Stephen Miller should self-deport

It isn’t that Miller’s ideas are cruel and repulsive. It’s more than that: I don’t understand why he wants to live in the United States.

Through decades of debate with disagreeable people, I have never told any of them that they should leave the country. I can’t imagine it. In fact, I regard as un-American (and pretty much fascist) the idea that, if you criticize the president and the national government, you should find another place to live. Back in the time of the Vietnam War, protesters were considered unpatriotic and admonished with six words: “America, love it or leave it.” We heard a similar sentiment during the Gulf Wars, and there have been Christian/patriotic echoes of it during the Trump nightmare.

But I can’t imagine telling anyone who takes a view contrary to mine that they should find another country — in essence, that they should self-deport for ideological reasons.

However, I make an exception for Stephen Miller, the White House deputy chief of staff and Trump’s Rasputin, architect of the ongoing immigrant purge.

It isn’t that I find Miller’s ideas cruel and repulsive. It’s more than that: I don’t understand why he wants to live in the United States. His ideas are so contrary to fundamental American principles that I question why he didn’t move to another country where he would be more comfortable as a citizen. At 40, he’s young enough to establish a new life in a nation where power is concentrated in the hands of an executive and where neither judges nor lawmakers can check him. Besides, it’s not like Miller will leave a lot of friends behind, and much of his family already has disowned him.

Until now, I just thought of Miller as an ambitious racist enabled by a racist president to carry out an aggressive and highly visible purge of brown and black people who might, or might not, be undocumented immigrants. Miller is one of several people in the Trump regime who appear to believe in a “post-Constitutional presidency” (Russell Vought’s term) where the executive willfully exceeds his authority (see Trump’s war with Iran) and makes random decisions reserved by statute for Congress (refusing to release funds, renaming of the Kennedy Center).

None of that improves our constitutional democracy.

In fact, it looks like sabotage.

And, it turns out, the push to have an all-powerful executive is not popular.

Most of the country disapproves of Trump’s presidency, and not just because of the price of gasoline and hamburger. Americans also have turned against Trump because of the immigrant purge he has allowed Miller to carry out. It’s not popular at all. Americans wanted immigrants who commit crimes deported, not those who mulch flower beds or care for children and the elderly.

So this gets me to the suggestion that Miller self-deport. He obviously can’t stand America as we know it: Too many restraints on presidential power.

According to reporting by Haberman and Swan of The New York Times, Miller sees a basic legal principle, the writ of habeas corpus, as an obstacle to his desire to deport immigrants without due process. That Miller suggested suspending habeas corpus so that he could keep the machine of deportation running tells me that the guy should just take his act somewhere else.

Russia is an option. So is Saudi Arabia. In those countries, Miller could probably thrive as an apparatchik. In Moscow, he could serve a dictator and enjoy suppression of political opposition and control of the media. In Saudi Arabia, he would probably be well paid as a servant of a rich monarchy that does whatever it wishes — without political opposition, legal obstacles or citizen dissent.

If Miller would be uncomfortable with a murderous regime, there are other countries with authoritarian leaders who have so far not poisoned or decapitated opponents; they would welcome him and his hard line on immigrants.

Of course, what I say about Miller — that he obviously favors an authoritarian government over our 250-year-old nuisance of a democracy, with its checks and balances — I could say about a lot of the people Trump brought to Washington. But I start with Miller because he’s such a misfit, a native-born American who obviously does not understand or respect the country’s founding principles. Instead of fighting a losing battle to turn the presidency into a dictatorship, he should do what he demands of immigrants who, ironically, appreciate America more than he does: He should self-deport. To paraphrase Groucho: “Go, and never darken our democracy again.”