On the Reactions to "Melania"

One, but hardly the only, response

Curmie, once a not infrequent guest columnist on Jack Marshall’s Ethics Alarms page, hasn’t posted as much as a comment there in over a year.  He does drop by occasionally to see if it has reverted to its titular ethics orientation instead of its more recent manifestation as a right-wing propaganda outlet.  It has not, alas.  To be sure, even when Curmie was a frequent contributor, his views on gun control (quite similar to those of Ronald Reagan, by the way) were described as “un-American,” and his position on abortion (pretty much that of every Protestant or Jewish denomination prior to the ‘80s) “unethical.”  This is standard partisan blather, and Curmie freely admits to indulging in the same tactics from time to time.  (He doesn’t pretend to be an ethicist, however.)

Anyway, Curmie once found it fairly easy just to disengage from that stuff, mostly because it represented only a smallish fraction of what Jack posted.  But when the “Democrats hate America” bullshit started to become the subject of the overwhelming majority of the output, and when excuses for inexcusable conduct by Dear Leader and his minions became a significant part of the mix, Curmie just couldn’t take it anymore.  The cadre of sycophantic commenters, most of whom hadn’t ever said anything positive about anyone to the left of Louis XIV, just made things worse.  Curmie bailed, thereby making what had already become an echo chamber into even more of one.  If any EA readers find their way to this page, he apologizes for that part.

Anyway, as noted above, Curmie does drop by EA occasionally, especially if, as was the case in the suppression of that high school production of The Crucible last spring, it’s a topic about which Jack’s perspective would be at least interesting if not indeed enlightening.  There was no such specific impulse a couple of days ago, but Curmie did find a piece about the very different Rotten Tomatoes rankings of “Melania,” the documentary about FLOTUS’s preparations for the second inaugural.  The screengrab Jack posted showed a 6% “tomatometer” ranking, but a 98% “popcornmeter” rating.  The former is the percentage of professional critics who gave the film a 3.5 out of 5 or better; the latter is from the general public.  As of this writing, there’s even more distance between the two scores: 5% vs. 99%.  Here’s that link, Gentle Reader; of course those numbers may have changed again between Curmie’s writing and your visiting the site. 

Imdb.com, in case you’re wondering, has the film at 1.3 out of 10, a level of negativity surpassed, as far as Curmie can remember, only by the 1.2 for the “Queen Cleopatra” series on Netflix that Curmie wrote about in the spring of 2023.

OK, that’s a tremendous spread.  Curmie can’t comment about the film itself, as he has not seen it, nor does he have any intention of ever doing so.  Curmie’s interest in watching a documentary is largely determined by his interest in the subject.  If his interest level is 10 out of 10, he’ll probably watch even if the film gets bad reviews; if it’s below 5, it’s going to take someone whose opinion Curmie really trusts saying, “No, really, this movie is really good” to even consider it.  Perhaps now would be a good time to say that it’s doubtful that Curmie will watch a different FLOTUS’s film, Michele Obama’s “Becoming,” either.  It’s been out since 2020 and is currently on Netflix, meaning it’s de facto free for Curmie and Beloved Spouse to watch should we be of a mind to do so.  And it’s got significantly better ratings from the critics (93%); the 78% “popcornmeter” rating looks pretty comparable to the 7.1 on imdb.  But it’s still pretty unlikely that we’ll watch.

Note that whereas the general public who voted on Rotten Tomatoes and those who voted on imdb pretty much agree on “Becoming,” they couldn’t be much further apart on “Melania.”  There’s not a whole lot above a 99% on the former or below a 1.2 on the latter.  Does this mean that the Woke Folk head to imdb and the MAGAs to Rotten Tomatoes?  Probably, at least to some degree.  Is it possible that one group or the other (or both) bombarded one of those sites with votes from people who hadn’t seen the film, or even from bots programmed to skew the results?  Of course.

But let’s look at Jack Marshall’s comments.  He notes that the opening weekend attracted a larger audience than expected (or at least than was expected after early predictions were revised downwards); it was indeed one of the biggest opening weekends for any documentary in a long time.  He doesn’t mention the $35 million marketing budget, which… erm… might well have been a factor.  He does admit that “There is always a chance that the popular reviews were rigged by MAGA zealots,” and that “The divide does not mean that the critics are wrong.”  He then proceeds to declare that “movie critics tend to be members of the progressive bubble, and are probably incapable of watching anything connected to President Trump objectively,” and that “the split also shows incompetent and irresponsible critics.”  Wait… what?

Curmie used to do some theatre criticism and even reviewed a couple of films.  It was never his job to predict what the reader would like or dislike, but to state as clearly as possible what he thought worked… or didn’t.  If a film is bad, it’s bad, and it’s the critic’s job to say so.  Ooh… but you shouldn’t do that if you’re a liberal and the movie you’re reviewing is both politically conservative and crap.  Leni Riefenstahl and Sergei Eisenstein both made excellent films, even if they were exercises in propaganda.  It appears that Brett Ratner doesn’t belong in their company.  Of course, it’s unlikely that Curmie will even know for sure.

More to the point: who is going to any opening weekend?  Professional critics… and fans.  Curmie admits that he’d never heard of Cinemascore prior to doing a little research for this post.  Those folks gave “Melania” an “A.” But then you look at their methodology, which seems to rely exclusively on interviews with the opening night audience.  It’s human nature to like things you agree with.  You’re a lot more likely to say this movie was really good if you’re a fan of FLOTUS (or her hubby) than if you think she’s a dim-witted, vulgar, bimbo.  Curmie remembers when, back in the days Netflix had customers rate movies on a scale of 1 to 5, he gave a 4 to a documentary on Václav Havel, not because it was a good film (it deserved a 2 as a film), but because he was a huge fan of Havel and hoped Netflix would suggest more movies about him or similar topics.  That kind of response is completely understandable.

The people who went to see “Melania” on the opening weekend wanted to see that film because of its topic.  It’s difficult to say much more than that.  Imdb has a note that their “rating mechanism has detected unusual voting activity on this title.”  Ya think?  The rating distribution is pretty much an inverse bell curve, or rather it would be if the 10s were anywhere near as plentiful as the 1s.  Virtually no one gives the film a 4 or 5, and damned few opt for 2-3 or 6-9.  Concluding that most moviegoers responded more politically than aesthetically seems pretty reasonable.  It’s not completely out of line to suggest that at least some critics did the same, but it’s a lot less certain.

