From: Scott Keen
Columbus
While reading the Sinclair Lewis novel “The Jungle” I remember thinking, after every disaster, “This can’t get much worse.” Then I would turn the page and it would indeed get much worse.
Now, the perpetual stream-of-consciousness lunacy from the MAGA Trump administration and the atrocious daily videos of ICE agents drubbing American citizens makes me feel the same way.
I still hopefully think “This can’t get much worse.” But it does.
A recent letter to the Republic confidently repeated many MAGA tropes of questionable accuracy concerning the ICE shooting of Renee Good.
Anybody watching the tragic videos of that incident can see the ICE agents were wrong. The young mom exercising her right to protest was no threat, telling the shooter “I’m not mad at you.” She never attempted to do anything but drive away.
The shooter strolled around her SUV taking a video. He walked in front of it. Then he shot the driver of a moving vehicle. All bad protocols. But there will be no investigation. MAGA, being omniscient, don’t need no stinking investigation.
“Choreographed Outrage” is a term the letter uses to describe the anger and horror people experience when masked, armed, ragtag, militarized (Jungle camo?) government agents invade our cities and brutalize citizens, violently mugging them, kneeing them in their faces, dragging them naked into the cold, or shooting them.
Who is “choreographing” this outrage? This isn’t a dance. Maybe Americans who despise being bullied, abused and killed by their own government are just genuinely outraged.
The letter blames the amorphous “left” repeatedly for allowing all these “illegals” into the country. But migrants don’t come here for the easy 2,000 mile walk. They come because American businesses have been hiring them in droves for decades. Low immigrant wages mean high business profits. Business leaders lean Republican, so is it really Lefties that are to blame? MAGA says “Si.”
Another term that intrigues me is “demographic capture,” which is the Muskian theory that lefties are importing minorities who will then vote for more lefties. That is baloney.
Which demographic fears being displaced? Well, that would be the Anglo, hetero, male, self-proclaimed Christian nationalists. True Americans. Who else? (Don’t ask how white people ended up “capturing the demographics” from Native Americans. Maybe brutality is the way to achieve our MAGAfest destiny.)
I still wonder where the NRA has gone. For decades it screamed it needed guns for when “jack booted government thugs” came to kick down doors and shoot families. That is happening right now. Why is the NRA MIA?
ICE massively slashed hiring and training criteria for new hires. Unquenched anger and a willingness to brutalize are now apparently sufficient qualifications.
I worry that many cop-beating Jan. 6 rioters (pardoned by Trump) and silent former NRA members could be on the ICE payroll energetically cracking American heads.
Meanwhile, our MAGA controlled Congress sleeps. Yeah, it’s gonna get worse…
