This is the state of American immigration politics: a destructive competition over who can do border better. But, as the unholy linking of foreign military aid to domestic border defense attests, this gross spectacle distracts from a far wider web of issues. Who has a right to migrate to the US and make their home here? Who gets to drop US-made bombs, and who is expected to silently suffer them? Because a Democratic President is punishing refugees at the US-Mexico border while also sponsoring the genocide of refugees in Gaza, these are not unrelated questions.
Five decades of ordinary bipartisan anti-immigrant politics
In May 2018, as Trump’s family separation policy became a major scandal, former Obama speechwriter and “Pod Save America” host Jon Favreau tweeted a photo of two migrant girls sleeping on the floor of a cage. “Look at these pictures. This is happening right now, and the only debate that matters is how we force our government to get these kids back to their families as fast as humanly possible.” As a number of his replies pointed out, the photos were actually from 2014, when his boss was still President. As with Biden’s response to the recent assault on Haitians, Favreau was fixated on the image.
A plea for liberal nationalism ignores what it has looked like in practice.
Despite the appeal to pragmatism, Mounk’s political vision is utopian, his ideal polity a kind of liberal sublime. In a distant place far outside of history, virtuous trustees of public reason skillfully mobilize the best of nationalism while fending off its “dangerous excesses.” Entranced, Mounk sees in nationalism a muscular tool for legitimizing the political-economic order: “Nationalism is like a half-wild beast. As long as it remains under our control, it can be of tremendous use.” Who is the “beast,” and who is the “us” into which Mounk places the reader?
