ICE: The New Kapos?

 

Who are these ICE agents, anyway?

"Inbred Cop Excrement" seen on posters held by protestors.

"Imbecile Creep Excretions."

This is clearly not the way the ICE agents see themselves.

Looking into publicly available data, one thing which leapt out at Mad Dog was that 18-30% (depending on the source) are Hispanics, often recent immigrants. Only 6% are Black.  

The large proportion of Hispanic males is striking. The usual explanation is this line of work offers good pay, job stability and a chance to display lots of machismo in a safe setting where mostly only you have the guns and you have an overwhelming number advantage over your victims. (Sort of a safe space for sadists.)

Mad Dog found all this a little disorienting. His idea of immigrant communities is obviously a little dated--the idea of a community of folks watching out for each other, isolated in a sea of sometimes hostile natives.

But, thinking about it, two things popped up in Mad Dog's febrile mind: Kapos and Patty Hearst.

Kapo with Nice Coat in Camp

Kapos were concentration camp prisoners, usually Jewish, who got special benefits working for the SS guards in the camps, relieving the SS of jobs they did not especially want to do, like herding crowds of prisoners into gas chambers, and hauling out their bodies, and a whole range of menial tasks which helped police and keep the prisoners working (if it was a work camp) and dying (if it was an extermination camp.) Another clear benefit of being a Kapo: They didn't kill you right away.

When the camps were liberated, Kapos were, not surprisingly, frequently hanged by the prisoners they betrayed. Kapo lynchings were widely reported.

Patty Hearst

Patty Hearst, the grand daughter of that news baron Hearst, was kidnapped by a group of Black men calling themselves a revolutionary group, who figured the best way to start a revolution was to rob banks, which, after all is where the money is, and if the revolution didn't pan out, at least they'd be rich, and eventually Hearst was photographed participating in the robberies, holding a gun and she recorded some bits condemning her rich ancestors and voicing support for the bank robber revolution.

And WHAT is Wrong with this Picture?

She was said to have "Stockholm syndrome," which described the peculiar reaction of some hostages to express sympathy or otherwise bond with their captors, seen as a sort of self preservation response: If I tell them I love them maybe they won't kill me. 

Georgie Porgy/Pudding Pie/
Kissed the Girls and Made Them Cry

This is the subject of any number of crime movies where an attractive woman is first abducted, but then one of the captors falls in love with her, or at least sympathizes with her, and she may demonstrate the zealotry of the convert, or maybe the ravished woman who decides rape was not all that bad and she really loves her abuser. 

Some of this may fit into that whole rape fantasy thing, but really dates back to the time of Genghis Kahn or at least to the Plains Indians where women were carried off and adopted into the nomadic tribe, because, really, what choice did they have? And so the ICE agents might be seen in that light: sort of squaws just making do.

But when the Boys Came Out to Play/
Georgie Porgie Ran Away

Or something.

In any event, this surprising "I should hate you, but I'll love you if you give me a badge and good paying job" phenomenon may explain those Hispanic ICE agents and few of the Black agents as well. Or, some may abbreviate this as they are the classic "prison bitch" type who needs a protector and gets all into being privileged.

Trump's Principle, Their Village

 

There is a wonderful scene in "Dr. Zhivago" when Zhivago, captured by a partisan group led by a particularly blood thirsty partisan is brought before this fearsome man and, unexpectedly, the partisan engages him in a discussion of principles, why the partisan is fighting for the Reds against the Whites. It's all a matter of principle he tells Zhivago. 

"Oh?" Zhivago says. "I saw an example of your principle on the train ride out here: A village was burned."

"They had been selling horses to the Whites," the partisan says. "It was a matter of principle."

"Yes," Zhivago rejoins, "Your principle, their village."

Mad Dog was reminded of this at a meeting of the Select Board where the 5 member Select Board voted down a Warrant Article which would have instructed the Hampton Chief of Police to not sign a contract with ICE.

As is typical of Select Board meetings, the members of the Board listened silently as citizens speak in the "Public Comment" part of the meeting, but none of the Board ever replies to any of the concerned citizens and usually, none of them engage in any discussion with the other select Board members, lest the public, which is watching on Channel 22, should be informed of the thinking of these gods rendering decisions from Mt. Olympus. 

