We’re Nearing the Day When ICE Thugs Just Open Fire on Crowds
Next up for the very fine people of
Immigration and Customs Enforcement: Maine. President Donald Trump, in his
speech in Detroit Wednesday, signaled that the Pine Tree State was in his
sights. Why? Well, no doubt partly because he’s never won the state in three
tries (although he has carried the rural 2nd district each time, and Maine is
one of two states that awards electoral votes by congressional district). But
mainly because Maine has something notable in common with Minnesota. Can you
guess? Yep: a sizeable Somali population.
“They’re scammers,” Trump said,
just putting the plain old racism out there for all to see. “They always will
be, and we’re getting them out. In Maine, it’s really crooked as hell, too.” In
response, Democratic Governor (and Senate candidate) Janet Mills released a video
in which she made her position plain: “To the federal government, I say this:
If your plan is to come here to be provocative and to undermine the civil
rights of Maine residents, do not be confused. Those tactics are not welcome
here.” The key word there, of course, is “residents” (as opposed to
“citizens”).
The several thousand Somalis who
have settled in Maine since the 1990s are based chiefly in Portland and
Lewiston. They’ve been on alert since at least mid-December, when Trump
referred to Somalis as “garbage.” Hundreds of Mainers gathered
at a December 15 rally in Lewiston to support the Somali population—who were
notably absent from the rally because, in the words of one Somali resident, “people
were afraid of, ‘OK, what if somebody shoots us, or something happens?’”
As Americans, our minds are trained
by involuntary habit to assume, when we see excess and violence, that the
government will step in and bring order. Things get a little crazy at a
protest, the cops break it up. Yes, there have been times when it’s the cops
themselves who incite violence, like in Chicago in 1968. But when that has
happened, the state has usually seemed at least a little sorry
afterward.
Certainly, there were and always
are reactionary forces working to throttle such examinations, and sometimes
they succeed. But at least the impulse to investigate has generally been there.
Indeed, a government commission appointed after the ’68 confrontations between
cops and protesters during that year’s Democratic convention had a staff of 200
conducting thousands of interviews; in its report, it actually used
the phrase “police riot.” That’s how things work in the United States—there
exists a shared assumption that violence of that sort is undesirable, and that
when it happens, some gesture toward accountability is what a democratic
society requires.
Well, there existed such
assumptions. All that’s out the window now. Now the federal government is the
unapologetic bringer of violence. And it’s further important to understand: No
amount of criticism, no amount of forensic or video evidence, no poll
expressing mass public disapproval will change this. In fact, precisely the
opposite. Any and all criticism will just be taken by Trump and MAGA world as
further proof that they are right. Evidence will be dismissed and countered
with fake “evidence,” like the video Vice President JD Vance trumpeted that
purported to show that Renee Nicole Good had it coming. Bad-news polls will be
dismissed as fake. The Trumpian state will dig in its heels. The only question
Stephen Miller will ask himself will be: How can we turn up the heat?
This is what makes what’s happening
in this country today different. The state is the perp. The government is
beyond the law. The United States is now closer to Bashar Al Assad’s Syria, or
perhaps even today’s Iran, than to anything we recognize as fitting within the
understood norms of American history. That’s a pretty big statement, I realize,
but it is not an exaggeration.
True—the Trump administration isn’t
killing people by the thousands. It isn’t dropping those hideous barrel bombs
on its own people. But mentally, psychologically, we as a country are edging in
that direction. Until Minneapolis, I would have told you that as bad as Trump
is, he’s not capable of ordering ICE agents to shoot people (citizens or not)
at random, and that as bad as ICE is, they’d refuse such orders. Now I no
longer believe either of those things. This man and his government are clearly
capable of mass violence against immigrants and all who support them. It seems
only a matter of time now before some of these thuggish ICE agents, under
orders from the thug president, shoot some people down.
Remember, ICE is still on a hiring
spree. And it’s not simply that ICE is recruiting—it’s how they’re doing it,
and what kind of recruits they’re targeting. Earlier this week, The Intercept reported
that just two days after Jonathan Ross executed Renee Good, the Department of
Homeland Security posted a recruiting effort on Instagram using the phrase
“We’ll Have Our Home Again.” The background music in the post was a song of the
same name by a group called Pine Tree Riots. The song’s lyrics, the story
reported, have been cited by extremists and neo-Nazis in the past. According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, Pine Tree Riots “is a little-known a
cappella group affiliated with the Mannerbund, which the [SPLC] has previously
listed as a white nationalist group.”
The Pine Tree Riot was an uprising
by some New Hampshire colonists against the British in 1772. The Pine Tree Flag
has recently been linked to Christian nationalism, and at least one was carried
by January 6 insurrectionists. And more recently—just so you know how deeply
MAGA marinates in this stuff—an official at the Department of Education had
one set up outside his office. It’s also the same flag that was spotted
outside Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito’s vacation home a few years ago. And
now, ICE is using if not the flag itself then the same far-right sentiment it
evokes to recruit people to whom it is, after the most minimal training
possible, handing masks and Glock 19s.
And Trump himself? Soon, in
Minnesota or somewhere, he will invoke the Insurrection Act against the will of
local elected officials and send in the military. It’s hard to say where that
will lead. But no place good. Again—all evidence that it isn’t working will be
rejected as fake, and Americans who disapprove will be dismissed as having
“Trump Derangement Syndrome,” a phrase that allegedly describes people like you
and me.
We’re the sane ones. The only Trump
Derangement Syndrome is that of Trump himself, and his supporters, and it is
destroying the country we thought we knew.