What hasn’t been mentioned is what all this ought to be telling us.  Curmie doubts that there has ever been a film about which what critics or voters on one of those websites say means less than this one.  No critic is going to dissuade a faithful MAGA from going; no outpouring of positive sentiment is going to convince a leftie of the film’s qualities.  The reaction to this film, like “life” in one of the most famous speeches in Macbeth, is “but a walking shadow, a poor player, / That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, / And then is heard no more.  It is a tale / Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, / Signifying nothing.”

This Time for Sure!

To quote the great 20th-century philosopher Bullwinkle J. Moose, “This time for sure!”  Curmie really is going to write about something that not only isn’t about ICE, it isn’t even about the 47 Regime at all!

As regular readers of this blog know, Curmie is a retired theatre professor.  He is virtually certain that he’ll never return to the classroom except, perhaps, as a one-day guest.  He’s no longer a member of any professional organization except one specifically linked to his PhD alma mater; he has three writing projects started, but he’s lost momentum on all of them, and it’s considerably more likely that none of them will ever be finished than that more than one will.  But there is one area of the job where he’s still rather active.  Five former students in the last couple of months have asked him to be a reference for them.  Four are applying to grad schools; one is looking for jobs as a teacher.  We’ll just call her “SA,” as Curmie doesn’t want to hurt her job prospects just because he can be an asshole from time to time.

It’s SA’s case that spurs this post.  Over the years, Curmie has discerned a rather disturbing phenomenon.  Whereas virtually every grad school or theatre company that has taken a serious interest in a student who’s listed him as a reference has made contact one way or another, public schools in Texas (at least) pretty much don’t care.  Curmie has lost count of how many former students have applied for jobs teaching theatre in a high school or junior high; it’s in the dozens, at least.  Most of these folks got a job; that’s the good news.  The number of schools that contacted Curmie at all totals perhaps 15% of that number.  Perhaps other references were so positive that the mere fact that Curmie agreed to be a reference was enough.  More likely, administrators just couldn’t be bothered to do their jobs.  It’s reasonable not to bother to check references if a candidate clearly isn’t going to make the cut.  But it’s unconscionable not to do so before hiring someone as a teacher.

One of the students for whom Curmie wasn’t a reference was what we call a “paper major,” i.e., someone who takes all the required classes for a Theatre major, but works on shows only to the extent specifically required by coursework: no auditioning, no volunteering for crews, none of that kind of stuff that might actually provide relevant experience.  She got a job as a technical director for a high school, because the person you want to show other people how to work a counterweight system or use power tools is someone who’s pretty much never done it herself.  ☹ Oh, but she went to that high school, so that’s OK, then.

But whereas those schools that don’t even bother to check references are the greater problem, those that do are almost as bad.  Now we come to the first rec I get to write to support SA’s quest for a teaching position.  They don’t want a letter; there’s a form to fill out.  We start with some questions with drop-down responses.  A couple of them are reasonable: things like time management, willingness to assume responsibility, etc.  Others are clearly variations on “can we push the applicant around (please say ‘yes’)?”  Curmie will pretend he doesn’t understand the subtext and answer what the question literally asks: about “ability to follow instructions,” for example.  His former student follows instructions very well, thank you.  But she’s clearly a lot more intelligent than whoever designed this questionnaire, and might just rebel a little if “instructed” to do something freaking stupid.  That is precisely why Curmie agreed to recommend her.

Alas, there are worse examples.  First question: “What is your relationship to this candidate?”  If that’s a fill-in-the-blank kind of query, it’s a logical way to start (assuming you’re too lazy and/or dim-witted to want an actual letter of recommendation).  But remember that this is a drop-down, and there’s no option that corresponds to the faculty/student relationship we had when she was an undergrad.  The only choices: “Supervisor,” “Peer,” “Friend,” and “Other.”  Supervisor?  Well, sort of, but it’s not like I was her boss or something.  Peer?  No.  Friend?  Well, yes, now, but that’s not what they mean.  

By the way, if there’s no professional relationship, what the hell use is the recommendation of someone who’s simply a friend?  “We were apartment-mates junior year, and she always did the dishes when it was her turn, and got out of the way when my boyfriend came over” might make her someone to go have a beer with, but it’s hardly a relevant concern in assessing her suitability as a teacher. 

Curmie supposes that makes him “Other.”  (He can hear those who know him personally snickering something like “Ain’t that the truth.”)  It’s just weird that Curmie (and her Master’s program supervisor) are relegated to “otherness,” but “friends” are given their own category.

The other question Curmie struggled with was about SA’s “teaching strategies.”  The closest Curmie has ever come to seeing SA’s “strategies” in action was when he advised her production of a 10-minute play a couple of decades ago.  And it’s not like Curmie remembers details of that show; even if he did, we can reasonably assume that she’s learned some things in the interim. “I don’t really know” is the honest answer.  Nope, not allowed on their divinely inspired form.  What to do?  

Well, SA has been living abroad for several years, successfully running a company that integrates ESL with theatre work.  This is a strategy that was very much foregrounded in Tudor England (except that the language in question was Latin instead of English), and was the driving principle behind the “French plays” Curmie saw and participated in when he was an undergrad.  Making that work for any period of time requires both creativity and pragmatism.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Curmie is calling that “excellent” and moving on.

Curmie’s initial thought was that this school’s form—farmed out to some company at taxpayer expense because either wanting actual letters or creating the school’s own form might take a few minutes of the administrators’ precious time that could be better spent playing solitaire on the office computer—was the stupidest he’d seen, against some very steep competition.  But then he thought back a little further.  One of the first such forms Curmie filled out for a former student does indeed take the Too Fucking Stupid to Believe Grand Prize.

It’s been a long time, so Curmie can’t remember all the details, including (luckily for them) the name of the school; he’s only reasonably confident he remembers who the student in question was.  If it’s who he thinks it was, she was truly remarkable, and has become a very successful teacher in a different district than the cretinous yahoos who distributed the form.  For this school, there was a list of something like 20 statements, with a drop-downs ranging from “strongly agree” to “strongly disagree.”  The very first question, presumably what the school cared about the most, was “Applicant is well groomed.”  Yes, really.  Curmie remembers that one.  There followed a series of prompts about the candidate’s being “obedient” (yes, Curmie remembers that specific word), “respectful,” and similar code words for passive servility.

Finally, about Question #16, we get to something about knowing the subject material.  There was one other question—Curmie can’t remember what it was, exactly—that was actually relevant to whether an applicant would be good at the job.  The rest, by far the majority, were all about looking nice and being inoffensive.  Those readers who know Curmie personally know what Curmie thinks of those priorities; the rest of you can no doubt guess.

