THE AWFUL PRICE OF FREEDOM

We Minneapolitans—and residents of several other American cities Donald Trump has targeted with his vindictiveness—confront a question that just might reflect the challenge of our post-World-War-II lifetimes: What might I do if I find myself face to face with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) goon squad abusing a neighbor or friend?

As a man who came of age at the height of the Vietnam War, I had to face a decision that tested my character: Do I get drafted? Enlist? Resist? Maybe find another way to serve? (I ended up enlisting and serving for six years in the U.S. Army Reserves.) And, informing that decision, another question: How would I act facing the enemy, and, God forbid, asked to make the ultimate sacrifice? 

PHOTO: Saline County Library

Once my years of draft eligibility passed, I never dreamed I’d have to confront those same life-and-death, mettle-testing questions again. But here we are. 

This time the threat, the enemy, is not some crazed pack of Viet Cong; it is my own government, whose barbarity defies not just our cherished Constitution, but simple decency. And it’s not happening 8,500 miles away; it’s right here in Minneapolis.

       Just pulling out my iPhone and tapping that red 
       circle could put me in the crosshairs of some dude 
       with the training of a night watchman and an urge 
       to kick some ass.

So, let’s say I’m at work—in an office building where some 80 percent of my fellow tenants are Somali-American. It seems quite possible that some of them, even those with legal status, will be targeted by ICE. If that happens, what will I do to stand up for the rights of my neighbors—most of them my fellow citizens—against some agents’ brutality?

PHOTO: Dave Decker - ZumaPress

The violence of federal agents toward even those simply bearing witness to their lawlessness is chilling. Just pulling out my iPhone and tapping that red circle could put me in the crosshairs of some dude with the training of a night watchman and an urge to kick some ass. I’m afraid, in the heat of the moment, incensed by the stark inhumanity of these bullies, I might do more than pull out my phone. 

Should I stop and weigh my options? Consider the prospect of injury, imprisonment…or worse? Calculate my odds of making the slightest difference? Or should I just go ahead and do what I’d hope someone might do for me if I were under attack by masked thugs? Exactly what Alex Pretti was doing. And died for.

Reasonable questions. Ones we Americans, sadly, must all be asking ourselves during this unprecedented attack on our Democracy. How sad, especially for one who’s been around the block a few times. Instead of growing old in peace in the country where I’ve worked and served for six decades, I must once again, right here in my home town, weigh the awful cost of freedom.

COOL IT WITH I.C.E.

Outrage over the sickening brutality of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and their ham-handed chain of command is certainly warranted. But we Democrats, more than ever, must be more aware, more strategic with our rhetoric. Let’s recall the ruinous effect of the Democrat left wing’s well-intentioned rallying cry after the police murder of George Floyd five years ago.

PHOTO: Chloe Jones | Arizona Mirror

“Defund the police!” was a gift to MAGA, who easily co-opted it and made it their own call to arms. Smoking-gun proof, they crowed, of Democrats’ radical agenda indulging crime. It proved a deciding factor in the electoral-college victory of the most disastrous president in our country’s history.

We must not repeat that blunder with our anti-ICE rhetoric. Specifically, with absolutist terms like “Abolish ICE.”

Remember, what most of us moderates object to is not ICE’s legitimate mission of enforcing U.S. immigration laws. We understand that those laws exist for a reason, and that folks who break those laws should be held accountable. That includes deporting them…some of them. 

PHOTO: Getty Images

If we want to reform that mission, democracies do that by advocating and enacting legislation, not by outright sabotage.

Where the Trump regime has gone off the tracks is in their weaponizing this agency of Homeland Security to exact vengeance just on Trump’s political enemies. Their indiscriminate, Gestapo-like tactics. Their pointed denial of due process—a guarantee clearly mandated in the Constitution’s 14th Amendment. 

And the well-documented brutality of some ICE agents who've been attacking not just the targets of their search for illegal aliens, but folks merely witnessing and documenting their abuses.

PHOTO: Jose Luis Magana/AP

So, yes, let’s keep calling out ICE for these illegal, immoral excesses. But drop the strident “Abolish ICE!” demands. What we want is for them to do their jobs, but in a way befitting a civilized, self-assured country, indeed one founded and grown by immigrants. 

