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| George Orwell, 1903-1950 |
With all due respect to Heather Cox Richardson, Robert
Reich, et al., the keenest observer of the 47 regime has been dead for
almost 76 years. He was a fella named
George Orwell, and his two best known books, Animal Farm and 1984,
encapsulate the reign of the Mad King of Trumpistan.
The latter has been much quoted of late, and we’ll return to
it in a moment, Gentle Reader, but Animal Farm hasn’t been given enough
credit for its apt analysis. The animals
join together to revolt against the imperious Farmer Jones. Their linkage is born of negativity: a sort
of enemy-of-my-enemy bonding that leads to the overthrow of the shared
adversary. But, of course, the alliance
begins to crumble as the pigs begin to assert absolute control. One particular pig, Napoleon, becomes fully
as megalomaniacal and indeed evil as Farmer Jones had been, and all the other
animals—hens, horses, sheep, etc.—are in at least as bad shape as they had been
before the revolution. They work harder
than ever, while the pigs in general and Napoleon in particular reap all the
benefits, all the while proclaiming the glorious economic and political glories
of the regime.
Eventually, we see new slogans that are presented as
dictates: “Napoleon is always right” and, ultimately adding an addendum to the
rallying cry, “All animals are equal”: “…but some animals are more equal than
others.” The book may have been
originally intended as a critique of communism, but it works just as well as a
parable about the 47 regime. The animals
represent the MAGA horde, happily overturning the old order, but many are
gradually realizing that the self-proclaimed “Mr. Tariff” is destroying their
livelihood: making imports of raw materials more expensive and exports harder
to sell because of reciprocal actions by other nations. Health care costs are skyrocketing,
especially for those on Medicaid, who are disproportionately… MAGAs. Those tax cuts for billionaires are
important, after all.
Napoleon… well, that’s pretty obvious. The name suggests someone who wants to be
emperor. Think of someone remarkably
porcine in appearance. Someone who is the
most piggish, in both senses of the term—greedy and vulgar—of any American
politician Curmie can think of or even imagine.
And, of course, someone far more interested in consolidating power than
in solving any problem, as demonstrated, hypothetically, of course, by scuttling a
bi-partisan border bill for the sole purpose of not allowing the political
opposition to get a victory: something to campaign on is deemed more important
than making progress on an issue of concern. Wonder who that could be…
There is one place where the analogy breaks down, of
course. Farmer Jones really was cruel and
abusive. The American political system
and its leaders in early November of 2024 had plenty of faults, but the MAGA
world wasn’t really oppressed; they just wanted to pretend they were. They needed someone to blame for their problems,
and their version of Napoleon supplied them with a list: Hispanics, Muslims, Queer
folk, et al. The great thing
about the hate list is that it’s enormously flexible: any group (blacks,
Asians, Jews, women…) that isn’t People Like Us can be construed as The
Problem.
It’s 1984 that gets referenced more often of late,
however, and for good reason. Curmie
lost track of how many of his FB friends recently posted one of the most famous
lines from a book cluttered with memorable phrases: “The Party told you to
reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential
command.” We’ve certainly seen that
scenario play out of late. First (hardly
really the first, but the first this week), there was (and still is, alas) the bizarre
and utterly mendacious page on the official White House website blaming the
Capitol Police, Nancy Pelosi (and Democrats in general), and Mike Pence for the
debacle that was January 6, 2021. (The New
York Times analysis of this remarkable display of chutzpah is pretty good.) It wasn’t outrageous enough, apparently, that
the stack of pardons (almost certainly signed by autopen, by the way) wasn’t
just for those who may indeed have been overcharged, but also for those who
literally attacked law enforcement officers, injuring scores of them, some
permanently.
More importantly, we all saw and heard what happened. Here’s the thing: if, Gentle Reader, you don’t think Trump’s speech that day rose to the level of incitement, Curmie will listen. He’ll disagree, but he’ll listen. At the very least, however, Trump could have done a lot to prevent things from getting out of hand and didn’t. If you want to argue that the January 6 Committee was something of a partisan witch hunt and a waste of taxpayer money, Curmie will even agree. But if you want to claim that the violence was initiated by the Capitol Police, he’ll call you a liar. Why? Because he refuses to reject the evidence of his own eyes and ears.
And that, of course, brings us to the events in Minneapolis,
where an ICE goon killed Renee Nicole Good.
Curmie would say “murdered,” but of course just because that’s the accurate term
doesn’t mean it can be used until and unless there’s an arrest, a trial, and a
conviction. Unfortunately, it’s pretty certain
that will never happen. The wagons have already been circled. Minnesota police have been shut out of the investigation by Kash Patel’s
incompetent and politically subservient FBI (murder is a state, not federal,
crime, remember), potential evidence has been removed from Jonathan Ross’s house,
and the three most incessant and unrepentant liars in the country—Trump, Vance,
and Noem (yes, even worse than Hegseth)—have all declared Ms. Good a “domestic
terrorist” or some variation on the theme.
