With Trump signing an executive order to halt immigration from 7 countries, there is a resounding reaction (at least in my bubble):
It's becoming pretty clear that if trump voters took him seriously not literally (as Peter Thiel said)… well, then they were wrong.
— Dan Primack (@danprimack) January 28, 2017
Most people are deeply offended by what is pretty obviously a disgusting policy, and yet here we are.
So what is a bad-case here? That the current bans become permanent, that they are expanded, that the federal government grabs more power, that this erodes America’s inherent love of opportunity.
So why does nobody seem to be speaking up? For democrats, it’s easy, they have nothing to gain, they were even laughed at for taking Trump literally before the election.
But what about republicans? There are two possible ‘good’ outcomes here for republicans. #1 is that somehow whatever Trump ends up doing doesn’t cause much damage or backlash or change and this ends up being forgotten. #2 is that after the 90 days are up, there is a relatively thoughtful new framework to put into place so that Trump can claim to continue to be tough on Islam, or whatever he thinks he’s doing, but nothing will change or maybe we’ll even stop a terrorist or two from entering the country. I’m skeptical, but it’s a possibility.
It has been remarkable how weak the response from both sides of the aisle has been on this executive order. I have to think they are either praying to Allah that this will go away by itself, or that they think Trump is digging himself into a hole out of which he cannot climb. The third alternative is too terrible to contemplate.