The Fix: Someone Else's Movie

Democrats do not have to play along with Republican propaganda.

Los Angeles, California, June 9th, 2025. Credit: Josiah True / Shutterstock

In the midst of an unprecedented military crackdown on Los Angeles protesters, 75 House Democrats voted Monday in support of a GOP resolution thanking the very agency that the city’s residents were protesting against.

The resolution “expresses gratitude to law enforcement officers, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel, for protecting the homeland."

I never thought I would have to say this, but you do not, in fact, have to hand it to the government jackboots remaking America in the name of white power.

The episode offers further confirmation that most Democrats relinquish any role they might play in the shaping of public opinion. They accept that Republicans can do it but see themselves as powerless to do the same.

In the Democratic mindset, Trump and his party are narrative-makers while they are narrative-takers. All they can do is accept how Republicans frame the world and respond to it on Republican terms—regardless of how outrageous and divorced from reality the GOP story is. Once Republicans say it—"Immigrants are a threat!”—it gets baked into public opinion, forcing Democrats to affirm it before staking out a position of their own.