Indeed, the most persuasive argument that Good was not, in fact, a
violence-prone leftie insurgent is that that trio of sociopaths says she was.
Again, we’ve all seen the videos.
Curmie, as you probably know, Gentle Reader, taught
college-level theatre courses in six different decades, beginning in 1979. For many years in Play
Analysis class he used David Ball’s Backwards and Forwards: A Technical Manual for Reading Plays. One term Ball uses is grimly ironic in the
current circumstances: “trigger.” What
he means is that every action is a response to another specific, immediate,
action. Thus Hamlet, who surely knows of
Claudius’s treachery and has just watched his mother die from poison, does not
act attack Claudius until Laertes declares, “The King, the King’s to blame.” That’s the “trigger” for what happens next.
We know that Good seemed perfectly pleasant in uttering what
turned out to be her last words, “I’m not mad at you.” There would be no reason
to expect even the potential for violence on either side. But we also know that Ross then tried and failed to intimidate Good’s partner (wife?); she responded “You want to come at us? I say, go get yourself some lunch, big
boy.” And then he walked around to the front
of the car, handgun already in hand. Were
Curmie of a cynical disposition, he might suggest that a hypersensitive and cowardly
asshole like Ross wasn’t really fearing for his life at all; he just wanted to
show them fillies who’s boss. Hence, the
ever-so-endearing “Fucking bitch” line with which Ross (or perhaps one of his
fellow goons) responded to the shooting.
We also see that Good was trying to steer away from him,
which means that he had stepped into her path.
We know that it’s a violation of protocol to do so, that it’s illegal to
use deadly force against someone merely fleeing, and, significantly, that there
was a review a little over a dozen years ago that found that Border Control agents near the
US/Mexico border were intentionally stepping into the path of moving cars in
order to justify the use of deadly force.
Two questions: 1). How sick is that? 2). Guess where Jonathan Ross was at the
time?
We also know that Ross walked away from the incident
apparently uninjured, certainly not “lucky to be alive” or any of that bullshit
spewed by POTUS and his minions. And
that also means that he was already out of the path of the vehicle when the car
lurched forward after Good was shot. We
know also, from a different video that a doctor sought to examine Good—to
render assistance if that was still relevant, or to pronounce her dead at the
scene. He was stopped by a different ICE
asshole who proclaimed that “we have our own medics.” According to one report, those medics didn’t
arrive for another 15 minutes. It’s
certainly possible that Good was already dead, but getting her assistance
immediately—which, by the way, is required in any officer-involved
shooting—might conceivably have made the difference between life and
death. To suggest that ICE is
unconcerned with the lives of anyone but themselves, that they’ll cheerfully
defame an innocent person if it gets one of theirs off the hook: this is to be
too kind to them.
A few other points, and this is where, once again Curmie
reminds you, Gentle Reader, that he is not a lawyer, so if there’s someone out
there who knows more about this stuff than he does, please comment. No, Curmie is not a lawyer, but he’s read a
lot of stuff from people who are (or at least purport to be). According to several of those folks, ICE has
jurisdiction over one thing and one thing only: people who are in the country
illegally. In other words, they had no
authority to order Good out of her car (or to yell at her to move, which also
happened). One lawyer said that in
matters involving traffic, they have less authority than a school crossing
guard. They have no right to detain
anyone about whom they lack probable cause to believe is an illegal alien. Yet they strut around like they don’t answer
to any laws… unfortunately, they may be right about that. And, of course, they’re real tough when
they’re armed to the teeth and confronting an unarmed mom. When they actually start going after the
“worst of the worst,” give Curmie a call.
The good news here is that tens of millions of people saw
those videos. Irrespective of what
anyone in the administration says, we know better. They can cover up all they want at this
point, but we all know what happened, and we’re not going to reject the
evidence of our eyes and ears.
But wait! That’s not
all! Our lad George has been on this
administration’s case for a long time.
The incursion into Venezuela prompted a Friend of Curmie to
post, “I am deeply concerned that this action is going to draw resources away
from our war in Eastasia.” We have,
after all, always been at war with Eastasia.
“War is Peace. Freedom
is slavery. Ignorance is strength.”
Well, we’ve got a POTUS who has ordered military strikes against three
other nations and threatened at least three others, including a NATO ally… and
thinks he deserves a Nobel Peace Prize. Curmie
isn’t sure that anyone in the administration thinks freedom is slavery, but there
are plenty that think (economic) slavery is freedom. And ignorance is indeed the strength by which
this regime maintains power.
“Big Brother is Watching You.” Turning over private records of every
American to the unvetted DOGE techbois wasn’t enough, apparently. Now they’re breaking out the spyware to pry
into the private conversations of people who… you know… attend the kind of protests
protected by the 1st Amendment.
There’s more, but we’re approaching 2000 words, so it’s
probably time to wrap this up. We close
with this, also from 1984: “Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus
two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”
Be careful out there, Gentle Reader.