The problem, as it so often is, is that the people who make hiring decisions—principals, etc.—are, as a class, even lazier than they are stupid, and that’s saying rather a lot.  Our public education system has been turned over not to competent professionals but to stolid bullies who care more about their own authority than about educating students.  They have degrees in educational administration but no damned sense.  All principals, superintendents, and similar folk?  Of course not.  But the word “most” has surpassed “many” in Curmie’s contemplation of this issue.  That’s not a good thing.

The Worst of the Three Infamous Murders Committed in Minneapolis by “Law Enforcement” Just Happened

 

Curmie had hoped to change the subject a little: from the abominations of the Trump administration, or at least from those committed by ICE.  He’s got a short encomium to Joanna Lumley forming in his head; there’s a critique of a series of television commercials; perhaps a commentary on that church invasion by anti-ICE demonstrators (Curmie is not a fan) or of Trump giving the finger to that auto worker (Curmie kinda shrugs, but can’t help snickering at the idiotic Karoline Leavitt follow-up); perhaps Curmie could write about that case in Florida in which the cops showed up at the door of a woman who’d made a Facebook post critical of the mayor.  Even writing about the continued harassment of Mark Kelly for having the audacity to say an objectively true statement out loud would at least make the topic something other than ICE.* 

No such luck, I’m afraid, Gentle Reader.  As the title of this essay suggests, things changed Saturday.  OK.  Review of the bidding.  Curmie is not suggesting that there was anything justifiable in the killings of George Floyd or Renee Good.  In the former case, there is no evidence that Derek Chauvin is or was anything but a bullying asshole.  He used excessive and unjustifiable force that led to Floyd’s death.  But, as Curmie pointed out back in ’21, Floyd’s drug use and an underlying heart condition were also contributing factors.  In other words, under normal circumstances, what Chauvin did, abhorrent as it was, would not have been life-threatening.  And no one seems to argue that Floyd should not have been detained, only that the detention was overly physical.  Oh, one last thing: Chauvin, as a Minneapolis Police officer, actually had jurisdiction to detain Floyd.

Next in both chronology and increased “police” culpability was the shooting of Renee Good by a trigger-happy goon named Jonathan Ross.  Let me repeat: there is nothing remotely justifiable in Ross’s actions, but there is at least some evidence that Good was blocking the road, thereby interfering in an ICE action (whether that action itself was justifiable—probably, but not incontrovertibly, not—is not the issue here).  And she did attempt to leave when told to get out of the car.  (She was also told to “move,” which could be interpreted either to exit the vehicle or to get it out of the way.)  Ross undeniably, intentionally, stepped in front of the car: a violation of protocol.  And Ross had just been humiliated by Good’s wife.  Was it murder?  In the sense of anything but a lawyerly quibble, yes.  But a car can be a weapon, and to a chicken-shit asshole like Ross, mere details like the fact that Good was in fact trying to avoid him just confuse the issue.

But now we come to the shooting of Alex Pretti, for which there is even less legitimacy, even more and better documentation of what actually happened, even more outrageous slander from the Usual Suspects. 

Here’s what we know, from video evidence (one example here), including the frame-by-frame analysis by the New York Times, and the testimony of witnesses (such as the woman in the pink coat) who saw the event live as it happened:

An ICE agent pepper sprayed a woman in the face.  Curmie has seen no evidence either way as to whether this was justified, but of course he has his suspicions.  Pretti, a nurse, remember, moves towards her to see if she’s all right.  He’s holding his phone in one hand; the other is empty and raised above his head (perhaps to protect himself from being sprayed in the face?  We’ll never know.)  There is no apparent attempt by the swarming ICE agents simply to stop his progress towards the woman.  Instead, they gang-tackle him.  A half dozen or so of them jump on top of him.  (EDIT: A friend on BlueSky reminds me that they then pistol-whipped him.  Totally unnecessary; completely in character.)  

Pretti does have a licensed and legally carried handgun; they seize it from him while he’s still face down on the ground.  And then, they shoot him ten times.  The chronology is important: Pretti is tackled to the ground before agents know that he has a weapon (so that wasn’t why they jumped him), he never reaches for the gun, and he’s been disarmed before they shoot him (so he posed no risk to their safety).  He did, however, have a phone, and in some ways documenting their manifold misdeeds could indeed make them fearful.

In other words: at least two under- or indeed un-trained “agents” panicked.  Being cowards, not terribly bright, and testosterone-poisoned, and no doubt believing (not without cause, alas) that they could do whatever the hell they wanted, they did something brutal and, let’s face it, remarkably stupid.  That’s problematic, but what happens after the fact is even more inexcusable.  Curmie isn’t going to forgive those who shot Mr. Pretti, but does at least understand that people don’t always make the best decisions in the heat of the moment.  That’s happened to Curmie, and he’s willing to bet that it’s happened to you, too, Gentle Reader (not to this extreme, of course).

What should have happened in the immediate aftermath, of course, was issuing statement along these lines: “An incident involving ICE agents which resulted in the death of a civilian occurred in Minneapolis today.  The agents involved have been placed on leave pending an investigation by federal, state, and local authorities.”  No muss, no fuss.  No admission of guilt, but also no blaming the victim.

But the obviously false narratives spewed by Donald Trump, Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, Greg Bovino, et al., are deliberate.  They’re not dependent on needing a response in a split second; they’re calculated.  But they’re not just lies and slander; they’re so outrageous that even members of the right-wing base are fleeing that sinking ship.  And no, it’s not just loose cannons like Rand Paul, although it’s him, too.  Curmie’s personal favorite is this clip from Ted Williams of Fox News… yes, that Fox News.  Williams is both a lawyer and a former homicide detective, by the way.

Here’s what he has to say (note: Williams refers to Pretti as “Peretti”; Curmie has corrected that, but made no other changes in what follows): 

Well, John, I’ve gotta tell you, I’ve watched that video tape for at least, let’s say, about a hundred times because I knew I was gonna be coming on with you and I wanted to speak as accurate as I can.  And I do believe that there needs to be a complete investigation.  I was taken back by the White House, who initially put out what I defined as misrepresentation of what took place there when you look at the video.  It was said that Mr. Pretti was brandishing a weapon.  Well, he was not brandishing a weapon; he did have a weapon.  It was said by the White House that Mr. Pretti attacked those agents.  No, he did not attack those agents.  And one of the White House individuals called Mr. Pretti “a domestic terrorist.”  I find… this man is dead.  He has family.  And to go out and call him a domestic terrorist without giving any more information is just unacceptable.  

