Further Musings on the Kent State Shootings... and Today

The Facebook Memories tab becomes especially relevant on some days more than others.  Today is one of them, because today, May 4, there’s a BK and an AK (explanation of terms forthcoming in a moment).  Curmie has written more than once (in 2015, 2022, 2024, and 2025) about how the murder (yes, murder) of four Kent State University students by National Guardsmen on May 4, 1970, was a life-changing event for him. 

It wasn’t so much what had happened.  That was terrible enough, and the now-famous photograph of Mary Vecchio screaming over the body of Jeffrey Miller brought everything home in dramatic fashion.  No, it was the aftermath: the explanations and excuses by government officials and even the allegedly left-leaning media.  They’d have had us believe that the dead and injured students were somehow to blame for their own victimhood.  Even at age 14, Curmie smelled bullshit, and came to understand something profoundly important: those in power will employ whatever means necessary to maintain their privileged position.

The lies, deceptions, and evasions came fast and furious.  Curmie quotes himself from last year: 

Of course, the political leaders at the time didn’t wait for the facts to emerge before blaming the victims.  President Nixon called them “bums”; Ohio Governor Jim Rhodes described them as “the worst type of people that we harbor in America”; Ronald Reagan, Governor of California at the time, said that “if it takes bloodbath” to deal with campus demonstrators “let's get it over with.”

These characterizations, intended to excuse or even to extol the actions of the Guardsmen, had precisely the opposite effect on Curmie.

There was just something not right about all of the claims that the Guardsmen were fearful of their own lives and just trying to defuse a tense situation.  These guys with military-grade weapons were afraid of a bunch of post-adolescents armed with… um… flowers?  As Curmie wrote four years ago, he knew very quickly that “[what] happened in that early afternoon in eastern Ohio wasn’t self-defense; it wasn’t inevitable; it wasn’t triggered by the actions of radical peaceniks.  And it sure as hell wasn’t a small sacrifice worth making to restore law and order.” 

Curmie learned to distrust—or, rather, not to trust uncritically—any pronouncement from government officials, the news media, or any variation on the theme of someone in a uniform carrying a gun.  It was life-changing.  What happened wasn’t a huge shift in perspective; it was a change in the grounding for that perspective.  What had been an unfocused adolescent rebelliousness morphed into a more mature skepticism.  Curmie may or may not have become a 14-year-old curmudgeon, but he was well on the way.

You will note, however, Gentle Reader, that Curmie had this blog for over five years before ever mentioning Kent State,  His personal Facebook page has one brief mention on this date in 2010, outnumbered prior to 2015 by variations on “May the 4th be with you.”  There was a Star Wars reference in 2011 on Curmie’s FB page, too.  But things changed in 2015.  Curmie was lucky enough to have been selected as one of 36 scholars from a host of academic disciplines to attend an NEH-sponsored Summer Institute on translation theory.  The organizers were both faculty members at Kent State, so that’s where the sessions were held in June.  (Hence: BK, Before Kent; AK, After Kent.) 

My first experience of the campus was driving into a parking lot near the dorm where I’d be staying for the three weeks of the Institute.  There were four columns, perhaps four feet high or so, in that lot.  They were memorials to the students killed about 100 or 150 yards away a little over 45 years earlier.  They had flat tops, and each was topped with several pebbles; I learned later that these were placed there by visitors as tokens of solemn remembrance and respect.  Yes, Gentle Reader, Curmie added a pebble to each column before leaving campus.

As noted in the 2015 post linked above, “the university appears to have been quite adept at walking a very fine line, simultaneously commemorating the chilling events of [then] 45 years ago and moving on with the academic mission of the institution.”  There are a few memorials, and the university has since added markers to honor the wounded as well as the dead.

Curmie does not adhere to the MAGA perspective that it’s not a problem unless it affects him directly.  But anyone with even a modicum of empathy will inevitably be affected more when there’s a personal connection, even an indirect one caused by physical proximity to the site where something significant occurred.  Still, it wasn’t just being on the Kent State campus that changed Curmie’s life again.  It wasn’t even the visit to the May 4 Museum that precipitated that 2015 essay, written in a dorm room only 150 yards or so from where those students were gunned down.  Yes, that visit was significant in and of itself, but it catalyzed something more important: it inspired not merely sorrow and anger, but curiosity, that essential element for any search for the truth.  

