Freedom for the Few: When my father was a kid growing up in Indiana, the Ku Klux Klansmen hated Catholics even more than they hated Jews. Those, I suppose, were the good old days. Given that my father was a devout Catholic, this was relevant information for any kid hoping to make it past puberty. Back then, Indiana led the nation in Klan membership.
| Credit: Wikipedia
The Ku Kluxers hated Catholics because of their presumed fealty to a foreign potentate — namely, the Pope. The whole Church of Rome conspiracy theory. As paranoid delusions go, it’s enough to swear off hallucinogens. If our current president were not spouting off crackpot notions vastly more unhinged, I’d find it all amusing.
As Donald Trump tells it, he’s dispatched thousands of mask-enshrouded secret police to attack our major metropoles to stop Democrats from exploiting the illegal immigrant voting bloc to regain power. In other words, the mass deportations, the quasi-military occupations, the de facto suspension of habeas corpus — a k a due process ― and the 30 ICE shootings thus far are due to a mass voter conspiracy involving people in the country illegally.
Not only are they out-reproducing White people, they’re outvoting us, too.
As a matter of fact, it’s worth noting Georgia’s secretary of state conducted an exhaustive audit of who registered and who voted in 2024, finding that of the eight million voters who registered, only 20 were non-citizens. None cast an actual ballot. That’s the same secretary of state — a Republican, by the way ― whom Trump implored four years earlier to “find” the 11,734 votes he needed to win Georgia.
In most countries, that would constitute the crime of suborning election fraud. In America, where federal agents arrest reporters and the president threatens pollsters with criminal prosecution for releasing results showing that public disapproval has never been higher — even among non-college-educated, working-class white voters — it’s freedom of speech.
Little wonder Trump is now talking about “federalizing” the time, place, and manner in which senate and congressional elections are conducted. The Constitution explicitly gives that responsibility — with allowance for a few modifications — to the states.
Trump is hardly the first to exploit the “Brown Peril” for political purposes. He is, however, the most extreme. All pretense of targeting the “worst of the worst” for deportation has been abandoned; skin color, accent, and proximity to car washes are now grounds for arrest without due process. If, along the way, a couple of 37-year-old white people in Minneapolis happen to get shot and killed — one a poet and a mother of three, the other an intensive care unit nurse at the local Veterans Affairs — that’s the price they’re willing to make someone else pay.
Our own Sheriff Bill Brown, once again doing his impersonation of a reasonable man, has cautioned against prejudging the investigations into these killings; they need to be given the time, he said, to spool out. Normally, I might agree. But it’s worth noting in the case of Renee Good that six of the most senior and most accomplished lawyers working for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Minneapolis quit in protest of restrictions imposed on them by federal higher-ups, who insisted the attorneys focus their investigative energies on Good’s partner for possible extremist ties. And they blocked efforts to investigate whether the ICE agent who fired the gun observed all the proper procedures. Or whether the ICE agents on the scene who rebuffed the offer of assistance made by a passing physician violated public safety protocol. That offer was made not once, but twice. For his efforts, he was told: “Get the fuck out.”
When you’ve been shot in the head, as Good was, every second counts. The ICE agents on the scene waited more than three minutes to call 9-1-1. When the EMTs arrived, Good was not breathing. But she still had a pulse.
All this, I realize, is old news. Yet for me, it remains freshly outrageous. I have a sister and a sister-in-law who do the same kind of ICE patrol work that Good and her partner did. It’s one way they express their faith. The whole Good Samaritan thing. Love thy neighbor. “What you do to the least of these,” Jesus reportedly said, “you do to me.” No wonder they crucified him.
Speaking more personally, Jesus nearly got me killed. Back in the day, I got stopped by six cops in Wisconsin, their guns drawn and pointed right at me. They were visibly spooked. After they didn’t shoot me and verified my ID, I learned I matched the description of a convicted cop killer who had just escaped. He was described as resembling Jesus Christ. And so, too, did I.
Trust me, nobody wants to end up like Jesus. We know how that story ends. In my case, it was a happy one. I got a tale to tell and a ride home. Had I twitched wrong, things could have quickly gotten asymmetrically kinetic, as the macho bad boys who populate the Trump White House like to say. Training, I saw, really matters. Organizational culture matters even more. Had they been ICE agents, I’d have been Swiss cheese.
Under Trump, there’s no such thing as a wrongful death. Agents are granted absolute operational impunity. Contempt, cruelty, and terror are the tactics. Self-deportation is the goal. It’s cheaper. ICE goons have the word “police” stenciled to the back of their shirts. But they’re not real police, and they’re not doing real police work. Real police should sue. For defamation. For alienation of community affection. For impersonating police officers. And poorly trained ones at that. ICE Agents used to get 800 hours of training before being released into the field; now it’s down to 47.
Why 47? Trump is the 47th president.
Cops really should sue.
What’s my point? Oh yeah, Trump is going to try to steal or stop the next election. I know only crazy people say things like that. Just listen to Number 47. Please read the tea leaves for yourselves.
I never want my own kids looking back at this time and describing it as “the good old days.”
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