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But.
It doesn’t happen often, thankfully, but this time a
personal friend was witness to an event that made national headlines, and his
story demands to be told. By now, Gentle
Reader, you’ll have read about the shooting at an ICE facility in Dallas early
yesterday morning.
You may well have first learned of the incident when the Usual Suspects started blathering without evidence about the shooter’s motives, just as they did in the wake of events in Utah a couple weeks ago. Here’s Kristi Noem:
This vile attack was motivated by hatred for ICE. For months, we’ve been warning politicians and the media to tone down their rhetoric about ICE law enforcement before someone was killed. This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about ICE has consequences. Comparing ICE Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.
And JD Vance:
“The obsessive attack on law enforcement, particularly ICE, must stop. I'm
praying for everyone hurt in this attack and for their families.” Curmie notes that all the victims were
detainees, and the day Vance gives a shit about any of them is the day after the
Devil tells him why he’s in hell.
And Kash Patel:
“These despicable, politically motivated attacks against law enforcement are
not a one-off. We are only miles from Prarieland, Texas where just two months
ago an individual ambushed a separate ICE facility, targeting their officers.”
And Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons:
“It wasn’t directed at the detainees; it wasn’t directed at civilians in the
street. It was a definite attack on law enforcement.”
And here’s a selection from the rant by the Tangerine Palpatine himself:
The Brave Men and Women of ICE are just trying to do their jobs, and remove the “WORST of the WORST” Criminals out of our Country, but they are facing an unprecedented increase in threats, violence, and attacks by Deranged Radical Leftists. This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis.” The continuing violence from Radical Left Terrorists, in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s assassination, must be stopped. ICE Officers, and other Brave Members of Law Enforcement, are under grave threat.
OK, let’s unpack that a little. ICE is not the least bit interested in removing
the “worst of the worst.” Indeed, they’re
under orders to avoid high crime areas, especially those with significant
levels of gang activity. Whether this is
because of commands that they fill numerical quotas (it’s a lot easier to
arrest a grandmother than a gang leader) or simply garden-variety cowardice is
unclear. Probably a bit of both.
It is indeed true that at least one of the bullet casings found at the scene did have “anti-ICE” written on it. That may be relevant; indeed it likely is. But, of course, as some memester pointed out, a real lefty would more likely write “Fuck ICE” or “Abolish ICE”; “anti-ICE” is what “a right-winger thinks a leftist says.”
Still, A hand-written note found at the home of the shooter, Joshua Jahn, seems to support the idea that Jahn was indeed attacking ICE. It remains curious, however, that there were three casualties, including at least one death (not counting Jahn himself), but none of the victims were the supposedly intended targets.
There’s a difference between a likelihood and a certainty, after all, but
you’d certainly never know that if you listened to the squawking from the
Trumpian minions. And some of the evidence that Jahn was indeed anti-ICE wasn
In fact, all this hyperventilating about “Radical Left
Terrorists,” especially given the inconclusiveness of the evidence, does little
but fan the flames and incite further violence.
Curmie isn’t quite ready to say that such is the intent of the
administration—providing an excuse for further infringements on First, Fourth,
and Fifth Amendment rights, for example—but it does loom as a possibility. Of course, simple stupidity is the
explanation for a lot of what this administration does…
Let’s be honest here.
We may suspect, even strongly suspect, what may have been Jahn's motives, but we don’t know with anything like certainty. The local Fox affiliate reports that “A sign on a car that reportedly belonged to the shooter reads, “Radioactive
fallout from nuclear formations that've passed over these areas more than 2x
since 1951.” So we’re dealing with
someone quite likely to be a pancake short of a Grand Slam Breakfast, whatever
his politics. Plus, of course, if he was
truly aiming for ICE agents, he’s an even worse shot than Thomas Michael Crooks.
All of this brings us to Curmie’s introduction to this piece. A good friend and former student of Curmie’s posted on social media that he was on site when the shooting occurred. His post was public, but Curmie doesn’t want him to get any backlash, so he’ll be listed here only as SR, and Curmie isn’t supplying a link; you’ll have to trust me on this, Gentle Reader. Curmie also declined to ask for further details: this had to have been an especially harrowing incident, and there’s no need to make him re-live that experience just to assuage Curmie’s curiosity.
Curmie should also mention that SR is a man of exemplary honesty
and forthrightness. He has no political
agenda, and is far more forgiving than Curmie of other people’s ethical
failures. If SR says, “this is what
happened,” then, Gentle Reader, you can take it to the bank that that’s what
happened. His account may not be complete
(how could it be?), but it is honest.
Curmie would bet everything he owns that SR is telling the absolute
truth to the extent that he can determine it.
So… SR drove a member of his church, who apparently had an
appointment, to the ICE facility. Apparently
there’s a rule that you can’t enter the facility without an appointment, so SR
and several other people were directed to an outdoor waiting area. (Curmie bets this will go over particularly well
in February.) OK, so it’s a stupid rule,
but ICE doesn’t have a monopoly on them…
The half dozen or so people outside, including SR and a
mother and her infant, still weren’t allowed inside when the shooting
started. SR says he “can’t really blame
the employees” for that decision; this is because SR is far more forgiving than
the average person. SR “had nowhere to
go, nothing to hide behind. The best option given the situation was to shelter
in place and wait and hope.” Eventually,
“Dallas PD arrived at the scene and ordered us to shelter inside, and the ICE
agents finally allowed us into the building.”
SR concludes, aptly:
Frankly, I don't care about the motive because it will just be propagandized to death. Ultimately, this event is another indicator of failed policies and inflammatory messaging.
Perhaps the most frustrating part is knowing that this will not lead to any meaningful change. It will be another fading headline, another statistic, another signpost on the road toward our own self-destruction.
There’s a reason SR is one of the former students in whom
Curmie takes the most pride.
Let’s consider above all his objective statements rather
than his analysis. Those “brave men and
women on the ground” that Lyons was praising may indeed have been trying to
rescue detainees from vehicles that were under fire. But we also know that ICE employees—perhaps
the same ones, perhaps not—refused to allow innocent civilians to seek shelter
inside their facility: an act both craven and cruel. How do we know? Because SR said so (without the adjectives). If the average person on the street said
something contrary to a Trump minion’s statement, Curmie would tend to believe
that person. When it’s SR, he’s certain
of it.
This, alas, is the true face of ICE: paranoid, cowardly, and
mendacious. They’re not the Gestapo,
though. Those guys weren’t afraid to
show their faces.