Prior to that visit, Curmie was aware only of the generalities: that the students were not a threat, that the government was more interested in protecting the reputation of the killers than of the victims, that sort of thing.  But the museum also provided some specifics.  Curmie spent a couple more hours of research before writing this:

It turns out, of course, that my suspicions were correct. The Guardsmen, seemingly retreating to avoid further confrontation, turned in unison to fire into the crowd.  The nearest of the four students fatally shot by the Guard was about 85 yards away and simply observing the activities, not even taking part in the protest. And this is according to Nixon’s own appointed commission, headed by former Pennsylvania governor William Scranton. The nearest of the nine students wounded in the 13-second fusillade (a total of 60+ shots fired from 28 military-grade rifles) was 20 yards from the Guardsman; the furthest was nearly 250 yards away. Think about that. 250 yards away, and he was shot in the neck… by the alleged good guys? Only two of the 13 casualties were shot from the front. They were the aggressors? I don’t think so, criminal acquittals of the killers notwithstanding.

No. The Kent State killings (and the disingenuous aftermath) were indeed the ultimate declaration of war by the authorities on my generation, and I knew then, with my 15th birthday still nearly five months away, not only that I’d have to take sides, but which side I’d have to take.

Today, the average person is unaware of just how egregious the events and the cover-up were.  Over half of today’s population wasn’t born yet, and a good many others were too young to understand.  Kent State resonated with Curmie because it was the first major event in which his reaction was truly his own rather than a version of his parents’ thinking.  Someone even a couple of years younger probably wouldn’t have been ready to take that step.  But there are plenty of folks old enough to remember, but who bought the spin instead of the facts.

And we are once again in a period in which heavily armed and under-trained federal forces are given virtual carte blanche to attack protesters.  Nixon may have intentionally mis-characterized what happened at Kent State, but even he appointed a commission to find out the truth.  Their findings were under-reported, but at least they existed.  The Trump administration has not only lied about the actions of ICE and similar goon squads; they have repeatedly refused to cooperate with Minnesota authorities regarding the shootings on Renee Good and Alex Pretti.  Need Curmie remind you that murders are state rather than federal offenses?

Back in 2015, Curmie expressed the fear that there couldn’t be another Kent State because of the political apathy of the college-aged population.  That’s still true: the median age of No Kings participants is probably in the 40s.  But the spirit of resistance lives on, and the violence and mendacity of the administration have not gone unnoticed.  When the likes of Tucker Carlson and Marjorie Taylor Greene have jumped ship, things aren’t looking good for the long-term prospects of the regime.  Curmie is not unhappy about that.

Unprovoked violence by those in power suggests their inability to make a reasoned argument.  Their obvious lies undermine their presumed authority.  And, as the banner above suggests, they can’t kill us all.  What happened at Kent State 56 years ago today was horrible.  But if there was a silver lining to that dark cloud, it was the clarity it brought to the fore about the Vietnam War and its proponents.  Whether Nixon knew it or not, it was the beginning of the end… or at least the end of the beginning.  Clarity about the advocates of the Iran War (and so many other remarkably stupid policies) is also emerging.  To quote a line attributed to Mark Twain, “History doesn’t repeat, but it often rhymes.”

For some of us, May 4, 1970, was a turning point.  Curmie is wearing his Kent State t-shirt today.  It seems like the least he could do.

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. 

George Orwell Had 47 Figured Out

 

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.

On Regretting the Loss of Thoughtful Disagreement

One of the saddest things about the current administration is that it has forced once-principled and intelligent conservatives to start spouting total nonsense.  Most of this comes as obeisance to an unstable and vengeful leader… more on that a little later.

One change is a new obsession with disjunctive thinking: every question must be answered with “black” or “white.”  There is no allowance for grey, or (especially) for qualifiers.  For example, Curmie recently saw an argument centered on whether someone supported deporting people who are in the country illegally.  Naturally, the only acceptable answer was “yes” according the racists and other right-wing zealots. 