And then, John, when I looked at the video, what you saw was an agent pushing a woman aside, Mr. Pretti getting sprayed, them jumping on top of Mr. Pretti.  And this is something that our audience should see with their own eyes.  You can see where one of the agents actually physically takes Mr. Pretti’s gun; and that is before he shot him.  And then, all of a sudden, he shot.  There’s a pause, and there are more bullets that are shot in his direction.  So, that investigation… what I’m asking is that there be a complete and thorough and transparent investigation, John, not only by the federal agencies, but also by the state and local investigators also, working together.

Needless to say, as in the Good/Ross case, the feds are refusing to cooperate.  Protecting one of their goons is clearly more important to them than anything remotely related to justice.

Perhaps the topper comes from none other than Dear Leader himself.  The “only criminals carry guns on our streets” tweet that you’ve probably seen, Gentle Reader, is almost certainly a fake.  (Yes, both sides are perfectly happy to lie to support their cause.)  But the follow-up—“You can’t have guns.  You can’t walk in with guns. You just can’t.”—isn’t, and didn’t sit well with organizations like the NRA, which had already lambasted an Assistant US Attorney for a remarkably stupid tweet along the same lines.  If you’re a Republican and you’re losing Fox News and the NRA, you’re not in good political shape.  This doesn’t even take into account the hypocrisy involved.  After all, one of the first things 47 did in office was to issue a blanket pardon for all the January 6 pseudo-patriots, including (of course) those who… erm… walked in with guns.  And Curmie antiphrastically doesn’t mention right-wing hero Kyle Rittenhouse.

Two more links and then Curmie will shut up.  The first is the reportage of Ken Klippenstein, who interviewed experienced immigrations officers.  A few of their comments: “Yet another ‘justified’ fatal shooting … ten versus one and somehow they couldn’t find a way to subdue the guy or use a less than lethal.  They all carry belts and vests with 9,000 pieces of equipment on them and the best they can do is shoot a guy in the back?”  “We can’t always support what happens just because it’s one of us.”  “This is a no-win situation for agents on the ground or immigration enforcement overall.  I think it’s time to pull out of Minnesota, that battle is lost.”  And, concisely, about the killing of Pretti, “Fuck this.”

But we’re left with the words of Heather Cox Richardson, whose commentary on virtually everything is worthy of notice: 

This is the moment at which it becomes too late for people to say, after this, ‘Oh, I didn’t know.  I didn’t know what was going to happen.’  It’s out there now….  It is no longer possible for people to say, ‘Oh, I believe in law and order, and so I support Donald Trump.’  This is the moment when people have to say, regardless of party, ‘either I believe in democracy, I believe in our Constitution, I believe in the rights that the framers wrote into that Constitution’ or they have to say, ‘No, I am siding with the likes of Stephen Miller in believing that my existence is under siege by immigrants, and anything it takes to stop that, regardless of the Constitution, regardless of American citizenship, regardless of rights, has to happen.’

Seems like an easy call to Curmie.  Perhaps to you, too, Gentle Reader?

* If any of these seem particularly interesting (or uninteresting), Gentle Reader, please comment—here on the blog, or on the links on Facebook or Bluesky.

Continuum Thinking, Disjunction, and ICE

Curmie doesn’t go this far, but...

Curmie was extremely fortunate throughout his career to have encountered a number of extraordinary university lecturers.  At, or at least very near, the top of the list was Ron Willis, who was the professor of record for an Intro to Theatre class for which Curmie was a Graduate Teaching Assistant for a couple of years in grad school.  Ron would lecture to a couple hundred undergrads on Mondays and Wednesdays, and then the GTAs would lead discussion groups of 20 or 25 students each on Fridays.

What made Ron special wasn’t merely his intellect, his grasp of the subject matter, or even his wit, all of which were on ample display every time he stepped up to the lectern.  Rather, it was his insistence on what is too often trivialized as “thinking outside the box.”  The phrase is cliché; Ron’s lectures never were.  One of the basic concepts Ron emphasized keeps coming back into Curmie’s consciousness: the difference between disjunctive and continuum thinking.  It is hardly a novel idea, but Curmie hadn’t seen it applied quite so self-consciously or specifically outside the realm of probability theory. 

If the local high school basketball team takes on an NBA team (that’s actually trying) and loses by 15 points, they’ve still lost by double digits (disjunctively) but played extraordinarily well (on a continuum for high school teams).  Of course, whereas continuum thinking is to be encouraged in general terms, many, even most, situations will eventually require a disjunctive solution: we watch this movie or that, we try to avoid traffic by going a little out of our way or we don’t, and so on.  You can’t cast 62% of your vote for Candidate X, 35% for Candidate Y, and 3% for that interesting third-party candidate who’s kinda crazy but has this one really cool idea.

Real-life problems, then, generally involve some level of… “compromise” isn’t quite the right word.  “Accommodation,” perhaps?  Back in the Dark Ages when Curmie was first of voting age, he sometimes found two candidates roughly equally appealing: X is better here, but Y is better there.  Now, of course, neither candidate is appealing, but they’re roughly equally unappealing. 

The key is getting the order right.  First the continuum, the weighing of all the pros and cons, then the disjunctive decision.  Reversing that process leads to confirmation bias.  That is, if we decide that a particular point of view is correct, we inevitably search out “evidence” that supports our conclusion and ignore that which might contradict that impression.  We must remember that pols and pundits lie.  All of them.  Even the ones on “our side.”

Which brings us to a discussion of ICE.  Curmie doesn’t purport to speak for everyone whose politics are somewhere to the left of those of Louis XIV or Francisco Franco (Curmie antiphrastically avoids mention of that dude with the bad haircut and the funny mustache).  That said, he understands two things: that in the modern age some form of border patrol that seeks to protect the nation from those who actually are “the worst of the worst” is a net positive, and that some of the testimonials coming out of Minneapolis right now (and elsewhere in weeks past) may well be exaggerated or even falsified.

Let’s take the second point first.  What we face here is the possibility that the anti-ICE faction might not be providing objectively accurate information.  Indeed, much of what we see and hear comes from neighbors (and therefore friends?) of victims of ICE brutality, and from left-leaning media outlets.  Does that make the reportage suspect?  Maybe.  But the alternative is to believe the stories ICE and the Trump administration are spinning.  

We saw the murder of Renee Good.  We saw ICE deny a doctor the opportunity to attend to her.  We saw the priest get pepper sprayed for no reason.  We saw the veteran dragged from her car.  We saw the invalid dragged from hers.  We saw the protester sprayed in the face when he was already in custody, face down on the ground.  We saw the 5-year-old kids (yes, plural) in custody.  We saw the old man get tackled in the hallway outside the office where he was checking in on his application for citizenship.  We heard the police chief tell us that his off-duty BIPOC officers were harassed by ICE.

