Christine Flowers: When having a nuanced view makes you Sybil

Over the past several weeks, I have been called schizophrenic, whether it be on social media, in emails from readers or jokingly from friends who seem to think I’m all over the map on the Trump administration. I thought a little clarification was due, before I take a flight over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

I am a conservative, through and through. I have the battle scars to prove it, and as I said in a recent column, my pronouns are Ronald/Reagan. But being a conservative, and not a “Never Trump” liberal light, does not require that I agree with everything that my president does. It does not mean that I have to “take one for the team,” when that one is a curve ball to the head that will give me a permanent concussion. Sometimes, you have to call them as you see them, and most of my friends understand that principle. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t be my friends.

So yes, Donald Trump and his Keystone Cop minions acted like third world despots when they removed a Salvadoran refugee back to El Salvador, even though they knew that he was protected by an order that had been issued by a Trump era judge. There is no gilding the lily here, no “well maybe they made a mistake but it was unintentional,” no “well he was a gang member (yeah? Prove it!) so he’s no great loss,” no “Geez Christine, can’t you let this one pass, because at least he won’t rape and kill someone like poor Laken Riley.”

None of it. There is no excuse for what was done, it was an egregious error and now the error is beginning to look like deliberate illegality. A federal judge has ordered that the Salvadoran be returned to the US, and the government is pretending that it does not have the power to do so. They are lying. This is what a retired ICE agent with forty years of experience under six presidents wrote to me:

“Interesting what the administration is saying about their inability to return someone to the U.S. given that that person is in custody at the administration’s behest. It’s no different than someone being held in custody in Germany on a U.S.-issued INTERPOL Red Notice pending collection by the U.S. Marshals.”

So yeah, they are lying and they need to get the man back here immediately. If they do not, the United States will have just joined Russia, the Philippines, Myanmar, Sudan and a whole host of other lovely countries as a government that “disappears” its problems. It should also wrap the Statute of Liberty in Styrofoam and return her to France.

On the other hand, progressives are in no position to start seizing the high ground. This weekend, a bunch of people who needed to do something with their pink pussy hats and their poster board decided to hold a protest against the government. I’m fine with protests. The First Amendment is my favorite of all the amendments, except maybe for the Fourteenth, and on occasion the Sixth. But that protest was hilarious, filled with virtue signaling seniors, bored millennials and some children who were forced to carry signs that screamed about abortion rights. There were also a number of posters with Trump re-imagined as Hitler, and attacks on the GOP as the KKK.

These people, many of whom probably marched against the war in Vietnam while getting blitzed on whatever controlled substance was most available, think of themselves as noble warriors. They are not. They speak about immigrant’s rights, but most of them never defended an immigrant in court, or understand the arcane laws that govern the process. They just like to say they “defend immigrants.” Many of them do understand abortion rights, because many of them probably had them, or know someone who did. Many of them are angry about their 401ks, as I am, but didn’t blame Joe Biden for high prices and would have forgiven him if we fell into an inflationary period.

My point is this: I can see how immoral and reprehensible Donald Trump’s administration has been with its bordering-on-fascistic initiatives in going after “illegal immigration,” while at the same time see the true faces of the people who are criticizing him in the streets. I can walk and chew gum. I am not a team player, I suppose.

You shouldn’t be, either. And if that makes me schizophrenic, just call me Sybil. And hand me a purple crayon.

Christine Flowers is an attorney and lifelong Philadelphian. @flowerlady61