Curmie won’t speak for all liberals, some of whom might indeed say “no” to that question, but his response is “yes, if…”  If they are indeed undocumented (remember that there were American citizens sent to “Alligator Alcatraz”), if they don’t have green cards and work permits, if they aren’t already in the process of applying for asylum and/or citizenship, if they’re afforded due process, then there’s no objection here. 

Well, actually, that’s not quite true.  Curmie would still disapprove of deporting those who have lived here for decades, contributed to their communities and to American culture, and have no criminal convictions.  Unless aggravated in some way (returning after being deported, for example), simply being in the country illegally is a Class C misdemeanor, the equivalent of a speeding ticket.  Perhaps it shouldn’t be that way, but it is.  Several states have a statute of limitations of under ten years for rape, but there’s none for a C misdemeanor?  Curmie would ask you to make it make sense, Gentle Reader, but he’d rather not subject you to that level of mental gymnastics.

Nor does agreement that some undocumented people should indeed be deported mean that ICE ought to be able to randomly tackle and detain anyone who looks or sounds Hispanic, which they’re doing with grim regularity.  And let’s drop the bullshit about how such-and-such a suspect “attacked” officers who were “just doing their duty.”  If that were true, then there would be video footage of the attack, but Curmie has literally never seen anyone do that except in obvious self-defense.  (Oops, I stand corrected: there was that guy who tossed a sandwich at a CPB agent.  A grand jury appropriately refused to indict him for a felony.)  

There is, however, plenty of footage of ICE agents tackling elderly citizens (!) without cause, shooting a pepper ball directly into the face of a minister who was <checks notes> praying, dragging a woman (a citizen) out of her car after they rammed it for the apparent crime of DWL (Driving While Latina), and so on.  Oh, and (of course), they lied about what happened.  Oh, and this just in: tear-gassing little kids in Hallowe’en costumes.

Sometimes, but only sometimes, ICE might be able to cobble together a complaint for resisting arrest.  Attacking them?  Nope.  They’re bullies and therefore cowards (hence the masks), and they’ll cheerfully lie to continue their cosplay as actual law enforcement.  The idea that these assholes have immunity from arrest and prosecution, as Reichsmarschall Stephen Miller proclaims, should send a shiver up the spine of every American; the fact that it doesn’t is truly horrifying.

It’s unlikely that Curmie will be attacked by masked men with high-end weaponry but without identification, a warrant, or probable cause.  His ancestors (well, most of them), after all, were from places like England, Wales, Ireland, and the Netherlands instead of Africa, the Middle East, or one of those places where they speak (gasp!) Romance languages.  But should it happen, you can bet that he’ll do what he can to defend himself.  He’ll lose the fight, of course, but he does know how to fight dirty, and with luck there might be someone other than just Curmie who regrets the encounter.

Another variation on the theme is what Curmie calls Trump Derangement Derangement (TDD).  This manifests as an unwillingness to recognize that some of the criticisms of Dear Ruler are not merely plausible but in fact objectively correct.  Did he lie about “not interfering” with the East Wing for the Epstein Ballroom vanity project over-priced boondoggle bunker upgrade corporate bribe White House renovations?  Yes.  Full stop.  Oh, but… you see… he broke the law avoided going through the normal planning process for such projects because doing that would have held up the project for so long it might not have even been completed during his presidency.  Curmie thinks that if the new ballroom is such a good idea, whoever 48 turns out to be would cheerfully complete the process for the good of the country.

Did the Manchurian Cantaloupe scuttle a 2024 bi-partisan bill to address the problems associated with the southern border because he’d rather have a campaign issue than a solution?  Yes, and it’s GOP legislators, not (just) Curmie who say so.  Less certain, but still more than plausible, is the argument that the settlement between Israel and Hamas is virtually identical to one proposed by Biden and subsequently rejected by Netanyahu because he wanted Trump to get the credit.  (Trump deserves at least some credit either way, of course, but quite likely not as much as he’s claiming for himself.)

