Tin soldiers and ICE are coming, we’re finally on our own…

It started in earnest after 9/11 when the US took the gloves off in the war of terror, but now the terror has returned to the homeland. Remember the John Yoo torture memos written for George W. Bush and the “Dark Lord” Dick Cheney to justify US military treatment of prisoners in places like Abu Ghraib, where people were extrajudicially rendered, disappeared, and without due process? That sounds a lot like what ICE is doing.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism, sums up the dystopia. “I don’t know how America survives this level of willful, institutionalized savagery. By most counts, ICE pumped ten bullets into a ICU nurse, Alex Pretti, for the crime of filming them and trying to intercede on behalf of a woman they had shoved to the pavement. The evidence of the execution is clear cut. ICE has not just gunned down an innocent man, but is also successfully terminating what remained of the rule of law in the US.”

It’s been obvious for a while that ICE’s rampage has nothing to do with enforcing immigration laws and everything to do with intimidating and murdering enemies of MAGA.

Speaking of which, where are all the 2nd Amendment zealots protesting the victims right to carry a licensed firearm? Imagine for a moment the reaction if Mr. Pretti had been part of a militia protesting Obama imposing healthcare on them, or the Covid mask restrictions?

But fascists are fine when the state violence is aimed at socialists and the left. That’s why when push comes to shove the oligarchs and corporate owners and officers prefer right-wing violence to the left-wing kind that threatens their property and status.

It’s urgent that we remember how Jay Gould boasted that he could hire half of the working-class men to murder the other half, because it sure appears that we’re headed back to an earlier period of American history where the shotgun calls the tune.

Update: Yves again with the final word: “I hope this outrage rouses enough people to stand up to this violence. Trump targeted Minneapolis out of pique (Mike Walz), perhaps a desire to punish the city for its effective George Floyd protests, but most of all, that its police force is small enough that he could muster enough ICE goons to outnumber them. ICE is not yet big enough to subdue the US. There is a window for action that is closing. Can enough citizens muster the courage and organization to thwart Trump’s clear intent to use brutality to mow down all opposition?”