1. Damon Linker: The revenge of the deplorables

It may have been politically ill-advised and numerically imprecise for Hillary Clinton to declare at a fundraiser in September 2016 that roughly half of Donald Trump's supporters belong in a "basket of deplorables" characterized by irredeemably "racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic" views. But it was undeniably true.

This was obvious at the time, and it's even more so now, after the horrifying events of the past week — including the mailing of a dozen pipe bombs to prominent Democrats and the single deadliest attack on the Jewish community in American history.

Every president is elected by a distinct electoral coalition, and the coalition that elected Trump included an unusually large number of people with virulently illiberal, extreme right-wing views — the kind of people who normally find both major-party nominees far too blandly centrist to inspire much enthusiasm. Trump spoke to these voters. His championing of "birtherism," his denunciation of Mexican "rapists," his denigration and fear-mongering about Muslims, and his attacks on "globalist" bankers convinced these extremist voters that Trump shared their fears of the country becoming less white, less Christian, and less willing to defend its identity as a white, Christian nation against various invaders, including Muslims, immigrants from Latin America, blacks, and Jews.

Along with his substantive message, Trump spoke to these voters with what one might call his habits of mind — his hostility to bedrock liberal norms and institutions (including a free press), his indulgence and encouragement of conspiracy theories, and his refusal to distance himself from far-right people and ideas. https://theweek.com/articles/804382/revenge-deplorables

2. David Corn: In the Wake of the Pittsburgh Massacre, Sarah Huckabee Sanders Gaslights America

It was not surprising. Giving the first White House news briefing in weeks, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders issued predictable words: “The American people reject hatred, bigotry, prejudice, and violence.” But President Donald Trump has not rejected any of that. The case is undeniable—except Trump and his minions keep denying it. 

Hatred: Trump has encouraged chants of “lock her up” regarding Hillary Clinton, his opponent in the 2016 presidential election. He has demeaned and demonized other political foes, engaging in name-calling and bully-like taunting. And he has offered comfort to haters, such as when he noted there were “very fine people” among the white nationalists who organized the Charlottesville protest. He has repeatedly called the media the “enemy of the people.” He did so once again Monday morning, even as the national discourse focused on the possibility of healing divisions. All this is hate, pure and simple. 

There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame… — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

Bigotry and prejudice: Trump pushed the racist birther conspiracy theory about former President Barack Obama. He claimed an American federal judge could not be impartial because he was “Mexican.” He has routinely referred to his African American critics as “low IQ.” He has often uttered misogynistic comments, referring to women as pigs and dogs. (And there is that Access Hollywood tape.) He pressed for a ban on Muslim travelers to the United States (and had to revise course to skirt judicial opposition to its prejudicial nature). 

Violence: Trump recently praised a one Republican congressman for assaulting a reporter. That remark prompted media outlets to review his previous comments that encouraged violence. Here’s one. Here’s another. These videos don’t lie. https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/10/in-the-wake-of-the-pittsburgh-massacre-sarah-sanders-gaslights-america/

3. Eliana Johnson: Bolton achieving 'life's work' by axing international deals

When John Bolton was a State Department official under President George W. Bush, he loved nothing more than sabotaging international agreements that he felt undermined America’s sovereignty and security. His “happiest moment” at the State Department, he recalled in a 2007 memoir, came when he personally extracted the U.S. from the International Criminal Court.

“I felt like a kid on Christmas Day,” Bolton wrote.

Now that Bolton is President Donald Trump’s national security adviser, Christmas has been coming early and often.

Since his arrival in early April, Bolton has helped to trash, weaken, or undermine four international treaties, organizations and agreements. They range from the major, like the Iran nuclear deal, to the minor, like an obscure 144-year-old international postal treaty from which the Trump administration withdrew last week.

If it is a dream come true for Bolton, it is a nightmare for the Washington diplomatic establishment he has relished torturing for the past three decades. In a Monday op-ed, Joe Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, wrote that Bolton is “on a serial killing spree of arms control agreements” and asked: “Can he be stopped before he kills again?” https://www.politico.com/story/2018/10/25/john-bolton-trump-white-house-foreign-policy-938604

4. Jennifer Rubin: “President” Trump, ever the victim

It takes remarkable skill, when you think about it, to claim victimhood when your enemies are threatened with assassination. But for President Trump, his state media and his cultish following, victimhood is central to their identity and critical to their mobilization. A party in control of every branch of government is the victim. White males — even a wealthy Yale graduate with a lifetime appointment to the federal bench — are victims. The cops who shoot unarmed black teens are victims. Residents of the small towns in the Rust Belt where few, if any, illegal immigrants live are victims of immigrants. Forget the crime statistics; we’re victims of criminals who are here illegally. Conservatives who control an entire media universe devoid of journalistic standards are victims of the mainstream media. Americans are victims (ripped off!) by an international system that made us the world’s only superpower.

