Where the Executioner's Face is Always Well Hidden

 

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

--Bob Dylan

Another ICE execution today by Trump's MAGA men in Minnesota, where masked men carry out the Mad King's orders to restore order by murder. Or, as they call it: self defense in fear of their lives. These ICE agents are terrified. And they're the ones with the guns. So far. 

Maybe this time someone else had a gun. Maybe he had the right to carry that gun. The Second Amendment applies even in Minnesota. Not much is known, at the moment, except that Trump and Noem will say the ICE agents did the right thing.

Wimps Always Well Hidden

It's possible ICE shot in self defense, but given what we have seen and given what Trump, Bovino, Noem, J.D. Vance have said about the protestors who they always say are the worst of the worst criminals, rapists and murderers--like the mother of three Renee Good--the default, until we know more, is to think, "Oh, this is just another example of enforcement = execution."

Farhenheit 10 

Even if the man was armed, that doesn't mean he used his gun to threaten an ICE agent. And, as the Guardian newspaper reminded us, “Treat the US government and ICE claims like you’d treat a Russian government claim after they’ve shot down an airliner or bombed a hospital,” Higgins wrote. “America 2026.”

There is a difference between what is legal and what the public may think is just, and in the case of Trump, who has ordered ICE to ignore the need for a warrant to search a home, the idea of legal no longer has any real meaning.

A man named Bernard Goetz shot four Black teenagers in a New York City subway in December, 1982. This happened at a time when robberies and beatings were happening frequently on the subways, which is a vast system running 24/7/365.  

One of the teenagers demanded $5 from Goetz, who could have got up and moved to another subway car, but instead drew out a Smith and Wesson pistol and shot his interlocuter and his three friends. One was hit in the head, survived, but was paralyzed. None died.

In May, 1983, a woman was gang raped and one of the gang was one of the teenagers Goetz had shot five months earlier.

When Goetz was tried in 1985 for shooting the four, he was found innocent of attempted murder on the grounds of self defense. The subsequent actions of one of the crew he had attacked--the gang rapist--weighed heavily in the court of public opinion and, apparently with the jury.

This was a case where a judgment on the nature of the people involved counted more than the details of the assault or the definition of self defense, which might have required that the shooter first  try to retreat and avoid confrontation. 

But the prevailing opinion in the city at that time is these teenagers got what they deserved, given the kind of people they are.

In 2021, the same logic is used by ICE agents and all those who sail with them: they are serving out justice in the form of executions. Or we might apply it to the ICE agents: they are just like the teenagers, ganging up on a prey they've separated from the herd and going in for the kill.

Terrorist Mother Threat to Badass ICE

Today, at the corner across from the Old Salt in downtown Hampton, 20 people stood holding signs: "NO ICE" and "ENFORCEMENT NOW MEANS EXECUTION," and "STAND WITH MINNESOTA."

It was minus one degree this morning in Hampton, but it warmed up 19 degrees by noon and the sign holding.  

Sign Holders in Hampton

One of the sign holders walked down to Blue Harbor coffee shop and bought a quart of coffee and a quart of hot chocolate for the crew standing out there on the corner. When he went to swipe his credit card the girl behind the counter, maybe 17 years old, asked him who the coffee was for. 

"The crazy old folks out there down the block, holding signs."

"No charge," the girl said, placing her hand over the credit card machine. 

"That's a pretty big order," the man told her.

"Your money's no good here. The owner told us."

"You know," the man said, "This makes you part of the resistance now."

The girl smiled. "Yeah, I know."

Resistance