Ice ICE, Baby

I like to mix things up when I'm reading.  If I've just finished a book on genetics, it might be time for a show business autobiography.  But somehow I've managed to read two books in a row about the extreme right wing-- its ideology and theoretical foundation as well as its designs on the American political system.  The first, Furious Minds by Laura K. Field is about the recent history of particularly 4 strains of far right conservatism which she calls Claremonter (i.e., Straussian "Ideas First" foundational theory coming out of the Claremont Institute and its ideological affiliate Hillsdale College), Post-Liberalism, National Conservatism and the Hard Right all of which have come together in spite of quibbles in their approaches to support and influence Trump in contrast to the more genteel Never-Trumper faction of more mainstream and establishment conservatives.  The second is Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes du Mez, which has as its subject the rise in America of a hyper masculinized Christian Nationalist Fundamentalism.  There is certainly overlap in the themes and content of both books.  Unfortunately, it is also bleeding into and saturating current events.

I keep getting haunted by the thought that ICE is a black hole that is being brandished against the American people.  If there is anything to take seriously from the themes explored in Field and du Mez's books, it's that there is a thick strain on the right that would like to Holocaust the left, and it’s not hard for me to believe that the gigantic plaything called ICE that they now have at their disposal thanks to Trump and their mutual enablement is piloting the clampdown.  I don’t know ultimately how well this is going to go over with "average Americans" though. I think the idea of an American Gestapo having carte blanche to kill citizens, even "radical lesbian" citizens is probably not going to sit well with people’s ideas of what America should be like.  I don’t know though.  How deep do the right’s tentacles go?  Am I being paranoid?  I think it’s a big agency with theoretical impunity and prosecutorial immunity that is not getting a lot of oversight out of the administration, an administration run by the most proudly horrible human beings whose horribleness is bolstered by a large network of like-minded academics, theologians, opinion makers and knuckleheads.

Jessica Burbank, who also goes by Ka, raised an interesting thought experiment on which she solicited opinions from her podcast audience.  Her question was "What do you think about ICE Agents quitting for moral reasons?  Do you forgive them?  What questions do you have?"  The conversation stuck me as being the evil cousin of the Graham Platner oppo reveal controversy that tested the mettle (and familiarly rent the fabric) of online leftism last fall. As with that earlier stink, Burbank's audience seemed split between forgiveness and vengeance.  

My advice to any ICE agents who suddenly wake from their repressed homoerotic Nazi dream and want to walk away:  Do it.  Don't ask for permission or forgiveness from the Americans whose tax dollars you have taken to wage war against.  Just come back from the darkness.  Join us on the streets that you will have made that much safer.