Given all that, it is hardly surprising that Trump claimed to be the victim in the mailing of pipe bombs (now numbering 12) to some of his favorite targets (e.g. John Brennan, Rep. Maxine Waters, the Clintons):

Funny how lowly rated CNN, and others, can criticize me at will, even blaming me for the current spate of Bombs and ridiculously comparing this to September 11th and the Oklahoma City bombing, yet when I criticize them they go wild and scream, “it’s just not Presidential!” — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018

Trump expresses no concern for the actual victims of these threats or for the country that is witnessing this domestic terrorism. Moreover, the attempted assassinations now become his go-to excuse if Republicans lose in the midterms:

Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows - news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018

On one level, this is insane, but on another it is symptomatic of Trump’s appeal. His party is now the party of white grievance. Bedraggled immigrants a thousand miles from the U.S. border or the crafty Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are all threats. China is a threat. Women reporting sexual assault are a threat. Mysterious — make that nonexistent–Middle Easterners who infiltrate a caravan hundreds of miles away are a threat. And most of all, the media — which refuses to accept Trump’s invented political universe — is a threat. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/opinions/wp/2018/10/26/president-trump-ever-the-victim/

5. Caitlyn Jenner: I thought Trump would help trans people. I was wrong.

The reality is that the trans community is being relentlessly attacked by this president. The leader of our nation has shown no regard for an already marginalized and struggling community. He has ignored our humanity. He has insulted our dignity. He has made trans people into political pawns as he whips up animus against us in an attempt to energize the most right-wing segment of his party, claiming his anti-transgender policies are meant to “protect the country.” This is politics at its worst. It is unacceptable, it is upsetting, and it has deeply, personally hurt me.

Believing that I could work with Trump and his administration to support our community was a mistake. The recently leaked Department of Health and Human Services memo that suggests — preposterously and unscientifically — that the government ought to link gender to one’s genitalia at birth is just one more example in a pattern of political attacks. One doesn’t need to look back far to witness the president assault our nation’s guardians with a ban on trans people serving in the military or assail our nation’s future with a rollback of Obama-era protections for trans schoolchildren.

It’s clear these policies have come directly from Trump, and they have been sanctioned, passively or actively, by the Republicans by whose continued support he governs. My hope in him — in them — was misplaced, and I cannot support anyone who is working against our community. I do not support Trump. I must learn from my mistakes and move forward. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/caitlyn-jenner-i-thought-trump-would-help-the-lgbtq-community-i-was-wrong/2018/10/25/3c4cd61e-d86a-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html

6. Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Party Is the Petri Dish for Diseased Minds That Grew Cesar Sayoc

Rush Limbaugh, the most influential conservative talk show host in the country, and a man whom Republicans made an honorary member of the 1995 freshman class in recognition of his role in helping them win the House majority, explained recently that the still-anonymous bomber could not be on the political right. “Republicans just don’t do this kind of thing,” he explained. “From the Haymarket riot to the Unabomber, bombs are a liberal tactic,” added Ann Coulter.

The discovery that the person suspected of mailing bombs to various figures Donald Trump has described as enemy threats is in fact a Trump-supporting Republican has necessitated a change in emphasis. Whereas before conservatives insisted the bomber’s method told us everything we needed to know about his ideology, now they insist it tells us nothing at all about his ideology. “Crazy person attacks Republican Congresspeople: blame the crazy. Crazy person sends bombs to Democrats: blame the Republicans,” tweets right-wing commentator Ben Shapiro, whose analysis was recirculated by Donald Trump Jr.

It is of course true that the overwhelming majority of Republicans are not violent. It is likewise true that nothing about conservative ideology or its program requires violent action. Nonetheless, the relationship between the two parties and violence is not symmetrical, and the fact that alleged bomber Cesar Sayoc had a strong identification with Trump and his partisan message is not a coincidence. The Republican Party encompasses an extremist fringe that nurtures violence in a way the Democratic Party does not.

