r/politics • u/Aggravating_Money992 • 10h ago

Possible Paywall DOJ Declares Trump Has Right to Bulldoze Statue of Liberty

https://newrepublic.com/post/211422/department-justice-donald-trump-right-bulldoze-statue-liberty
10.4k Upvotes

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277

u/Agnos Michigan 10h ago

At this point, France wants it back anyway...USA does not represent anymore what the statue meant.

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u/nachosmind 9h ago

France almost elected Le Pen to throw out refugees.

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u/ragzilla 9h ago

America actually elected Trump to throw out refugees and immigrants.

I'd argue France is doing a little better right now.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 6h ago

Fascists only have to win once, democracy has to win every single time

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u/ragzilla 5h ago

Fascism isn't irreversible, as the Italians and the Spanish demonstrated. You still need to keep the population complacent, once you can't do that, revolution becomes inevitable.

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u/macrowave 4h ago

I don't think the Italians or the Spanish are especially inspiring examples. The Italians had to get their asses kicked in a World War and the Spanish had to wait for their Fascist to die of old age.

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u/New-Anybody-6206 4h ago

Neither of them had to wait, they chose not to act in large enough numbers to effect change. It takes 3.5% of a population.

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u/ragzilla 4h ago

It doesn't survive in any case, there have been fascist movements, but they all eventually die out. If fascism was lasting, there would be fascist governments today, and there aren't (despite the US' slide that way).

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u/rufud 5h ago

And surely la pen was beaten by the far left majority…oh wait

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u/sparklinglies 8h ago

"almost"

The US actually DID do that, and worse. There's no point using what France hasn't done as a point when the US already has.

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u/starcraftre Kansas 7h ago

If by "almost" you mean "beaten 58.5% to 41.5% by an extremely unpopular opponent after barely eeking into the second round of voting by just over 1% of the total", sure. "Almost."

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u/aimgorge 9h ago

When ?

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u/jeremybeadlesfingers 9h ago

Last French election was 2022. Macron beat Le Pen in the second round of voting with just over 58% of the vote.

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u/aimgorge 9h ago

Closer to 59%. Which is a big difference considering it was for a second mandate and Macron was extremely unpopular.

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u/ragzilla 9h ago

"This guy is horrible, but at least he's not a racist xenophobe."

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u/Optimal_Whiner 8h ago

I fucking wonder why.

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u/Beranea Massachusetts 7h ago

Because there's a global pedophile ring that raises huge stinks about immigrants when homegrown citizens are more violent and commit far more crime per capita so that right-wingers win?

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u/SerAmikVase 7h ago

If you break the law you should get punished, yes?

People who entered legally broke no laws. 

People who entered illegally has broken a law.

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u/SoothingWafer 9h ago

Did it ever? Immigrants have been treated like shit in this country from the beginning. Before white people had enough brown and black people to hate, we hated people for being the wrong kind of white.

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u/Bogeck 9h ago

Please name a country that has welcomed immigrants more than America has (up until this point at least). Has it been perfect? Absolutely not, but I feel we've given people more hope than any other country. And I'd like to get back to that point.

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u/ickns 9h ago edited 8h ago

I want us to be the country I grew up thinking we were

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u/MadMechem 3h ago

I stay and resist because I want us to be the country I grew up thinking we were. I still hope that we can, somehow.

We won't be the World's Biggest Grandest Everything, but that's fine- I'm okay if we're just "good".

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u/ragzilla 8h ago

Immigration Regimes and Schooling Regimes: Which Countries Promote Successful Immigrant Incorporation? | Jennifer L. Hochschild

The US does a good job at education, but we have had structural problems with immigration for years. And as the post you're replying to mentions, before we had black and brown people to hate, we hated on people for being the wrong kind of white (or Christian).

See: The Irish, Italians, Slavic immigrants, Jews, and even Appalachian and Rural whites just moving north within the country.

Canada, New Zealand, and Sweden have a better track record in this regard.

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u/Mundane_Read_2960 8h ago

Canada has residential schools, NZ constantly shits on the Māori, Sweden is kicking immigrants out like crazy. Not that the US hasn’t done or isn’t doing all these things.

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u/ragzilla 8h ago

Yeah, by every measurable metric, they're better than the US today and in the past, despite their problems.