And we’ve seen and heard Trump, Vance, Bondi, Noem, Bovino, Miller, et al., flat-out out lying about what happened.  Every.   Single.  Time.  And you know you we haven’t heard from?  Anyone on-site who witnessed these events live and can corroborate ICE’s narrative.  Anyone except ICE agents themselves, that is.  Is it possible that some of the specifics of some of the cases have been exaggerated or even fabricated by the left?  Curmie would say that’s not merely a possibility, but a likelihood.  Alas, that’s rather the way of the world.  And certainly the technology exists to make something appear to have happened when it didn’t.  It’s also true that people like Gavin Newsom seem much more interested in their prospective presidential runs in ’28 than in actually solving problems in the here and now.

So yes, there’s a continuum at play here.  We ought to be careful about what we believe.  One side might be lying.  The other side definitely is.  The only thing we should believe from anyone associated with ICE is when they say they “don’t care.”  Don’t care that you’ve done nothing illegal.  Don’t care that you’re a citizen.  Don’t care that you’re an asylum-seeker and can prove it.  Don’t care that you’re a doctor.  Don’t care that you’re a veteran.  Indeed, don’t care about literally anything but their presumed power.  They lack empathy, actual patriotism, humanity.  Oh, and courage.  Mustn’t forget that.

But let’s return to the other part of this analysis.  If, as those on the right would have it, ICE were detaining the “worst of the worst,” then the opposition would be significantly weakened.  And it is true, apparently, that a fair number of unsavory folks have indeed been apprehended: murderers, rapists, robbers, drug dealers, and the like.  But the percentage of detainees who fall into one of those categories is far too low.  It’s also important to remember that even accused murderers have 1st, 4th, 5th, and 14th amendment rights.  ICE doesn’t care.  Curmie does.

Curmie wrote about a variation on the theme back in 2012 when New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg was all about stop-and-frisk measures despite the fact that they were “successful” only once in every 879 stops, and that young black or Hispanic males were more than eight times more likely to be stopped than their percentage of the population would indicate.  Curmie wrote, 

If you search literally everybody without any provocation, chances are pretty good you’ll catch someone with a gun or drugs or an outstanding warrant. But the price is too high except in the McCarthyite universe inhabited by arrogant buffoons like Mike Bloomberg. Really, if the price of “law and order” is a state in which the authorities can do whatever the hell they want, I’ll take a little risk.

That’s still true.  By the way, how does one prove citizenship?  You can get a driver’s license without citizenship, after all.  A voter ID card, I suppose?  Curmie has never carried his except literally on election day, or his passport except heading to or from an international airport.   And if you happen to be on the other side of the state (or the other side of the country) from where those documents are stored (in Curmie’s underwear drawer, for example), there’s not a lot to be done to establish your right to be in this country.  

Curmie, being white (well, there’s a little First Nations heritage in there, but not enough that anyone would even suspect that by looking at him) and having English as his native language, is less likely than some of his friends are to be hassled by a goon squad that is longer on testosterone than on brain cells.  But “less likely” isn’t good enough, and what other folks, especially those who “look Hispanic,” have to deal with is absurd… or, rather, it would be if it weren’t so real.  Curmie has been loath to say this, at least this frankly, for the past year, but cannot now come to any conclusion other than that ICE is not merely primarily about the racism, but indeed virtually exclusively so.

Curmie does not argue here that there should be “no raids, no detention, no deportations,” as that one protester’s poster in the photo above reads.  But it is unreasonable at best to allow anonymous, largely untrained, “agents” to be able to do whatever they want, without warrants, without even probable cause (or at least without what any reasonable definition of probable cause would be), without oversight.  Take away their masks, their guns, and their ability to commit violence.  Make them work with local police: N.B., this does NOT mean that they’re the ones in charge.  No one can be detained if they are in fact obeying the rules—applying for asylum, seeking work permits, etc.  Any arrest without a judicial warrant or demonstrable exigent circumstances is felony kidnapping.  Make ICE follow the law, and Curmie has no objection to their continued existence.  But the current structure and leadership cannot endure.

So…  Yes, there have been some violent criminals taken off the street by ICE.  Yes, some of the allegations against them are no doubt inflated.  But ultimately the choice is disjunctive: we fund and tolerate ICE or we don’t.  Captain Bonespurs and the Gravy Seals would make a pretty good band name, but it’s no way to run a free country.  Time to melt the ICE.

Toll Road Follies

Curmie got two bills (of sorts) for toll road fees today. 

One appeared on his phone; it was an obvious scam.  Curmie’s cell has a New Hampshire number, but he hasn’t been in that state in about three and a half years, and to the best of his recollection has never driven on a toll road there, even if there are any.  This is perhaps the third time he’s had one of these threatening messages.  The last one was from a phone number from the nation of Tuvalu; this time he didn’t bother to check before tapping the “delete and report” tab.

The other one came by mail, and was actually legit.  Well, sort of.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse were able to get away for a brief vacation in San Antonio between Christmas and New Year’s.  Our GPS took us onto a toll road near Austin on the way there; we took another route on the way home.  Anyway, we owed the Central Texas Regional Mobility Authority (what a title!) a grand total of $2.71, $1 of which was a processing fee.

Anyway, the outside of the envelope reads, in big letters, “Past Due Payment Required.”  Whoever was sorting the mail at the post office couldn’t have missed it, nor could our mailman.  Needless to say, there was nothing past due about our account, and those assholes knew it.  The invoice wasn’t even processed until the 11th, and just arrived today.  So we begin with a defamatory lie.  Way to start off on the right foot, CTRMA!

But there’s a $15 fine if you don’t pay the bill by the actual due date (February 10), and this is this kind of thing that sometimes gets buried, so Curmie decided to pay it immediately.  There are manifold ways of paying: by mail, online, by scanning a QR code, in person (in Austin, about a four-hour drive) or by phone.  Curmie didn’t have any stamps handy, and he didn’t really want to have to pay for one, let alone drive to the post office.  And he really didn’t trust those bozos to process a check as soon as they got it, especially since they’d get more money if they delayed.  Having a credit card receipt seemed the way to go, so he tried online first. 

You’ve got to fill out a form that wants far more information than is necessary, but Curmie shrugged and entered it all in.  But, of course, there were problems.  The form insists on a cell number.  Curmie dutifully plugged his in.  Nope.  It was the “wrong format.”  Of course, there wasn’t a specified format, but whatever.  After you get told you did it wrong, there’s (sometimes) a pop-up that says to use only numbers with no spaces.  That’s what Curmie had done, of course.  After a couple of tries, it became clear that “only numbers with no spaces” means “parentheses around the area code and then a space, and a hyphen after the exchange.”

