Choosing to defy a ruling by the Republican (!) Supreme Court as well as the supremacy clause of the Constitution, Texass white nationalist Republican Gov. Greg Abbott is doing his best impersonation of Jefferson Davis:
...What does it look like when secessionist theory is weaponized against a 21st-century president? We have already begun to find out. For months, the Texas National Guard was engaged in an armed standoff with federal law enforcement, as well as active duty service members, at the Rio Grande: Guardsmen used razor wire to fence off the border, preventing federal access to migrants, even those in severe medical distress. On Monday, by a 5–4 vote, the Supreme Court lifted an injunction that prevented federal officers from cutting through this razor wire. But Abbott says his state will “defend and protect itself” by continued use of force, raising the very real possibility of ongoing clashes between state and federal law enforcement. Whether these disputes turn violent is anyone’s guess. The belligerent governor, though, has conspicuously declined to rule out use of force against anyone who stands in his way.
Vicious nativism is certainly not a perfect comparison to the totalitarian white supremacy that drove the slave states to Civil War, but it, too, springs from the diseased roots of bigotry, fear, and rage. It should be no surprise, then, that Abbott and his allies would adopt Confederate rhetoric in his quest to seize control over the border and subject migrants to anguish and death. By embracing the Confederate theory of the nation as a mere compact, he has freed himself to take even more aggressive measures against the federal government. We have been here before. It does not end well.
This ambitious, seditious asshole is dead set on causing a Constitutional confrontation with the Biden Administration (and Supreme Court). Like his cult leader and his Congressional minions, Abbott sees immigration as a hot button issue his nativist party can demagogue on any time there's an election. Abbott is being aided and abetted by the Republican governors of 25 other States, which should be the best indication yet that we're not dealing with a "normal" conservative movement with "moderate" leaders, but rather a neo-Confederate, nativist, fascistic party whose cult leader is fanning the flames of insurrection now even more than he did before and on January 6, 2021.
Abbott, along with fellow nativist Gov. "Bootsie" DeSantis, is notorious for cruelly busing migrants to Democratic- controlled cities just in order to "mess" with them. Maybe it's time to mess with Abbott's Texass.
BONUS: More reading here, here and here.
(Photo: "Securing the border" not really what they're after / USA Today)