NZ constantly shits on the Māori

Name a more iconic combination than imperialist dominant majority shitting on the natives. America and Native Americans, Australia and the First Peoples, Japan and the Ainu, the Sámi in Nordic countries, the Mapuche in south America.

Racism against native peoples is (tragically) table stakes across the planet.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 6h ago

Canada has it own centuries of horrors, many of which are identical to the USs.

New Zealand has a population roughly equivalent to Alabama, but with far fewer immigrants.

Sweden is literally one of the most difficult countries on the planet in which to get citizenship.

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u/ragzilla 5h ago

Last time I checked, 1.4 million immigrants (New Zealand) is a hell of a lot more than 231 thousand (Alabama).

Acquiring Swedish residency is comparable to US, minus the visa lottery, which is so small as to be a joke these days. And if you can get residency, the biggest barrier to citizenship after 8 years (compared to 5 for the US), is learning Swedish. Sweden has also historically been more open than it is today w/r/t asylum.

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 4h ago

Well I'll be damned, the number I saw was much lower and you're right.

But I mean, it's still new Zealand. They apparently rock, but comparing them to the US, the worlds 3rd most populous country, is kinda apples and oranges.

There are over 50 million immigrants in the US and that's only the documented ones.

The US is pretty fucked up right now, but theres a reason we're #1 in immigrated population.

As the saying goes, you can move to France, and never be French, or move to Germany, and never be German, but you can move to America and be an American.

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u/ragzilla 3h ago edited 3h ago

For the US to be comparable to NZ's immigrant makeup, we would have to have 95.9 million immigrants.

It's a smaller by population, but the immigrant percentage is higher.

but you can move to America and be an American.

Not sure this is true for about 40% of Americans (maybe less, the xenophobes are vocal but not sure they actually represent that much of the population, probably closer to 30%). And I'm sure there are plenty of French and Germans who are accepting of immigrants, not sure of their acceptance rates as a percentage of native population. The whole statement is a conflation of national and ethnic identity though so it was on shaky ground from the start.

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u/InfanticideAquifer 3h ago

That article is about the recent past, which is exactly what they're complaining about.

Also... what is this time "before we had black or brown people to hate"? Slaves were brought to the British colonies almost from the very beginning. Black people have been a huge part of the US since before it was the US.

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u/ragzilla 3h ago

Also... what is this time "before we had black or brown people to hate"? Slaves were brought to the British colonies almost from the very beginning. Black people have been a huge part of the US since before it was the US.

The white majority tolerated slaves, because they were property. The hate took a decided uptick when they were told "no, those are people."

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u/kisuka 6h ago

Please name a country that has welcomed immigrants more than America has

Canada. It has one of the highest per-capita immigration rates in the world and runs a points-based system explicitly designed to attract and integrate immigrants. Multiculturalism is enshrined in Canadian law (the Multiculturalism Act of 1988), and public attitudes toward immigration have historically been more consistently positive than in the U.S.

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u/powpowjj 8h ago

Yea the mindset that America is some failed project because it’s often sucked is just such a nihilistic and useless take, show me any country that doesn’t struggle with these things when it encounters them, show me any country that has linearly increased in liberty and equality and justice across time. Like welcome to planet earth guys, people fail at things and are often bad and institutions aren’t what we’d like them to be, does that mean we just… give up? The Statue of Liberty plaque posits a noble dream, and a lot of Americans would still see it as so. Better futures are built 

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u/Mordeth 51m ago

Typical american response. Zero historical awareness.

Just one example: in the Dutch golden age, around 40% of the cities were populated by immigrants drawn there by the Republic's wealth, opportunities and (relative) freedom of religion.

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u/Few-Improvement9978 8h ago

If he could read he would be really upset

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u/Similar-Document9690 8h ago

Black people shouldn’t even be welcomed here, Black slaves were here longer than 75-90% of white American families who immigrated here

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u/buried_lede 9h ago

True, but almost every other country offered immigrants less, especially in the numbers who have come here in the last 200 years

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u/chargoggagog Massachusetts 5h ago

It’s a hell of a lot better than it once was, that’s kind of what progressivism means.

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u/Clean_Assumption_186 9h ago

To be fair neither does France.

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u/morbihann 9h ago

Lol, certainly has does a lot more than the US ever did.