Political violence — when it is attached to political ideology at all, as opposed to simple mental illness — is associated with Manichean, paranoid, illiberal thought. That is a description of a large and steadily growing wing of conservative politics. Elements of paranoid extremism resided in the very beginnings of the Goldwater movement, which took its inspiration from delusional yet wildly paranoid tracts such as “A Choice, Not an Echo” and “None Dare Call It Treason.” Sensible conservatives roll their eyes at this sort of nuttery, but by this point in history, such modes of delusional thought have gained such deep inroads in the party that purging them is a hopeless task.

Even figures as deranged as Limbaugh have long since found themselves outflanked by even more deranged minds like Alex Jones, who has received respectful attention from President Trump, himself an avid conspiracy theorist. Trump has praised a member of Congress for assaulting a reporter; pardoned ranchers who inspired a right-wing militia attack, the right-wing conspiracist Dinesh D’Souza, and lawless authoritarian racist Joe Arpaio; literally today, at an event in which he was attempting to project some measure of dignity and decorum, Trump invoked a far-right conspiracy theory by attacking George Soros as a “globalist” and chuckling appreciatively at an audience member shouting “Lock him up!” http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/bomber-cesar-sayoc-is-trump-republican-extremism.html

7. Ryan Cooper: All the ways Republicans are trying to destroy pre-existing conditions coverage

Do you have a pre-existing condition, like arthritis, diabetes, asthma, or about a million other problems? About one in four Americans (or over 50 million people) do. Even if you aren't personally in that group, it's highly likely one of your friends or family are — and what's more, such a condition can develop at any time.

That's why it's important for each and every American to know that, contrary to what President Trump claims, the Republican Party has made great efforts to snatch health insurance from people with pre-existing conditions. They have tried multiple times to do it through legislation and are trying to do it right now through legal and regulatory efforts.

Let's take them in turn. Back in 2017, the Republican Party tried multiple times to repeal ObamaCare with the American Health Care Act. Now, this would have preserved "guaranteed issue" regulations, meaning insurers would have to sell you a policy if you had a pre-existing condition — but it would have heavily eroded "community rating" regulations which prevented insurers from charging you through the nose for that policy. For states that set up high-risk pools, those restrictions could be removed. What's more, the AHCA subsidies for these pools were so stingy — about 6 percent of a reasonable amount — that the premiums were sure to be outrageous. An AARP report estimated that premiums in such a pool would cost about $25,000 per year, and the policies would be garbage. (A later conservative amendment had the same waiver problem.)

This is a natural outgrowth of conservative ideology when it comes to health insurance. As House Speaker Paul Ryan has explained in detail, conservatives can't abide the idea of shifting money from one person to another (well, unless the recipient is a bank, oil company, or other wealthy businessman, but never mind). But people with pre-existing conditions often require more treatment than they can afford — sometimes many multiples of their entire income. What happens if you deliver health care through pure market institutions is that people who have expensive conditions go without treatment, unless they are rich. https://theweek.com/articles/803889/all-ways-republicans-are-trying-destroy-preexisting-conditions-coverage

8. David Remnick: The Midterm Elections Are a Referendum on Donald Trump

Trump is a masterful demagogue of the entertainment age. His instruments are resentment, sarcasm, unbounded insult, casual mendacity, and the swaggering assertion of dominance. From his desk in the Oval Office, on Twitter, and at political rallies across the country, he spews poison into the atmosphere. Trump is an agent of climate change, an unceasing generator of toxic gas that raises the national temperature.

The midterm elections are being held in an atmosphere of immense national stress. It could only be so when the singular actor in the drama is Donald Trump, who thrives on the idea that American life is a daily cliffhanger, in which the hero bravely sets out to deepen the divide between his supporters and everyone else, to dismantle international agreements and alliances, and to protect corporate interests over the interests of working people and the natural world. There are, unquestionably, countless local and regional issues being debated, but, above all, this election is a referendum on Trump, a contest between his base and those who feel that it is in the national interest to establish at least some brake—a new majority in the House of Representatives, a new crop of governors and state legislators—to slow his disintegration of American life and his despoilment of the national spirit. Two years ago, the prospect of a Trump Presidency represented an emergency. Tens of millions of voters found a reason to stay home. This year, the polls are tight. The stakes cannot be overstated.  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/11/05/the-midterm-elections-are-a-referendum-on-donald-trump

9. John McLaughlin: Why dropping the INF Treaty is a terrible idea

When it comes to nuclear weapons, just giving up and walking away from an arms-control treaty reverses the wise course of negotiated reductions we have followed for decades. The likely consequence of killing this treaty is that Russia will build more nukes and so will we. There are about 15,000 nuclear weapons in the world and tons of explosive nuclear material; no one needs more. While nuclear weapons can be stabilizing, that effect is most apparent when there is a degree of cross-national transparency codified in arms control agreements.