Then you’ve got to enter a user name and password, then to identify the letters or decide what part of the photo includes a motorcycle or whatever.  Curmie got that far, hit the “next” button and watched the spinning wheel of death for a good four minutes before finally getting the message that there was an error, and to “please try again later.”  Curmie waited a few minutes, then tried again.  But this time he got a message that the secondary email couldn’t match the primary email.  Of course, Curmie hadn’t entered a secondary email.  So he added one.  Remember, all that’s happened so far is the system rejecting Curmie’s attempt to establish an account. 

One more try to establish the account… now the message reads that the primary email is already in use, presumably meaning that although the previous message had said that there was an error, apparently the account really was established… except that it wasn’t, or at least the password Curmie had just created didn’t work.

Anyway, after some more fiddling, we finally get to the point where you can enter your credit card information.  Another interminable wait while it processes, and another message that there’s been an error; try again later.  Arrgghhh.  Went through the whole process again, with the same result: there was an error, try later.  Okay, that’s it.  The online system is obviously FUBAR.  Fine.  Let’s try scanning that QR code.  Well, it doesn’t work, either.  At least it tells you that pretty quickly. 

Ah, but there’s still the possibility of paying by phone.  The robot voice, sounding rather like a junior high girl trying to be elegant, asks for the account number.  Curmie provides it.  He is then informed that he has a credit balance of $2.71.  Not only had they charged his card while claiming the inability to do so, they’d done it twice!

So Curmie called the credit card company.  Apparently they can’t do anything while the charge is still officially “pending” (Curmie would have thought it would be easier under those conditions), but once the charges are fully posted, Curmie can call them back and they’ll claw back the money.  It’s only $2.71, which Curmie can afford, but dammit, CTRMA is not getting paid extra because they’re inept.

Curmie already knew that avoiding that toll road in the future is of paramount importance, and that customer service at Discover is really good.  He’s learned one more thing: No one who works for CTRMA should be allowed within ten paces of any device that wasn’t manufactured by Fisher-Price.

The Censorial Asshats at Texas A&M Are At It Again

Dr. Leonard Bright

Yes, there are probably more important stories to write about, but Curmie was a college professor for a very long time, and taught multiple courses in which topics related to race and gender figured reasonably prominently.  Curmie has already expressed his relief that he’s now retired, because now the university doesn’t have to fire him for thinking he knows more about what’s appropriate reading and/or discussion material for his course than some administrator too busy kissing the ass of grandstanding politicians to actually care about education does.

So, here we are again, because, as the title of this essay suggests, the censorial asshats at Texas A&M University are at it again.  And in some ways it’s worse than ever.  Yes, demanding the removal of a selection from Plato’s Symposium from a Philosophy course is probably stupider, but this one may show even less regard for the way universities are supposed to operate.  It’s bad enough, in other words, that Professor Leonard Bright’s graduate level Ethics and Public Policy (PSAA 642) course was cancelled, but these idiots did so after the class had already met!

Dean John Sherman claims that Bright had declined repeated requests for more specifics about his course.  Bright says, quite reasonably, that issues of race, gender, and sexuality were likely to arise every day: “During discussions, book reviews, case studies, throughout the course. There is no one day. That’s how this class works.”  Well, duh.  Sherman, of course, had no relevant experience in an academic environment prior to being hired as dean, so, not to put too fine a point on it, he doesn’t know what the hell he’s doing.  Curmie’s a reasonably smart lad, too, but you don’t want to put him in charge of a national security agency. 

Sherman is clearly far from stupid, but he is ignorant, and that may be even worse under these circumstances.  Let’s start with some basic facts.  First off, the more advanced a course is, at least outside the so-called “hard sciences,” the more it tends to be run as a seminar.  Students are actively engaged in discussing, debating, and interrogating course materials.  People who don’t understand how seminars work—and, unfortunately, this includes a good many university administrators—think this makes for a lesser load on the professor, even trying to claim that teaching a three-credit-hour seminar should count as less than three hours of courseload in lecture courses.  

In fact, of course, the opposite is true.  True, you do less of the talking, but you don’t know what direction a student wants to take the discussion, so you’d better be ready for anything.  That means more prep time and a greater need to clarify one’s own perspectives.  An analogy might be the difference between a speech (lecture) and a press conference (seminar).

Importantly, these are graduate students, who are curious by nature and both intelligent enough and scholarly enough to have been admitted to grad school at Texas A&M back when it was a reputable university (i.e., last year or earlier).  They’re going to ask questions.  They’re going to have, and state, their own opinions.  Even in the wet dreams of the Christian dominionists, there is no means to completely control what students say in a classroom.  The censors can claim that a faculty member’s mentioning the fact that gay people exist is somehow “advocating” for homosexuality, but they don’t have a rejoinder for a student who says, “I’m LGBTQ+, and this policy affects me in the following manner…” 

What is the professor to do in that scenario?  Sure, there’s an opportunity to open the floor for other student input, but what if there is none, other than perhaps a handful of nods in agreement?  Students deserve a response to their commentary, and they deserve to hear the professional perspective of a recognized authority (the professor), not some equivocation inspired by trying to obey an unconstitutional imperative.

In other words, Dr. Bright’s assertion that the verboten topics might arise in literally any class period is 100% accurate, and he would be compelled to respond.  Expecting him to be able to predict when and how often such conversations would happen is not merely unreasonable; it betrays a profound misunderstanding of how university coursework works, especially in advanced courses.  Yes, we can put much of the blame on the idiot state legislators (the usual apologies for redundancy) who passed SB37, but Sherman deserves plenty of criticism, too.

But that’s not all!  As Curmie wrote last October about the suppression of a high school play, “If you’re going to be a censorial asshat, at least be timely about it.”  As noted above, the course was cancelled after classes has already started!  Yeah, yeah, the university promises to help students find new classes, where, of course, they’ll already be behind.  If they as much as wrote their names on the inside cover of a textbook, they can’t sell it back to the bookstore for full price.  Most importantly, this was the course that best fit those students’ needs, which they chose, presumably in consultation with their advisors, for that reason.  It was the only ethics course to be offered in the department this spring.  Curmie won’t bother you with the obvious joke in that regard, Gentle Reader; he knows you can get there on your own.

There is precisely one legitimate reason to cancel a course after the semester has started: that the professor is unable to continue teaching it for reasons beyond the university’s control: serious illness, for example.  Clearly, that’s not the case here.  QED.