One of the Select Board members, Amy Hansen, who had been elected with the endorsement of the town Democratic Party, broke with this code of silence, and said she did not want to make this Select Board action "partisan," before voting against the other Democrats against supporting the warrant articles. 

"Well," replied Carleigh Beriont, a Democrat, "Due process is hardly a partisan issue." In the end only 2 of the 3 Democrats on the Board voted for the article and the 2 Republicans against, * along with Amy Hansen who is now referred to in Democratic circles as a "DINO."

Less than a week later, Renee Good was shot in the face by an ICE agents in Minneapolis, a cold blooded murder, recorded from multiple angles. It was, one might say, a murder by a partisan on principle.

Mother murdered on Principle

Chris Muns had introduced the warrant articles for the Board's consideration. Chris speaks Dutch and lived with his family in the Netherlands, and he is very aware of Anne Frank, who was arrested for being an illegal immigrant, deported and killed in a concentration camp. He says he does not want to remain silent in America under current circumstances. He happens to represent Hampton in the state house of representative in Concord. 

On the ballot, below the text of the warrant article will be a line in bold letters: NOT RECOMMENDED BY THE SELECT BOARD. That's another Hampton tradition. There are 30 pages of warrant articles, and most voters know little about any of them, so they simply read the recommendations of the Select Board, or the School Board or the relevant board and vote that way. It's supposed to be Norman Rockwell civic participation in town government but, in practice, it looks more like Soviet Russian elections: Recommended by the authorities, or not.

During the Vietnam war, an American general famously replied to a reporter's question about a Hamlet which had been napalmed by his forces. The village had been giving aid to the Viet Cong, he said  and he added, "We had to destroy that village to save it."

Napalmed on Principle

That's what Trump and his toadies Hegseth, Leavitt, Noem and Miller are saying now.

* Technically, this is not entirely accurate. Rusty Bridle voted against the article, along with Amy Hansen and Chuck Rage was absent, but we are told he will be allowed to vote later and he is a well known "dead Red" Republican so his vote is thought to be a forgone conclusion. Hegseth and RFKJR might denounce Trump tomorrow, but that has about the same chance as Rage voting for this warrant article.

What is a Terrorist?

 

The word "terrorist" has origins which date back generations, but its use like most language has changed and evolved.

In the 21st century, the men who flew the airplanes into the Twin Towers were certainly "terrorists."

One the the features of their act was their anonymity. Nobody in New York knew who they were.

Another feature was the uncertainty of their motivation, but that quickly emerged as the men who financed and supported them quickly claimed credit and gave meaning to their acts, sort of. 

Clearly, the targets spoke from themselves: New York City's Twin Towers, the heart of American capitalism; The Pentagon, the heart of American military might and the Capitol building, which was thwarted by passengers on that plane.

That act was an assault, a protest against American dominance, and it came from Arabs unhappy with American support for Israel.

Typically, most terrorists whether Irish Republican Army or Arab, or even Zionist (of the King David Hotel bombing) are engaged in "asymmetric" warfare, i.e., they recognize they do not have the power to simply organize an army and move the English out of Ireland or the British out of Palestine, or the Israelis out of Israel, so they aim to sow fear (terror) into an otherwise placid community, to announce that their cause is not just important, but pre-eminent: all other functions of society must stop to deal with the bomb in the marketplace, or violence to a crowd.

Of course, the quintessential American terrorists were the members of the Ku Klux Klan. Like today's ICE agents, they were careful to mask. Anonymity lowered the risk for them. They were all brave and big and strong when they could hide their identities. The Klan grew out of the resistance to the defeat of the Confederacy; it allowed Grand Wizard, Nathan Bedford Forrest, to continue the fight, to slip back into the countryside and terrorize recently freed slaves. 

Klansmen, were, of course, often known in the community and the Klan was winked at in many places. The difference today is, the Klansmen in their ICE hoods are employed by the government.

But sometimes, and more often recently, the terrorism is generated from those in power, who seek to dominate a placid population more completely, to really assert in shocking ways the power wielded by those in power.

So now, in our time, the terrorists are government terrorists: ICE agents with faces covered--still anonymity is important to the effect: They are the Star Wars soldiers in white metal helmets, anonymous, carrying out the will of the Empire. They strike without warning. Their message is their cruelty: Colored people go back to your "shithole countries" or we'll slam you into vans and transport you to Alligator Alcatraz.

No law need apply.

We are the terror.