Musings on the Shootings in Dallas... with a personal connection

Curmie really wants to write about something other than the immorality and incompetence of the Trump administration and their minions in more than a few statehouses.  He’s even got something about another topic essentially written and ready to post. 

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’t discovered until well after the accusations were belched forth.  Government officials hurling accusations without evidence is a problem, even if, as now seems probable, they turn out to be right.

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.