Being Susan Collins, &c.

On ‘navigating the Trump era,’ the reality of deportations, scenes from New York, and more

Maine Coast, by Winslow Homer (1896) (Wikimedia Commons)

Jonathan Martin, that ace political journalist, has done an interview with Susan Collins, the senior senator from Maine. She is a Republican. The interview is worth reading in full—or seeing in full—but I’m going to concentrate on a small part of it.

Collins is not a Trump Republican, but she is not exactly a Trump opponent either. She is “navigating the Trump era,” as they say.

Of Liz Cheney, Collins said to J-Mart, “What influence does she have today? Really none.” She further said, “It’s not just that she lost her seat; it’s that she has no impact, in my view.”

Okay. I’m not sure how “impactful” Senator Collins has been. But I want, again, to quote Henry Hyde, the late congressman, a conservative Republican from Illinois. I quoted him in a piece about Lindsey Graham, and I quoted him in a subsequent column.

Hyde had the role of addressing new congressmen at their “freshman orientation.” In 1990, he said,

This may sound odd, even ironic. You are here in the flush of victory. And yet it is precisely now that I ask you to contemplate the possibility of defeat—perhaps even the necessity of defeat.

Further on in his remarks, he said,

I feel obliged to put the matter more sharply still: If you don’t know the principle, or the policy, for which you are willing to lose your office, then you are going to do damage here.

Liz Cheney thought that Trump was unfit to be president—grotesquely so—and said so. This, of course, cost her her leadership position in the House and, soon after, her seat.

But, you know? She stood for something. She took a stand. And she won the admiration, and gratitude, of many of us.

I have an easier time excusing politicians such as Susan Collins than I do their counterparts in the media—Republicans who have swum along with Trump in order to keep their audiences and their jobs.

Said Charles Krauthammer, “You’re betraying your whole life if you don’t say what you think—and you don’t say it honestly and bluntly.”

Bless him.

When Collins first ran for the Senate, in 1996, she pledged to serve only two terms. “Twelve years is long enough to be in public service, make a contribution, and then come home and let someone else take your place.”

She is now completing her fifth term and running for a sixth.

That’s the way it goes …

***

I’d like to cite one more thing from J-Mart’s interview of Collins. Speaking about her opponent this year, Troy Jackson, the senator said, “I’m not going to bring up the fact that the mother of his two children is his second cousin. I don’t know whether people know that or not.”

(1) Classy lady. (2) Do you think the issue will hurt Jackson? I’m not sure.

***

By now, you have probably heard about Pierre Damas Bel. I will not dwell on the details. “Haitian Student, Despondent Over Ankle Monitor, Dies in Apparent Suicide.” That is a headline in the New York Times. The subheading reads, “The 20-year-old was fitted with a tracking device under a Trump administrative initiative targeting Haitians in Springfield, Ohio.”

For the article, go here. In the last two years—since the 2024 presidential campaign—there have been many, many articles about Springfield. Trump and Vance have put it on the map, so to speak. Today, I would like to say just one thing.

“America is great because America is good.” That line has been attributed to Tocqueville, who did not say it. Nevertheless, I have always thought there is some truth in it.

And if America ceases to be good …

What makes America great? Seizing Venezuela’s oil? Threatening Greenland? Renaming Lake Ontario?

For crying out loud.

***

Of supporters of our mass deportations, I ask one thing: that they acquaint themselves with the facts, the details. No matter how discomforting it is.

“Deportees Recount Harrowing Journeys to Africa: Shackles, a ‘Freezer’ and Blows.” That report is here. And here is another report, which begins,

A 37-year-old Cuban man who lived in South Florida and spent seven months in U.S. immigration detention says he was placed on a plane in handcuffs and deported to the Central African Republic—a country he had never heard of.

Most people have not. (I wrote about the country’s onetime dictator, who crowned himself emperor, in a book. A monstrous man named Bokassa.)

Here is another report, headed “Cubans living in Florida are being deported to Africa.” I propose a little thought experiment: What if, say, the Obama administration were doing this? Or an AOC administration? What would the Republican Party and its media say?

I can tell you that, for Cuban Americans in Miami, this situation is mightily awkward. (That community, to which I have long had close ties, is overwhelmingly Republican.)

But back to my point: Support deportations if you will (say I)—but none of us should be ignorant of what, precisely, our government is doing.

***

Milo Yiannopoulos, the right-wing provocateur, has been deported back to the United Kingdom. He had been all for Trump’s deportations. Had egged them on, cheered them on. Then he himself was arrested and subsequently said,

I don’t think I’ve ever been frightened like that before. I didn’t really understand the physical reality of how institutionalized the brutality is in America. The manner in which they arrest you. They put you in manacles—your hands, your feet, chained together. Everybody is arrested like an MS-13 gang member. …

It was humiliating and it was disorientating, all the rest of it. It was physically degrading. It was frightening.

I’m sure it was. And I think of an aphorism from Ben Franklin: “Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other.”

I would also like to quote a wise man from our own day, David French:

This is one reason why the attack on empathy is so evil. If we have to wait for person after person to experience the brutality of this administration before we wake up, then we’ll inflict an immense amount of pain on our country. But if, instead, we could place ourselves in the shoes of the immigrant in chains, then we can see the injustice more plainly.

David went on to say,

And no, this does not mean that we can’t or shouldn’t deport illegal immigrants when appropriate. It doesn’t mean we must have open borders. But we can’t lose our own humanity and decency in the process, and we must not use brutality as an instrument of enforcement.

***

Gloria Steinem has died at 92. One line from her sticks out in my memory—not the most important thing she ever said, but something that stays with me: When the New York Times at last relented and accepted the honorific “Ms.,” she said, “I no longer have to be ‘Miss Steinem of Ms. magazine.’”

***

“Macron and King Charles III hail their nations’ ties as they view the Bayeux Tapestry in London.” That is the heading over a report from the Associated Press. The reporter, Jill Lawless, had a little fun with words:

The two heads of state viewed the embroidered depiction of the 1066 Norman conquest of England alongside new prime minister Andy Burnham, who is eager to restitch bonds between Britain and its European neighbors that have been frayed by Brexit.

Have one more sentence, after which I will recall an admonition from Churchill:

Charles praised the agreement between Britain and France that brought the priceless, fragile tapestry to London, and called its presence there “a precious symbol of trust at a time when trust seems sadly to be in short supply between nations.”

Churchill despised the phrase “in short supply” (which I think was then relatively new). He said it took three words to say “scarce.”

***

I saw a long line of people on a sidewalk in New York. It turned out to be a line of people waiting to receive free food. Bunch of vagrants, right, most of them black and Hispanic? No. They were people of various races and ages. Some of them were well dressed.

A sight to make one ponder.

***

We have all seen crazy people on the street, talking to themselves, or holding imaginary conversations. These days, however, people might be having phone conversations, hands-free. They may well have buds in their ears.

I was waiting at a bus stop with a man who was having an animated conversation. Something about morality and ethics. I assumed he was on the phone. But there were no buds in his ears.

Oh, dear.

Later on, my friends. Thank you for joining me, and for subscribing if you can or want. Talk to you soon.