I used to know a guy who grew up in the Yugoslavian ghetto of North Jersey, with a childhood spent with only limited contact with anyone outside that community. He desperately wanted to become a conservative activist and was constantly coming up with complicated schemes, large parts of which involved contacting and placating a (nonexistent) hierarchy that was constantly watching, knew all things, and held the ultimate veto on just about everything. When it was explained to him that this was unnecessary, he'd say, "Uh...okay..." and fall silent, only to come up with a similar scheme in short order.

It wasn't long before I realized that this was exactly how things worked in Tito's Yugoslavia, and, though raised in the U.S., he'd been exposed to and internalized it to the nth degree. He was living in a mental communist dictatorship and always would be.

This came to mind as I was reading about Rashida Tlaib's extended fugue this weekend regarding what should be done to Donald Trump's Cabinet once they were arrested. It was clear to me that the same mentality was at work. There is no reason to arrest the Cabinet and no reason to believe that it will ever happen. But...overlooked in all the commentary on the lithe and perky Ms. Tlaib's ramblings was the fact that this is exactly what her confreres in Gaza did after Hamas took over from Al Fatah in 2007. Only there wasn't any debate about what was to be done with them. They were immediately taken to the tops of tall buildings and tossed off. Tlaib, it's apparent enough, is living in a dream Gaza, where the law is whatever the man holding the Kalashnikov says it is, where the strong do what they will and the weak endure what they must. (At least she wasn't suggesting that secretary of the interior David Bernhardt be tossed off a building. We've civilized her that much.)

We've seen this problem otherwise in recent years, regarding President Barack Obama and his handler Valerie Jarrett, both of whom grew up outside of the United States in third-world tyrannies with politics that would have warped the minds of even the most strong-willed. With Barry, it was Mohammed Suharto's Indonesia, with Valerie, the Shah's Iran. Both internalized aspects of these societies, as was apparent in many of the policies of the Obama regime. Obama — no doubt guided by Jarrett — became accustomed to making decisions with no outside consultation and carrying them out by executive fiat, exactly as would have occurred in Indonesia and Iran. The examples of this are myriad. One of the most blatant, of course, involved Jarrett's beloved Iran.

This is a problem that has gone unaddressed (I know of no one else who has brought it up regarding Obama, obvious though it is) and one that will have increasing effects in this age of mass immigration. Exactly what is to be expected and required of individuals who are, in a real sense, not American in attitudes, personalities, and inclinations?

This is not something in which we can look to previous epochs for help. During the last immigration period of the late 19th–early 20th centuries, the social structure was firm as bedrock — Anglo-German WASPs ran the culture, politics, and big business; the Irish were cops; the Jews ran small business; and everybody else got to scrabble. Today it is anything but.

We're already paying a price for this through the antics of Tlaib and her colleague Ilhan (Omar) Elmi. The latter's family, the Elmis, were closely tied to the warlords in Somalia and the unrelentingly vicious atrocities they carried out. What Elmi thinks should be done with her opponents is beyond conjecture.

This is a factor that we're going to need to deal with — before the politics of Gaza and Somalia become commonplace here.