How a culture of dehumanization and denial keeps ICE and Border Patrol personnel “at war with an enemy that does not fight back.”
Archived at https://archive.ph/Qv0Wk
Technically, that article is the LONGEST SONG INTRODUCTION OF ALL TIME. Just sayin’.
Why? Because they are nazis, they like this shit.
It’s not that I think you’re wrong per se, but I think this way of thinking is interesting.
One of the things I’ve come to believe after reading the Discworld novels by Sir Terry Pratchett - and I think this is an incredibly important insight about humanity and humans - is that there are no good people or evil people. There are only people. And those people - we people - choose to do things that are good (or at least we believe so), or evil (or we choose to not care about the consequences for others for our actions).
And the reason I think that is critical: Let’s talk about Hitler. Most people say Hitler was evil. But I say: He was not evil. He was simple a person that chose to do all of those things that he did.
The truly scary thing is that any person can choose to do those evil things. And we know this: Look at all the people who go out and shoot a bunch of people or shoot up a school. Those are “normal” people, for the most part. If you rode the bus or were waiting in some line with them, you’d make small talk about the weather and such.
I choose not to do those things, like you choose not to do them. And unfortunately, some people do choose to do those things. People choose to work for ICE, they choose to abuse the noncitizens and even citizens they interact with. They might feel trapped by the money, but they still choose to keep working there and doing those things. They choose to lie to themselves and try to make themselves feel better about it.
Not that I’m perfect. I can reflect on my life and see times when I’m selfish and stupid and do things that onconvenience others or harm them, and I don’t like those parts about myself.
It’s all about choices. We do not choose our circumstances; only how we react to them and by what we choose to do.
Nah, you can’t invoke Terry Pratchett to try to white wash nazis. First of all thats wildly insulting to Terry, secondly it is just as simple as they are fucking evil.
There are people who do bad things sure everyone has. But most people, good people, normal people recognize immediately that ICE is nothing more than the gestapo dressed in red white and blue.
Systemically rounding up, oppressing, profiling, murdering, and putting people in cages requires evil. They are just evil.
Nah, you can’t invoke Terry Pratchett to try to white wash nazis. First of all thats wildly insulting to Terry, secondly it is just as simple as they are fucking evil.
Good thing I fucking wasn’t then. If you can’t be bothered to comprehend clearly written language, bugger off somewhere else. You misunderstand me AND downvote? No, fuck your disrespect for me and for Sir Terry.
If you want to disagree, that’s one thing, but to completely disregard what I said and imply that I would sully Pratchett is unforgivable. Fuck all the way off.
Well that was quite the tantrum.
I started to read this article, but decided quickly that I’m happy concluding that ICE / Border Patrol agents are Nazi pieces of shit that don’t deserve any compassion, sympathy, or understanding. Instead, I would like to see most of them on trial for their crimes.
Yah I was like humm, what new information could there be, but nope, pieces of shit are pieces of shit festering under a shitty administration giving shit orders to thugs that are happy to abuse people with zero empathy involved.
Honestly, fair
It’s also well-trod ground already. See: The Banality of Evil.
Completely unexamined: Latino desire to get that Honorary White Card by brutalizing other Latinos. The majority of Border Patrol are Latino, and 30% of ICE.
This isn’t exclusive to Latinos, either, it’s just how huamnity works under in-group/out-group dynamics.
Latinos are also not as homogeneous as we think they are. Each nationality has it’s own biases and bigotry against other Latino nationalities.
I’ve worked with a lot of Latinos and I noticed a couple of things. They all seem to hold the same low regard for Mexicans and Cubans think they’re better than all the rest. There are exceptions, of course, but this was the general trend I saw.
The Cubans you run into are the children of the aristocratic fucks that got chased out of Cuba… so that explains that. And maybe there’s a racial component there (since whiteness and aristocracy are linked). Many Latinos are absolutely blind to their internalized racism and get immediately offended if you bring it up.
I honestly don’t know where the anti-Mexican sentiment comes from, but I heard it from an Ecuadoran–call me a [slur], call me a [slur], but don’t call me Mexican.
I’ve been told the Mexicans are seen as hicks, mainly because of their music and dress, especially “el grito” which is the characteristic shouting heard in Mexican music.
That sounds more like post hoc justification than a cause, tbh. I don’t know that Mexico has a monopoly on rednecks.
I agree. Drive 20 miles outside of any metro area in the world and the density of hicks increases.
But I will grant that Mexican music is often considered an acquired taste.
Mexican music is incredibly diverse. I like old-school folk so Chavela Vargas (born Costa Rican but “Mexicans are born wherever they damn well want”) is my jam. Natalia LaFourcade also is great, once she stopped trying to be a teeny bopper. Julieta Venegas … there’s some more but I’d have to log into Deezer to remember their names.
That said, this is semi-nichey stuff; there’s an oppressively homogenous vaquero music (ranchero?), of which the only good thing I can say is that it is not reggaeton.
I know someone who once worked for the US Border Patrol.
He ended up holding two other agents at gunpoint because they were planning to sexually assault a detainee. He left for a local police department not long after that.
Over/under that he’s still a cop?
He’s still a cop.
I don’t expect people here to take my word for it that he’s one of the good ones, but I’ll say it anyway.
Well, if he’s working for a small department, it’s possible he doesn’t have to turn a blind eye to really heinous shit.
It’s a mid-size department with an above-average reputation for handling officer misconduct.
I used to travel along the southern border at least once a year, usually twice, for weeks at a time. At that time, border patrol were pretty friendly. We really stuck out and I’m sure we’re in their database somewhere.
I stopped going down there as soon as the ICE violence started. I’m not only afraid for my safety, I’m afraid of how I will react if border patrol asks me for ID at one of the checkpoints.
Why Immigration Agents Don’t Quit in Protest
Money(and power)
ICE at it’s core is a jobs program
It’s shitty but this is one way that fascism has historically rooted itself into a nation.
It shores up support by creating a defacto jobs program for disaffected, immiserated, and angry people that buys their loyalty by providing them a good salary and the promise of social status as an enforcer of the regime. And for others it is a job that was hiring in a economy with a precarious job’s market. Which creates a golden handcuff problem under capitalism.
And the other side of this is that for many supposed “pragmatic” oppositional politicians they recognize this co-dependency and are scared of dismantling it. In part cause they might risk losing voters(see Talarico in Texas) but also cause they will simultaneously be beholden to their own oligarchical dependencies, typically thru the donor system or party disciplining, that prevent them from offering what is actually needed which is a replacement jobs program, or wholesale economic restructuring that deals not just with this problem but the larger driving forces of broad economic immiseration, alienation, and disaffection. But because that runs afoul with many of their donors(and in some cases constituents), they box themselves into this “reform” posture both toward ICE and larger economic fixes.
Which just ends up as someone being another do nothing Democrat.
And while this author gives good analysis to this economic relationship and offers some tactical advice for the oppositional movement, it similarly fails to offer a deeper fix for the underlying class and economic problems that not only risk still remaining, but actually risk intensifying if not addressed simultaneously.
Guys they’re just doing their jobs
Yes, just doing their jobs, and just following orders, as all Good Americans should do.