Indeed, ignoring laws, even SCOTUS rulings, that Dear Leader considers inconvenient is standard procedure for this administration, and with both houses of Congress dominated by GOP boot-lickers, he’s likely to continue getting away with it, even on those rare occasions when this SCOTUS actually decides to uphold the Constitution.

One of the more interesting variations on TDD is the assertion that people don’t dislike Trump’s policies; they dislike him.  Well, it’s true that Curmie dislikes him.  He tends not to have a particularly high opinion of rapists, grifters, embezzlers, pathological liars, and those with so high an opinion of themselves that Narcissus had to call a press conference to say, “Hey, c’mon, I’m not as bad as that.  Don’t compare me to that guy.”  As for the other part, Curmie won’t pretend to speak for everyone to the left of Tommy Tuberville, but he very much dislikes virtually every policy of this administration.

A few examples: pretending to be targeting the “worst of the worst” when the majority of those detained have no criminal record; allowing incompetent idiots like Hegseth, Patel, and Kennedy to keep their jobs (appointing them to begin with was bad enough); cutting funding to about every program designed to help everyday people—the FAA, CDC, FEMA, NOAA, SNAP, ACA, Medicaid, medical research, research grants to universities, etc.—while lining the pockets of his fellow billionaires; turning Elon Musk’s unvetted minions loose on the private records of every American; using the military against our own citizens; sinking foreign-owned fishing vessels in international waters based on speculation (at best); abrogating this country’s responsibility to defend Ukraine (part of the deal for them to abandon nuclear weapons) because Uncle Vladimir said to… There’s more, of course, but this paragraph is long enough already.

There’s also the problem of exaggeration.  No, Bernie Sanders is not a communist just because he thinks that poor people ought to be able to afford food and shelter.  But at one level, this is the same kind of enflamed rhetoric that characterizes a lot of political speech… as Curmie demonstrated above in referring to the abominable Stephen Miller.

A more complex problem because it requires a projection of long-term vs. short-term effectiveness comes in economic policy.  Raising tariffs, for example, may seem like a good idea in the near term, but there are several inevitable results.  Some things just can’t be created here: think coffee, for example.  Also, if the price of some imported product goes up 10%, US competitors will cheerfully raise their prices by 5% and still get a greater market share.  In both cases, prices go up.  And, of course, other countries are likely to impose their own retaliatory tariffs, making it harder to export American goods, especially agricultural products.  Ask soybean farmers what they think of these policies.  Or, in a variation on the theme, talk to cattle farmers who hear the guy they voted for suggesting a significant increase in importing Argentinian beef.

Similarly, cutting ACA subsidies doesn’t hurt just those directly affected.  Those folks can’t afford health care, so they don’t get it.  They show up at work with communicable diseases.  Small-town hospitals go out of business.  Doctors charge the rest of us more to make up for lost patients.  How is any of this good news?

We could also, of course, address the internal contradictions in so many policy decisions.  Let’s take that Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher Education, for example.  It insists on a de facto quota system based on ideology, but is radically opposed to DEI, i.e., diversity, equity and inclusion.  It demands that international students open their social media accounts to governmental snooping. 

It pretends to support free speech, but seeks to punish universities which allow protests against what some students perceive as Israeli genocide.  The key word in the previous sentence is “allow.”  A university need not encourage such protests, merely allow them in the spirit of First Amendment principles and that “broad spectrum of ideological viewpoints” the Compact purports to endorse to run afoul of this administration’s attempts at controlling what can be discussed on university campuses.  Curmie could go on, but he hopes the point has been made. 

There was a time, not that long ago, when genuine, honest, debate could happen, when it was possible to see the point of view of someone whose stance on abortion or gun control, for example, was different from one’s own.  There’s a limit to that viewpoint, however.  The Republican Party is now completely subservient to the petulance and vindictiveness of a delirious despot-wannabe, and they’ll say or do anything to prove their allegiance to him. 

Either that, or they truly believe that Americans ought not to have access to disaster relief if they happen to live in a “blue state,” that there’s not a problem with reverse Robin Hood policies designed to steal from the poor to give to the rich, that protecting a pedophile is more important than representing the people, that health insurance premiums increasing by over $50 a day (!) is quite all right…  Again, there’s more, but we’ll leave it at that.

The idiocy and intentional cruelty of those policies is transparent to anyone who can out-think a rutabaga, but debating those issues is an exercise in futility because the first tenet of MAGA-dom is never to admit anything.  The rhetoric on either side doesn’t matter; policy does.  There’s plenty to distrust on both sides of the political aisle, but mud-slinging isn’t the answer.  (Yes, Curmie is aware of the irony of this statement appearing in this essay.)  The truth always seeks to be free.  It will find its way out.  In the meantime: resist by whatever (legal and ethical) means necessary… and ultimately vote the bastards out.

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.

Tamara de Lempicka to the Rescue

 

Young Woman in Green, c. 1931

Curmie can’t seem to focus much on anything these days.  His writing, both for scholarly publication and on this blog, has slowed to a crawl.  He suspects that he’s not alone in feeling a little overwhelmed by the stupidity, cruelty, and lawlessness of the Trump administration and the mind-boggling cowardice of the Congressional GOP.  Senator Murkowski is only the most outrageous recent example; there are, as you know, Gentle Reader, plenty of others.

Although some of the worst stuff was cut before the final version, what remained in the “Big Beautiful Bill” was still an indictment of the morality of every pol who voted for it, as well as an abdication of the legislature’s responsibility to do that whole “checks and balances” thing, especially when the executive branch wants something transcendently moronic (or evil).

Then there was the horror that took place a few hours west-southwest of Curmie’s abode in East Texas.  Would there have been fewer deaths had the country been led by someone less sociopathic, someone who didn’t cheerily cut funding for the very agency that could have detected the intensity of that storm sooner?  Well, we don’t know that for certain, but it seems pretty damned likely.  And it’s certain that the cuts to FEMA, even though this a red state, will negatively impact the lives of thousands of people.

Those of us who think of ourselves as “the left” generally really mean “not the right.”  One of the differences is that we tend to be at least marginally empathetic: it doesn’t have to happen to us for us to care.  There are lots of memes about how Biden sent relief to red states as a matter of course, but Trump wouldn’t do so after the California fires. That doesn’t mean that events don’t hit a little harder when you know someone directly affected, though. 

One of Curmie’s favorite former students is from Kerrville, one of the hardest-hit communities; it was good to hear that her family is safe, but so many spaces important to her are gone forever.  (By the way, Gentle Reader, if you have a few spare dollars, the organization she’s suggesting we support is the Community Foundation of the Texas Hill Country.  Curmie made an online contribution and he hopes a few of his readers might be in a position to do so, as well.)

Beloved Spouse went to a conference in Anaheim a couple of weeks ago.  While she was there, she took some time off to visit Disneyland with her best friend (who was also at the conference) and her son and one of her daughters.  They’re all US-born citizens, but they’re identifiably Hispanic, and mere details like citizenship haven’t seemed to matter much to the cowardly goons of ICE.  The was a major raid in the area two days after they came home.  One wonders, “what if…?”

There are personal distractions, too: a minor health issue, some unforeseen expenses,  and the realization that Curmie will soon need to replace his car, his mattress, his phone, and his laptop.  Not getting to hear the Boston Pops play the 1812 Overture on the 4th, as we’ve done for many years in a row (thanks for nothing, CW), shouldn’t have been as annoying as it was.  

So we come to Saturday the 5th, not exactly in foul humor, but certainly stressed and a little overwhelmed.  What to do?  There are two possibilities.  The first is escape into nature.  Head to the mountains, the forest, the shore, but away from everyone else except those you love.  But Curmie was never a fan of heat indexes over 100°, and what meager allure being outside in that heat may once have had has dwindled further as septuagenarian status approaches.

That leaves ART.  Curmie and Beloved Spouse don’t live within an easy drive to any major city, but Houston is still close enough that a day-trip is possible.  So that’s what happened.  We’d been intending to go down to the Tamara de Lempicka exhibit at the Museum of Fine Arts for some time, but it never seemed to work out.  But on Saturday, it did. 

Normally, when we go to a museum, we’ll see the special exhibitions that interest us and still have time to check out the permanent collection, too.  We can’t do that at, say, the Art Institute in Chicago—it’s just too big—but we generally get to visit our favorites from previous visits.  Not this trip, either.  Not only is the MFA huge, spread across four multi-story buildings, but the Lempicka exhibit was also enormous, with dozens of works displayed.  Yes, some of them were small preliminary sketches or whatever, but it was a lot.  There were a couple of places to sit, and Curmie took advantage of them, but just the amount of standing and walking was rather exhausting for an old fart like Curmie.

So we didn’t see much else.  We didn’t need to, to declare the day a huge success.  The exhibition was magnificent.  Tamara de Lempicka (originally, “Łempicka,” apparently, so I’ve been pronouncing it wrong for years) is one of those handful of artists—alongside the likes of Van Gogh, Chagall, and yesterday’s birthday boy Giorgio de Chirico—whose work is instantly identifiable as hers. 

Regarded as one of the founders of Art Deco (she claimed to be the founder of the movement), she drew from about every artistic movement imaginable.  There’s one painting “inspired by Botticelli.”  Yep, Curmie can see that.  Others are reminiscent of the style of other late medieval or Renaissance artists.  Her use of color seems to be drawn from the vividness of expressionism, her still lifes from post-impressionism, many of her backgrounds from cubism.  There are hints of surrealism in the juxtaposition of images (there are a couple of her works that are unquestionably surrealistic, but they weren’t part of this exhibition).  And yet all of her paintings are unquestionably hers.

She was also, of course, a fascinating individual.  Born in Warsaw (probably), she later lived in St. Petersburg, Copenhagen, London, Paris, Los Angeles, and Houston before retiring to Mexico.  She was married twice—to Polish lawyer Tadeusz Łempicki and Austro-Hungarian baron Raoul Kuffner de Diószegh—and had multiple affairs with both men and women.  When her first husband was arrested by Russian authorities after the 1917 Revolution, she supposedly slept with the Swedish consul to get his support for Łempicki’s release.  It worked.

She was an outstanding example of the “new woman” or “modern woman,” both in her life and in her work.  An article in Vogue from 1929 is cited on the description of Young Woman in Green (Young Woman with Gloves).  It describes the modern woman: “She seeks purity in line, in contour, hair, and clothes.  She knows that, in the drama of her own personality, she must be stage director, scene-shifter, mistress of costumes, as well as star of the play.”  It’s no wonder that such a confident, competent, independent woman would be just a little scary to those who knew nothing but patriarchy.

She understood her role in all this: 

I was the first woman to make clear paintings, and that was the origin of my success. Among a hundred canvases, mine were always recognizable. The banality in which art had sunk gave me a feeling of disgust. I was searching for a craft that no longer existed; I worked quickly with a delicate brush. I was in search of technique, craft, simplicity and good taste. My goal: never copy. Create a new style, with luminous and brilliant colors, rediscover the elegance of my models.

Lempicka was cognizant of the need to apply, on numerous occasions, a male suffix to her name when she signed paintings (the art establishment was not interested in female artists); she hid her Jewish ancestry, which certainly played a role in her decision to leave Paris in the late 1930s.  But she was also iconoclastic, fully deserving of the title of “Bad Girl Queen,” as a headline on the Paper City site reads.

The sensuality of her models, especially the women, is foregrounded.  Yes, she painted both male and female nudes, but, as Dan Duray wrote for Observer, “everyone is much sexier with their clothes on.”  Young Woman in Green is a good example.  The eyes are turned away in a manner reminiscent of all those studio shots of Clara Bow; the dress looks like it is sprayed on in places; the left hand draws the eye towards the crotch.  The sexuality is a function of both what is revealed and what is concealed.

Not all of her work is this overtly sensual, but most of it is nearly as eye-catching.  It’s difficult for us now to understand how her work fell out of favor, even as the likes of Elton John, Barbra Streisand and Madonna were buying it up.  But that did happen.  The more recent revival of interest in her work, and in Art Deco in general, is a good thing.  Because she and a lot of her contemporaries were good at their jobs.

Curmie still worries about the future of the country, about the upcoming bills, about what he’ll do when he really retires.  But for a couple of glorious hours last weekend, none of that mattered.  The problems are still there.  But the mind is clearer, and Curmie is more mentally and emotionally prepared than he was a week ago.  

We take our triumphs where they come.  Take care of yourself, Gentle Reader.

 

Two Stories Set at Dodger Stadium

 

Curmie isn’t as big a baseball fan as he once was, and he’s never been a Dodgers fan, but it’s still not unusual for him to read about the goings-on at Dodger Stadium.  It’s usually about what happened on the field, though: Shohei Ohtani did this, Mookie Betts did that, and so on. 

Yeah, there was that moment a couple of years ago when stadium security couldn’t catch the idiot fan who had run on the field so the ball girl tackled him.  (Curmie thinks the best part wasn’t the takedown per se, but the casual stroll away afterwards.)  And there have been a couple of squabbles over the “ownership” of a couple of home run balls, especially Ohtani’s first homer as a Dodger and his “50/50” ball. 

But Curmie never had an urge to write about any of that.  Now, however, there are not one but two stories from the last month or so that caught Curmie’s attention.  Neither is really related to what happened on the field at all.  Neither made big headlines; indeed, the earlier one escaped Curmie’s notice altogether for about a fortnight.  Let’s start there.

Over the off-season, the Dodgers completed a $100 million renovation of the stadium.  Most of the improvements were to the field per se and to the clubhouses, but there were also some projects dedicated to ensuring a “top-notch game-day experience” for fans.

Yeah, well, maybe not quite so “top-notch.”  On May 30, a chunk of concrete about the size of a softball dislodged from an upper deck and hit a fan, Luis Ricardo Aquino, in the back, breaking a rib.  Aquino, a resident of Mexico City, had traveled to LA for the game. 

OK, there are elements to this story that Curmie is going to skim over really quickly here, but are worth mentioning: 1). $100 million in renovations and you can’t have a stadium that isn’t a death trap?  If Aquino had happened to be leaning back for some reason and that chunk of concrete had hit him in the head, it could have killed him.  2). How slimy do the Dodgers’ reps have to be to get Aquino not to file a complaint in exchange for a jersey, couple of trinkets and a bobble-head?  That’s a 7-figure lawsuit, easy.  3). Aquino declined a trip to the hospital, saying “this is not my country, so I did not feel comfortable.”  One reasonable translation would be “I’ll live with a broken rib until I get home, where I can actually afford medical care, and the Dodgers aren’t likely to pay.”

But the big story is that when help appeared on the scene, the first question wasn’t about where he was hit or the severity of the injury, but whether he was in the US legally.  Subsequent reporting by Michael Elizondo suggests that the questioning may not have been merely insensitive, tacky, and racist, but literally unlawful if performed by other than an immigration agent.  Notice also the blithe assumption that Aquino isn’t a citizen.

“Papers, please” has long since achieved cliché status in movies.  The line is usually given to some officious official representing an evil regime.  You know, Gentle Reader, like all those WWII movies with Nazis who always spoke in English but with German accents.  But we’re heading towards that level of intrusion in the US right now. 

Curmie has been lucky enough to be able the travel outside the US on numerous occasions.  He’s lived in two foreign countries and spent over three months total over several visits in another; he’s spent the night in eight others, and passed through (on a train, for example) or made a brief excursion into four more.  There are two more he specifically wants to add to the list, and many others he’d be happy to visit.  All this probably puts him above the mean for Americans, but he knows several people whose international experience far exceeds his own.

In all those voyages, Curmie has needed his passport (his “papers”) for precisely three kinds of events: crossing a national border, checking into a hotel, and (before ATMs became ubiqitous and linked) changing currency (or, in the old days, travelers checks) at a bank… and not literally every time for any of them.  He was told directly by trip organizers, experienced travelers, and even local law enforcement not to carry his passport except when necessary: better to leave it where you’re staying.  This was true, too, for when he had the UK equivalent of a green card when he was studying for his MA.

But whereas ICE goons needn’t have any identification at all to detain someone for… you know… looking and sounding like they might not be an American citizen (Curmie is certain the tourism industry has some choice words for these assholes), Mr. Aquino had to have his paperwork on his person to attend a freaking baseball game.  Imagine if he hadn’t! 

It is more than a little terrifying that any non-citizen in this country is subject to this level of scrutiny.  True, it’s not as bad as requiring applicants for student visas to supply details of their social media presence for the last five years and to set all their accounts to public, much less to the horrific idea that all “non-detained migrants” (that would include students) must wear GPS tracking devices.  But it’s still creepy as hell, and a far cry from anything resembling “the land of the free.”  Emma Lazarus famously wrote about the “golden door.”  In Trumpistan, having enough gold will get you a free pass through that door.  Everybody else gets treated like a criminal. 

OK, moving on to the other story…  On June 19th, the Dodgers tweeted that “ICE agents came to Dodger Stadium and requested permission to access the parking lots. They were denied entry to the grounds by the organization.”  There’s not much of a story there, right, Gentle Reader?  Stories of people facing down the goons are damned near ubiquitous.  Ah, but <insert late-night infomercial voice here> that’s not all! 

You see, ICE proclaimed they “were never there.”  They’re almost certainly lying, of course.  Anti-ICE activists, as the kids say, brought the receipts in the form of photographs.  It’s possible, of course, that they never asked permission (they’re not the type to be professional, of course), but they were certainly there.

So, why would they lie?  Well, it’s what they do, for one thing.  The number of times they’ve lied about the reason for an “asylum meeting” or blamed an American citizen they tackled for attacking them when there’s clear video evidence to the contrary has now reached into the “frequently” range.  We know that, like all bullies, they’re cowards: hence the masks, the refusal to show appropriate identification, the unwillingness to go after actual gang members when they can make their quota by rounding up hotel maids and dishwashers who sorta look Latino.  And they sure as hell don’t want to reveal the fragility of their faux machismo preening.  The fact that they tried and failed to throw their weight around simply cannot be allowed to become public knowledge.

But, Gentle Reader, you know what’s even worse than a gaggle of federal agents longer on testosterone than on empathy or truth-telling?  What if this time they were actually telling the truth?  That would mean that since ICE and their partners in crime (this is not merely an expression, of course) refuse to identify themselves, a bunch of other white male assholes can now try cosplaying as federal agents.  At least some of the detentions made by immigration officials are legitimate.  But the fake guys: actual, no-doubt-about-it kidnappings, with the potential for extortion, theft, assault, rape, even murder. 

All the while real police stand around and watch… and may even help.  We’re already seeing the inevitable: reports of fake ICE agents committing crimes are popping up with grim regularity.  Commenting on a case in Houston this week, ICE released a statement: 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and agents are highly trained and dedicated professionals who are sworn to uphold the law, protect the American people and support U.S. national security interests. ICE strongly condemns the impersonation of its officers or agents. This action is not only dangerous, but illegal. Imposters can be charged with various criminal offenses both at the state/local level, as well as federally (under 18 USC 912).

Yeah, right.  Actual cops need a badge, an ID, and a warrant.  And they’re not hiding behind masks.  Judge, lawyers, journalists… they’re not anonymous, and they do things that could get the bad guys mad at them.  But ICE?  They won’t identify themselves, which of course would make impersonating them considerably easier, but they’ll charge you with assault of law enforcement if you fight back.  They’re scum.  Literally every one of them, starting at the top.  As Curmie wrote during the 45 regime, “why else would anyone want to join a notoriously brutal, racist, self-important organization if not to be, well, brutal, racist, and self-important?”  Hat tip to the Dodgers for throwing them out.

Oh, there’s another non-baseball story about the Dodgers: they’re pledging $1 million to families affected by ICE raids.  Sure, it’s virtue-signaling and showboating.  And yes, they can afford it.  But underscoring the sadism, mendacity, and criminality of ICE… that’s not a bad thing.