Moreover, walking away from this agreement distracts from the most basic truth about nuclear weapons: They are dangerous. The more weapons there are, scattered among more countries, ungoverned by international accords, the greater the likelihood of miscalculation or accidental launch — and the world has had a few close calls. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/why-dropping-the-inf-treaty-is-a-terrible-idea/2018/10/26/c03553ec-d929-11e8-a10f-b51546b10756_story.html

10. Joe Scarborough: Voters are finally on to the GOP

Washington Democrats have been in a political death spiral since the day Donald Trump descended his tacky golden escalator to announce a run for the presidency. In the three years since, the Democratic response to Trump’s toxic tweets and putrid pronouncements has been confused and ineffective. Their Capitol Hill news conferences bemoaning the former reality TV star’s racism, misogyny and corruption have usually fallen on mostly deaf ears. Even the demagogue in chief’s self-inflicted wounds only serve to harden the support of his base.

So it has been fascinating this week to watch Trump Republicans running scared whenever the subject turns to health care.

But voters are finally on to the GOP.  That’s why endangered Republican candidates are changing the subject from health care in America to migrant families in Guatemala. Scott, McSally and scores of desperate candidates have decided to follow America’s most famous birther by playing to voters’ worst instincts. With their congressional majorities on the line, Republicans are frantically trying to stoke fear of “others.”
Don’t worry about health care, their argument goes, when thousands of brown-skinned marauders — somehow organized and financed by big-money Jewish Democrats — are heading our way. They aren’t like us, they have no place in our country, and they will be stopped in their tracks by U.S. troops at the border. This nonsense obviously polls well among low-information voters who have already forgotten that the last such “invasion” from Central America only resulted in a few dozen arrests.

But facts stopped mattering to my former political party a long time ago. Instead, Trump’s party is betting its congressional majority on the cynical belief that racism in America is such a toxic force that voters will throw away their families’ health-care protections in response to a phony conspiracy theory cooked up in the diseased minds of radicals and race-baiting politicians. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/voters-are-finally-on-to-the-gop/2018/10/26/8bd9ce84-d94c-11e8-83a2-d1c3da28d6b6_story.html

11. Maureen Dowd: ‘Riling Up the Crazies’

As long as I’ve covered politics, Republicans have been trying to scare me.

Sometimes, it has been about gays and transgender people and uppity women looming, but usually it has been about people with darker skin looming.

They’re coming, always coming, to take things and change things and hurt people.

A Democratic president coined the expression, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” But it was Republicans who flipped the sentiment and turned it into a powerful and remorseless campaign ethos: Make voters fear fear itself.

President Trump was relieved when the F.B.I. arrested a suspect — a racist, homophobic, roid-raging, strip-club-loving, MAGA-worshiping Florida man who was living in a van that looked like a decoupage of Fox News propaganda.

The real fear that Cesar Sayoc Jr. is accused of spreading was distracting from the fake fear Trump was spreading to spur Republicans to the polls. And the president didn’t like it. Before Sayoc was caught, Trump implied that the terrorism was a Democratic setup to deflect from his midterms roadshow. Pipe bombs getting in the way of pipe dreams. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/27/opinion/sunday/donald-trump-fear.html

12. Josh Marshall: The Stakes Are Dire

As a friend pointed out yesterday, 2016 can be seen as a fluke. A series of perfect storm factors coming together to make Donald Trump president with a minority of the popular vote and razor thin margins in three critical states. 2018, if it’s a winning election for the Republicans, will be a choice. A ratification of everything we’ve seen over the last two years. That will be a reality we’ll all have to contend with for what it says about the state of the country. It will send a signal abroad that this is now the American political reality and unquestionably accelerate all the geo-political processes Trump has spurred or which drove him to the White House in the first place.