This time, let’s be smarter. Show some discipline. Make sure our language suits our complaint. How about “No ICE Gestapo!”, “Unmask ICE!”, or “Stop Weaponizing ICE!”? You get the idea.

This time, make MAGA write their own call to arms. 

ONE SMALL STEP – The Indefensible Murder of Renee Good

One step. 

That’s all it would have taken Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent Jonathan Ross to spare Renee Good's life last Wednesday, Jan. 7. 

She was a young protester simply following an ICE order to leave the area. As she was doing so, other agents ordered her out of her car. Good likely saw this, as anyone would, as a bunch of armed Gestapo thugs with a reputation for “disappearing” folks set to drag her from her vehicle for no apparent offense. 

Yet she responded with a warm smile and the words, "That's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you," and started to pull away.

        Ross decided the penalty for (disobedience) was death.

In the second or so it took Ross—standing not in front of the SUV as Trump regime officials insist, but near its front left headlight—to draw and point his weapon, he could have simply taken one not-very-big step to his right.

PHOTO: Screen capture from Agent Jonathan Ross's cell phone video

And guess what, that is exactly what he did; he took one not-very-big, not-all-that-desperate step to his right. No ramming, little or no contact, no threat to him or anyone else. In fact, Good was clearly starting to turn to the right, away from Ross.

It appears her only infraction was disobedience. And Ross decided the penalty for that was death. Not a warning shot; not a shot to disable the vehicle or its unarmed driver. Three shots, at point blank range, into Renee Good’s head as she drove past without touching him.

I don’t really care what kind of a day Agent Ross was having. Nor his reported previous experience with a suspect trying to flee. What I and other compassionate human beings care about is that one small step.

Why wasn't that step, one that clearly took him out of harm's way, not enough for him?

TRUTH: NO CONSEQUENCES
This senseless tragedy, this brutal murder, is just the latest in the deluge of lawlessness inflicted on our once-great country by the authoritarian Trump Regime. What's more frightening than these cretins' deadly ineptitude is the near certainty that, with Congress and the Supreme Court all bought and paid for, none of them—especially the Rambo wannabe who blew Renee Good's brains out—will ever face justice.

America, please prove me wrong. 

RISK, SCHMISK! – The Rote Recklessness of Donald Trump

A Jan. 5 page-one article in the Minnesota Star Tribune, “With (his sudden annexation of) Venezuela, Trump is diving into a new era of risk,” begs the question: what is this troubled little man’s grasp of risk?

The whole notion of risk hinges on the possibility that something might go wrong. But Trump, since childhood, has been taught—by his father, by Roy Cohn and other mentors of ruthlessness—that, if you employ certain techniques, mistakes are, if not impossible, never yours. 

    No consequences, no risk. It’s all pure rote.

A BLOODY WAKE
You do whatever you want. If you’re caught breaking the law, you vow it never happened. If that doesn’t work, you blame the thing that never happened on someone else. If they fight back, you double down. If threats fail, you sic your lawyers on them. 

IMAGE: Harvard Gazette

Should your legal thugs lose, you appeal. And you keep appealing until your case ends up before a judge you’ve bought and paid for. If 
it's a political lackey turning on you, you either fire, libel or “primary” them out of a job.

No consequences, no risk. It’s all pure rote. 

The scheme has worked for Trump his whole life. His business misadventures have left a bloody wake of folks holding the legal and financial bag for his mistakes. His personal life—think infidelity, sexual predation, slander, whatever—is also Teflon-coated. (Even his family members have all signed NDAs.)

PHOTO: France 24

A PERILOUS GAMBLE
Not even when he parlays his charade into the presidency of the United States has the man ever had to live with the results of his reckless, ego-driven actions. Why would his playbook for that role be any different from that which has guided his entire life?

One of the most powerful men in the world with no morals, no conscience, no accountability, no soul. Where’s the risk in that? I assure you, it is not on Donald Trump. And if this doesn’t compel you to take constructive political action, it should.

IMAGE: Shutterstock