Oh, by the way, you know how Curmie mentioned in his blog post of January 8 that Dr. Martin Peterson, whose choice of a selection from Plato led to censorship, was the Chair of the Academic Freedom Council at A&M, “which makes him an especial target for the censorial asshat brigade”?  Well, the Texas Tribune article linked above reports that Dr. Bright, who is, by the way, a tenured Full Professor, also happens to be president of the Texas A&M Chapter of the American Association of University Professors, “a faculty group that opposes the system’s new race and gender ideology policy.”  What a coincidence, huh?  Dr. Bright argues that his “decision to speak out in defense of academic freedom and the integrity of higher education has clearly placed a target on [his] back.”  It is difficult to argue with that analysis.

Back when Curmie was teaching, he not infrequently expressed views that he freely admitted were not shared by the majority of theatre historians—about the motivations behind creating the Dionysian festival or about the demographics of Shakespeare’s audience, for example.  He made a point of explaining why most scholars thought the way they did, and why he disagreed.  He didn’t care which argument students regarded as more persuasive; he wanted them to think, to reach a conclusion based on all the available arguments.  In the absence of evidence to the contrary, we must believe Dr. Bright when he says that students are not expected to agree with him.  It’s the administration that has clearly taken a side, and it’s not in favor of free inquiry.

Texas A&M has quickly turned into the Augean stables, and is desperately in need of a Herakles.

There's No 3-D Chess Here

Nope.

It had probably been months since Curmie had heard the term “3-D Chess” to describe someone so strategically brilliant as to leave the rest of us in the dust.  Then he encountered the metaphor twice on Wednesday of this week.  In both cases, Curmie’s response was, shall we say, skeptical.

The first occurrence was during the FIRE members-only webcast.  One of the viewers asked if it was possible that the administration at Texas A&M was in fact sympathetic with faculty who just want to teach their courses based on their professional expertise.  The argument, you see, was that censoring Plato in a Philosophy course was so remarkably stupid that it invites a lawsuit, which would, hypothetically, free the university from the grotesquerie that is SB37.  In other words, university policy-makers—the Regents and the administration—were hoping for a 1st Amendment challenge to an obviously unconstitutional law.  It would succeed, and control of the curriculum would thereby be wrested from idiot pols and returned to its rightful place, the university itself.

It was not an outrageous question, but FIRE’s General Counsel Ronnie London doubted that university officials were indeed “playing 3-D chess.”  He granted the possibility, but made it clear that such a scenario was unlikely.  Curmie agrees, not merely because he doubts that anyone would employ such a strategy, but because the Regents are appointed by ultra-right wing Governor Greg Abbott, whose fingerprints are all over the legislation in question… and they, in turn appoint the President.  The principal qualifications to be a Regent for a state university in Texas are simple: you must be a rich Republican who neither knows nor cares anything about higher education except as a means of advancing a political agenda.  Abbott certainly found his flock at A&M.

Remember, too, that last fall a young woman described by Curmie as “a single narcissistic and reactionary student” objected to a discussion topic because it violated an Executive Order from Dear Leader, and the professor, department chair, dean, and president all lost their jobs. 

By the way, it’s been reported that the reason that the department chair (and presumably those up the food chain) got in trouble was that they allowed the prof to teach something that wasn’t in the course description.  As a side note: when Curmie came to the university from which he is now retired, the catalog description for the second half of the Theatre History sequence said the course stopped chronologically at World War II.  Curmie said he was going to extend the timeline to the present, thereby including absurdism, the Angry Young Men, Off- and Off-Off Broadway, playwrights like Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller, feminist dramaturgy, deconstruction… well, you get the idea, Gentle Reader.  

And get this: Curmie’s boss agreed to it without any hesitation!  Such insubordination from a department chair!  We did, by the way, change the course description, but it took a couple of years to get the revisions through the system.  In the meantime, it would appear that Curmie and his boss were both very naughty, indeed.  Luckily, the statute of limitations has run out.

But revenons à nos moutons.  The powers-that-be had their chance to challenge or even circumvent the state’s censorial policy and passed on the opportunity.  If the Regents actually wanted to halt this unconstitutional idiocy, they would have done so.  Nope.  They’re absolutely complicit.

So now we turn to the other contender for “3-D chess” designation: 47’s stated intention of annexing Greenland through whatever means necessary.  Actually, the CNN story Curmie read references MAGA-dom’s belief that Dear Leader is playing 4-D chess, and similar inanities have apparently been uttered not infrequently for some time, especially with respect to events in Venezuela.  Curmie either just didn’t see them or succeeded in ignoring them.

Last Friday, Chris Cillizza’s YouTube post (which Curmie didn’t see until today) opened with some pretty open mockery of the idea that “Donald Trump is always playing 3- or maybe 4- or maybe 5-dimensional chess, while the Democrats, the reporters covering him, everyone else, is sort of playing checkers at best.  The essence of the argument is that Trump is so strategically smart that he’s always multiple moves ahead of everyone else.”  Cillizza proceeds to talk about the strategic stupidity involved in describing Susan Collins, the most vulnerable Republican Senator seeking re-election, as a “disaster” who “should never be elected to office again.”  Collins, of course, only votes against GOP directives when it won’t make any difference (a point Cillizza doesn’t raise), and of course her vote on a procedural matter that will lead to nothing substantive fits that description nicely.

So Cillizza has a point.  But the true coup de grâce came a couple days after Cillizza’s piece, when Greenland became the topic of conversation on Sunday and then again on Wednesday.  The apologists’ argument is that only by threatening to invade an ally could Trump get Western Europe to send troops to protect Greenland, even if the perceived enemy is… well… us.  Pursuing this policy is far stupider than attacking Susan Collins. 

Sure, Greenland has some strategic importance, and we’d rather not have it taken over by Russia or China.  But first of all, that isn’t going to happen, and secondly, the downside of 47’s bluster is enormous.  His recklessness on the international stage has already cost this country more than can be regained in a decade or more of actual diplomacy and ethical leadership.  What ally would possibly trust the US now?  The idea that there would actually be a US military operation against Greenland would be laughable if we had a sane President.  As it is, the possibility looms. 

And if such an invasion were to take place, the situation would change from bad to cataclysmic.  There’s commentary out there that has been attributed to Brent Molnar (although why it doesn’t appear on his Facebook or Bluesky pages is a mystery).  Regardless of who wrote it, it’s pretty scary.  Curmie suspects it may be a little alarmist (“the world as we know it ends” may be a bit much), but virtually everything mentioned in the piece is at least a possibility if not a probability: the destruction of NATO is virtually assured; closure of American military bases in Europe, economic retaliation from the EU resulting in staggering inflation, the expulsion of US corporations from European countries, cessation of trans-Atlantic travel: all well within the realm of possibility…  It’s not a pretty picture.  

