how society is structured, and for those we typically have very narrow blinders. There's one true morality and economic system, everything else is mascara and lipstick and, most importantly rouge.

Bigotry and xenophobia are American values. Lots of things I dislike intensely are. Yet I'm not going to deny reality or say that those holding them are, ahistorically and counterfactually, not Americans. If we're equal under the law, we're equal. They have the same say in defining America that I do, for good or for bad.

As an aside, my Russian teacher in the '80s was proud that "un-American" like "anti-American" was a nonsense word, primarily associated with the infamous House Un-American Activities Committee. "Anti-Soviet" was blasphemy, it assumed a monolithic view of what Soviet was--a possibility made real by the definitional nature of the CPSU and it's affiliated politico-theocratic organizations that defined politico-historical truth and the One True Interpretation of history and economics. America, he as a naturalized Jewish Soviet refugee was proud to say, had no defining organization. It had some ideals, but no One True Path (vernyi istinnyi put') to get to that Shining Future (svetloe budushchee). Nobody got to define "American values" because in an open, pluralistic, free society like the US nobody was empowered to do so--or, rather, everybody was equally empowered to do so, so nobody properly had sufficient authority to make the claim, and those that did should probably find a market for their excess hubris.

Fr'uim would have have been embarrassed. Pissed off at Trump, pissed off to no end, but embarrassed by all the self-vaunting definers of the One True America and One True We the People.

and afraid and they let it rule them in making decisions that they know violate some major core principles in both the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence.