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.

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.

It’s a Different World Out There Now, Dennis

Masked ICE agent sprays Pastor David Black directly in the face. Photo by Ashlee Rezin of the Chicago Sun-Times

There were, no doubt, several adult visitors to my classroom when I was a boy, but there were only two I remember with any clarity.  One was a friend of my 3rd grade teacher, Mrs. Hamilton.  He was a very nice man who told funny stories and sang and played his banjo for us.  I remember the tale of defeating the mean giant Abiyoyo, the funny song about little boxes on a hillside, and that one beautiful tune that I didn’t understand because it was in Spanish (but he explained to us what it was about and even got us to join in on the chorus).

Mrs. Hamilton was my teacher again in 5th grade, and her friend visited us again.  It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I learned that the nice man was kind of famous, and a few more years after that, that the “Holy shit, that was Pete Seeger!” revelation dawned.

But it’s the other visitor I want to talk about today.  I think his name was Dennis something, but I might well be making that up.  Exactly why he showed up in our classroom, I don’t recall, if indeed I ever knew.  I don’t remember how old I was, although probably a tween.  Anyway, Dennis (we’ll call him that) was an FBI agent.  He was probably in his late 20s or early 30s, and he was dressed in the then-standard FBI get-up: a cheap and rather ill-fitting black suit, with highly polished black shoes, a white shirt, skinny black tie, and a crew-cut. 

Dennis was clearly very proud of being in the FBI, and went on for some time about that agency’s spotless record of integrity.  I’m pretty sure he believed his own testimony, as it wasn’t until a few years later that the atrocities of the J. Edgar Hoover era became known.  Indeed, Curmie, who even in junior high was a skeptical lad, later found it very difficult to process evidence of slander, intimidation, even assassination pointing to the agency as perpetrators rather than investigators.  The National Guard was, of course, a different story.

Dennis’s visit, that utter confidence in the rectitude, even the incorruptibility, of the FBI, still lingers in Curmie’s memory over a half century later, mostly because any such testimony now would be so risible that even kids wouldn’t buy that nonsense for a moment.  Not with every federal allegedly law enforcement agency—ATF, FBI, ICE, DHS, et al.—turned into a private army by a bullying POTUS incapable of any emotions other than rage and paranoia.  Rule of law?  What’s that?

Frighteningly enough, it may indeed be true that the FBI, even headed by a mendacious moron like Kash Patel, is still the most uncompromised of the federal agencies.  We need only look at the outrageous antics employed by ICE and their attendant lackeys in other departments (and SCOTUS) in places like Los Angeles, Chicago, and Portland, to think that the FBI, though rendered incompetent, partisan, and corrupt, may not be quite so bad in comparison. 

It might also be worth noting that none of those three cities appears on the US News and World Report list of the 25 Most Dangerous Places to Live.  Indeed, the top four cities, and eight of the top ten, in murder rate per capita, are in red states.  You know who checks in at #10?  Shreveport, the biggest city in Mike Johnson’s district.  Yet there seems to be no indication that federal troops will invade the Ratchet City.  Go figure, huh?  You know who doesn’t appear in the top 20?  Los Angeles, Chicago, or Portland. 

Over-zealous, violent, and often racist policing is, to be sure, not a new problem.  Yes, it has been aggravated by the recklessness (at best) of the First Felon, but police over-reach at all levels has been around for a long time.  This situation is not, of course, exclusively the result of the efforts of the authoritarian right, but it sure does seem like there’s a correlation.  More to the point, whereas the problems haven’t changed, the degree has.  Curmie has now reached the point at which he no longer implicitly trusts any member of law enforcement at any level even to refrain from brutality and to tell the truth, let alone to be competent at the job.  That’s not a good place to be.

It is difficult to determine the rationale for impassioned and utterly mendacious proclamations coming from ICE and DHS.  They can’t really believe that dozens of heavily armed, masked, and armor-protected agents are truly at risk in the presence of unarmed protesters who are <checks notes> chanting at them.  Can they?  It is certainly true that bullies, and anyone who would work for ICE either is one or wants to be, are, by definition, cowards.  And that particular variety of pusillanimity almost always manifests in bluster and, more often than not, in outright lies.

The other alternative is more chilling.  A number of left-leaning pundits suggest that all this activity is intended for the sole purpose of raising tensions.  If the authorities can plausibly claim they were threatened, then a show of even more authoritarian power can at least appear to be legitimized.  So far, it’s clear that the aggressors are nearly always the ones recently described by a federal judge (a Reagan appointee, by the way) as “cowardly desperados.”  Unfortunately, that may not last, which, goes the theory, is precisely what Trump and his minions wants: an excuse to pretend the 1st, 4th, and 5th amendments don’t exist. 

Oh, and they’re not really big fans of the 2nd amendment, either, unless the gun-toter is a white male who answers to “Bubba.”  Witness the desperate attempt by DHS to claim that Marimar Martinez was armed; she had a gun that never left her purse, and a valid concealed-carry license.  Martinez’s lawyer says there’s bodycam evidence that the federal agent, not Ms. Martinez, initiated the collision between their vehicles.  OK, Gentle Reader, he’s not the most objective source, but the easy way to prove him wrong is for the government to release the tape… guess what hasn’t happened.

The pressure still needs to be applied, and Ghandi-like non-violence is difficult, but it’s the only way.  Rising to the bait is the worst thing to do.  In the words of today’s birthday boy, John Lennon, “When it gets down to having to use violence, then you are playing the system’s game. The establishment will irritate you – pull your beard, flick your face – to make you fight. Because once they’ve got you violent, then they know how to handle you. The only thing they don’t know how to handle is non-violence and humor.”

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.