More to the point, not only would the loss of status, economic stability, and the moral high ground be devastating, there would be no upside.  The only country to gain from this ill-begotten fever dream is Russia, since European powers would be distracted away from supporting Ukraine.  Curmie judiciously refrains from wondering if that was the whole point.

Curmie would like to think that military leaders would either talk Dear Leader out of doing something so suicidal to American interests, or that they would listen to Senator Kelly and refuse an illegal order.  But when the Generals and Admirals are our last line of defense against a sociopathic POTUS with the maturity of a pampered toddler, we are neck deep in the shit and sinking fast.  Suddenly, “Doctor Strangelove” doesn’t seem so funny anymore.

So, no.  Neither the folks at Texas A&M nor in the White House inner circle are playing 3-D chess.  They’d be lucky to handle the complexities of Go Fish.

Curmie Doesn't Like ICE Unless It's Cooling His Drink

Thirty-ish years ago, when Curmie was in grad school, he had a paper accepted for a conference in Greece.  It turned out that one of the professors with a courtesy appointment in Theatre (his “home” was African and African-American Studies) was also going, so we planned to travel together, room together to save money, etc.  But our plans were altered by the fact that Curmie’s colleague was a Nigerian citizen.

How is that relevant?  He had a visa for Greece, after all.  (Curmie, being an American, didn’t need one.)  Well, we were scheduled to change planes in Germany.  That’s it: we’d never even leave the international terminal at the airport.  But Nigerians needed a “transit visa” (I think that was the term) to even set foot in the airport.  When we checked in at the airport in Kansas City, it took a little time to convince the airline staffer that all we were doing was changing planes, but everything seemed to have been worked out, and we boarded the plane for the first leg of our trip. 

Then a couple of armed security types showed up to escort Curmie’s companion from the plane.  That was embarrassing for Curmie, let alone for his travel partner, who actually wouldn’t be allowed to land in Germany.  That meant, among other things, that the first leg of his voyage would take him to a different American city than where Curmie was headed.  He could then make a connection through Amsterdam instead of Munich or Frankfurt (Curmie connected through one going to Greece and the other on the return trip; he can’t remember which was which); he’d get to Greece a couple hours after Curmie, but he could at least get there.  The kicker is that the border between Germany and the Netherlands is open: Curmie’s friend could have entered Germany from Amsterdam without as much as having to show his passport if he’d arrived by car or train or bus.

This is the part that’s relevant to this post.  There’s more to the story about the return trip, but that can wait for a future post.  What matters is the idiocy of the rules.  This time, the problem was with German regulations, but let’s just say that those folks don’t have a monopoly on this sort of stuff.  Yesterday happens to be the 10th anniversary of Curmie’s finally getting home at about 3 a.m. with a British exchange student who had been held up by Homeland Security.  You can read about that incident here.  There was another variation on the theme (that Curmie didn’t write about) a few years later.  And, of course, there were the two times Curmie himself got stopped trying to re-enter his own country.  Yeah, there’s a lot of stupid enforcement of stupid rules by stupid (but ever so self-important) people out there.  The Trump administration does not have a monopoly.

None is this attempt to deny the importance of border safety.  True, with the exception of some restrictions on Asian immigrants, prior to the Immigration Act of 1924 (barely a century ago), you entered the US pretty much by walking or driving across the border or landing at the dock in the harbor.  Trans-oceanic flights hadn’t happened yet, but there were passenger flights between Havana and a couple of destinations in Florida.  Still, it’s easy to understand why countries would want to be able to keep foreign bad actors out and to reserve citizenship rights to those who go through appropriate channels.  There are also legitimate national security issues involved: not enough to justify a lot of what’s happening now, but worthy of attention nonetheless.

Curmie has several foreign-born friends who went through the process, and are now US citizens.  A couple of them still have accents associated with their birthplaces; others could just as easily have been born in Omaha.  (And some of Curmie’s born-in-the-USA friends grew up with (legal) immigrant parents, learned a different language (generally Spanish) before English, and still haven’t completely lost the accent.)

What this post is about, then, is not about the legitimacy of ICE as an agency.  For the sake of argument, let’s take that as granted.  This is about conduct.  If ICE really attempted to go after “the worst of the worst,” as their apologists keep asserting, the level of criticism, from Curmie, at least, would be significantly reduced.  It’s tough to make an argument that we wouldn’t be better off without foreign-born murderers, thieves, rapists, and similar purveyors of perfidy, after all.  But in fact ICE is under strict orders not to pursue those violent criminals.  Stephen Miller, who’s really in charge of this show, wants numbers and obviously doesn’t care about anything else, including whether the people being harassed are American citizens, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to detain a grandmother or a hotel maid than a gangbanger who might shoot back.

ICE agents are universally bullies.  Hence the strutting around as if they are answerable to no one.  Hence the masks, which serve the dual purpose of being intimidating and protecting the identities of the real criminals: the agents themselves.  Bullies are all cowards, after all.  There have, of course, been numerous assaults and robberies committed by felons pretending to be ICE, too: if we’re not allowed to know who’s behind that mask (even a badge number), then anyone wearing a mask and carrying a weapon is protected.

Again, if ICE agents actually needed a warrant or even actual probable cause to detain someone; if they were more interested in serving the community by detaining actual illegal aliens rather than in playing demolition derby, crashing into cars for no other reason than that the driver is brown (no, SCOTUS, that isn’t enough, even if you idiots think it is); if they obeyed the law, themselves…  then, it would be a lot harder to argue against their presence.  But they don’t do any of that, and they’ve got the entire administration—Trump, Vance, Noem, Bondi…—ready to lie to protect their little Sturm Abteilung cosplayers.  Not really SA, though, of course: no one would ever use the term “elite” to describe these bozos.

ICE agents have no right to detain anyone who isn’t a legitimate suspect of an immigration-related offense or who isn’t actively interfering with their attempts to do their jobs.  Spraying tear gas or pepper spray into a non-violent crowd exercising their 1st Amendment rights or directly into the face of a protester isn’t acceptable.  Nor is intentionally crashing into someone’s car and dragging them out. (Oops, that was an American citizen.  They’re generally free to go after a few hours without food, water, toilet access, or legal counsel.  Don’t expect an apology, let alone restitution, of course.)  Photographing public ICE actions from a distance is perfectly legal, but don’t tell that to the goons on the ground or the prevaricating pols.  Oh, and giving a speech behind a podium displaying a quotation from a literal Nazi isn’t cool, either.

A decade ago, a career in ICE might have been an ethical course of action.  Anyone in ICE today is by definition an idiot or an asshole… and probably both.