Domestically the impact will be worse. The political message will be simple: you can do all this stuff and suffer no political consequences. https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-stakes-are-dire

13. Max Boot: What Is Happening to Our Country?

Extremism has been present in America for a long time. But Trump is applying a match to the kindling.

Trump calls Democrats “evil” and “crazy.” He accuses them of being “treasonous” and “un-American.” He claims they are in league with MS-13 gang members. He says they are trying to open our borders to criminals and to turn America into Venezuela — a bankrupt socialist dictatorship. He denounces the media as “the enemy of the people.” He applauds a congressman who assaulted a reporter and calls for his political opponent to be locked up. He singles out minorities such as Waters for opprobrium, and he promotes anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that hold George Soros responsible for everything from the Central American caravan to protests against Brett M. Kavanaugh. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-is-happening-to-our-country/2018/10/27/47b462f6-da13-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html

14. Jason Sattler: The tide of hate and the man in the White House

Before Shabbat began Friday night, a Donald Trump superfan had been arrested for a failed domestic terrorism spree against the President’s favorite rhetorical targets.

Trump refused to take any blame for inspiring alleged mail bomber Cesar Sayoc’s actions and gave a speech in the East Room of the White House in which he called out “globalists” for “cheating our workers.”

A fan in the crowd got exactly what the President meant and shouted “Soros.”

You know George Soros is the billionaire who’d been targeted by Sayoc and blamed by many on the right for everything from the protests against Brett Kavanaugh to the overhyped “caravan” of asylum seekers that’s still close to the Equator than it is to the U.S. border.

Another Trump fan shouted, “Lock him up!”

Trump chuckled and said under his breath, “Lock him up.”

Before Shabbat was over, a gunman had killed several members of the congregation and three police officers were killed inside the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, on the morning of a baby’s bris.

The killer reportedly shouted, “All these Jews must die.”

The President responded to this horror with the NRA-approved pabulum, “If they had some kind of a protection inside the temple, maybe it could have been a much different situation.”

This attempt to blame the congregation for not defending themselves isn’t inventive, but it ignores the fact that when cops arrived, they too were shot.

It’s clear what Trump is saying that it would be better to fill our houses of worship with guns than to take any steps to reduce their availability or reduce the volume of rising hate against all minorities that has seen a historic anti-Semitic hate, according to the Anti-Defamation League. http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/ny-oped-tide-of-hate-man-in-white-house-20181027-story.html

15. E.J. Dionne Jr.: Trump’s grip on power depends on splitting the nation in two

It’s often innocently assumed that presidents, by virtue of the office they hold, automatically push aside partisanship in the face of national crises. The slaughter at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh combined with the pipe bombs sent to President Trump’s opponents have certainly created such a moment.

But this wishful thinking overlooks the central fact about Trump’s approach to politics: His grip on power depends entirely on splitting the nation in two. Angry division — rooted in race, gender, immigration status, religion and ideology — allowed Trump to become president. Absent a politics of us-versus-them, Trumpism makes no sense at all.

This explains why Trump will sometimes offer presidentially appropriate words of concord (“It will require all of us working together to extract the hateful poison of anti-Semitism,” he said at an Illinois rally on Saturday) but almost immediately return to baiting and assailing his enemies and also groups against whom he hopes to court a backlash.

For Trump and his enablers, national unity is not a noble goal but a dire threat to their political well-being. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trumps-grip-on-power-depends-on-splitting-the-nation-in-two/2018/10/28/c7ba9bca-d958-11e8-aeb7-ddcad4a0a54e_story.html

16. Max Boot: Fox News and the rest of the right-wing media can’t escape responsibility

Who created the environment in which right-wing terrorismhas become far more commonplace — and, since 9/11, far more deadly — than Islamist terrorism in America?

President Trump — by championing “nationalism,” denouncing “globalists” such as Jewish financier George Soros, vilifying immigrants as “snakes” and “animals,” fearmongering about a refugee caravan and defending white supremacists as “fine people” — bears a substantial share of the blame.

Some of his Republican followers are even more extreme. Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) brought a Holocaust denier to the State of the Union and has blamed Soros for financing a Central American immigrant caravan. Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) gave an interview to a far-right Austrian website in which he endorsed the white-supremacist claim that white nations are committing “slow-motion cultural suicide” by allowing in immigrants of color.

Where do these politicians get these noxious ideas? From a right-wing media industrial machine that includes Fox News, Breitbart, Infowars, Newsmax, the Daily Caller, Gateway Pundit and many other outlets. It was Maria Bartiromo of Fox Business Network who asked Grassley if Soros was behind the Kavanaugh protests — and after Grassley endorsed the charge, Trump gave it his imprimatur. The Wall Street Journal, in turn, ran an op-ed endorsing this calumny. Last week, Fox Business host Lou Dobbs interviewed Chris Farrell of Judicial Watch, who claimed that the Central American caravan was directed by the “Soros-occupied State Department,” echoing neo-Nazi propaganda about a “Zionist-occupied government.” (Fox Business has since apologized.)

Fox News isn’t just vilifying a major Jewish donor to liberal causes. It is also demonizing all Democrats — literally. Host Jeanine Pirro refers to them as “demon rats.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ask-the-questions-about-right-wing-terrorists-that-we-ask-about-islamist-militants/2018/10/28/64403b32-daec-11e8-b3f0-62607289efee_story.html

17. Eric Levitz: The GOP’s Caravan Propaganda Is Aiding Nazis for No Good Reason

In recent months, President Trump has warned the public that Democrats “want illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they are, to pour in and infest our Country, like MS-13” because liberals “view them as potential voters.” The nation’s most-watched cable news network has echoed this charge, reporting, in its prime-time hour, that Democrats are “plotting a coup”against the U.S. government, using illegal immigrants as their shock troops.

In recent weeks, Trump has told supporters that the caravan of Central American migrants currently headed towards the U.S. “didn’t just happen,” and that “the Democrats had something to do with it” — while also stipulating that there were known criminals and Middle Eastern terrorists in the caravan. Meanwhile, Republican congressman Matt Gaetz suggested that migrants were being paid — possibly by George Soros, who frequently donates to Democratic causes — to “storm the US border @ election time.” Conservative commentator Erick Erickson made the same point less equivocally, tweeting, “It is not a coincidence that this caravan to the south of us is happening 2 weeks before our federal elections.”

And pundits at just about every major right-wing outlet began describing the caravan as a literal invasion of the United States, with some explicitly arguing that the attempt by thousands of (disease-riddled) Central Americans to secure asylum in the United States should be regarded as “an act of war.”

Given all of this, it is perfectly appropriate for Democrats to respond to the atrocity in Pittsburgh by calling on the Republican Party to cease its promotion of a paranoid fiction that closely resembles neo-Nazi propaganda. Conservatives who are more troubled by right-wing authoritarians than by liberal straw men will join in such calls; those who aren’t will decry Democrats for “using dead Jews as yet another way to attack Trump, ” as the reigning authoritarian-in-chief himself carries on blaming anti-Semitic violence on a news media conspiracy, and lambasting his political rivals for organizing an “invasion” of the United States. http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/10/trump-migrant-caravan-robert-bowers-anti-semitism-nazis-tree-of-life-shooting.html

18. Ryan Cooper: The GOP's pathetic caravan distraction

One important implication is that this caravan doesn't represent some huge surge in people coming to the U.S. On the contrary, it's nothing more than a few weeks' worth of the typical refugee flows gathered together in one place. Nearly 300,000 people were apprehended crossing the border in 2017. A few thousand is just not that many. And while monthly apprehensions have increased substantially since early last year, it has only roughly matched 2016 levels, and remains far below 2014 levels.

From an American perspective, everything about this caravan should be small potatoes. America is a country of a 325 million people. There are about 43 million immigrants already living here. Far from being some devious criminal element, the immigrant population commits substantially less crime than the native-born average. A couple thousand refugees just is not going to change very much one way or another.

From the refugee perspective, of course, it is a matter of life and death. Most if not all of these folks are decent, ordinary people, again many of them innocent women and children, whose dearest hope is to not be mercilessly butchered by gangsters, and maybe a half-decent job at Home Depot if they're really lucky. So for a decent country — one which adhered to the words of Jesus Christ about what happens to people who do not care for strangers or the poor, for instance — it would be an absolutely trivial matter to help these unlucky souls. Indeed, if it weren't for Fox News and our addle-brained president contemptuously manipulating the media into giving this thundering wall-to-wall coverage, almost nobody would even notice. A few thousand Hondurans could disappear into existing such communities in El Paso, San Diego, and Washington, D.C., with nary a ripple. https://theweek.com/articles/804064/gops-pathetic-caravan-distraction