The softest Nazis you ever did see
They should be white, of course, and ideally ‘roided up. These guys are the sort that can take a punch and not even blink, the hardest MFers you’re ever going to see.
Just look
at all the sizzle
reels DHS is putting out, and you can feel the toughness through the
screen, right? And you just know that if those dudes want to take you down,
you’re going down.
Now, it’s not at all unusual for authoritarians to treat even the smallest pushback on law enforcement officers as an attack on their authority and an excuse to be rabidly violent. But that’s not quite what the administration is doing. In public, they want everyone to know that these thugs they’ve deployed to terrorize cities are battle-hardened and impervious to pain.
But on the other hand, they are also such delicate flowers that if they
are, say, lightly grazed by a sandwich, they are entitled to justice because of
the horrific assault they have suffered.
Call it tough guy in the streets and widdle guy in the sheets (of paper for court filings).
The hero (sandwich) we need
Back in August, Dunn threw a subway sandwich at Gregory
Lairmore, one of the many CBP agents the president sent to DC for what Trump
claims is a crime crackdown, but is really more of an occupation.
Larimore was in a bulletproof vest, and the sub bounced off
him harmlessly. Dunn then hoofed it out of there, giving us the spectacle of
several other federal agents trying to catch him.
Dunn was arrested about a block away, but released
relatively soon because come on, it’s a sandwich. He offered to turn himself in
to federal authorities, but instead they did a dramatic nighttime raid at
Dunn’s home, complete with armed agents in riot gear. It was filmed, of course,
and the White House posted it on
X with the caption: “Nighttime Routine: Operation Make DC Safe Again
Edition.”
Safe from … sandwiches?
Larimore was apparently so harmed by the sandwich that US
Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Pirro first tried to charge Dunn
with a felony.
A felony. For … a sandwich?
The grand jury declined
to indict Dunn for a felony because, again, it was a sandwich. So,
Pirro’s office charged him with a misdemeanor, which doesn’t require a grand
jury. And then we had the spectacle of a multi-day trial … over a sandwich.
Larimore took
the stand to talk about his trauma, explaining that “the sandwich kind
of exploded all over my uniform. It smelled of onions and mustard.” The horror!
Now, it’s comical that this big, brutal warrior would get on
the stand to say that he literally felt assaulted by a sandwich exploding on
his uniform. It’s more comical, though, that Dunn’s attorney then showed
Larimore a photo of the sandwich on the ground. Wrapped. Not exploded.
Larimore tried to save the moment: “I had mustard and
condiments on my uniform, and an onion hanging from my radio antenna that
night.”
Part of what undercut Larimore’s assertion that the mustard
and onions put him in real fear, made him feel violently attacked, was that
he got
gag gifts from his fellow tough guy federal agents, like a plush
sandwich and a patch reading “Felony Footlong,” and was just fine with it.
“Boo-boos”
Dunn is not the only one to walk free from a ridiculous
trial.
Back in July, Sidney Reid was filming ICE agents outside a
DC jail, which made those agents mad, so one grabbed her and shoved her against
a wall, while an FBI agent, Eugenia Bates, decided
to join in. While these folks were violently arresting Reid for the
not-at-all-a-crime of filming them, Reid’s knee allegedly jerked and made
contact with Bates’s groin.
You can see Bates’s horrifying injury here.
Yes, that is basically a tiny scrape on her hand, presumably obtained when she
was assisting in wrongfully arresting Reid. If you got that injury, you’d go
home and put some Bactine on it and maybe a bandage. Maybe. But you are not a
federal agent, as they are apparently made of glass.
You know what comes next, right? Pirro’s office tried three times to get a grand jury to agree this was a felony, and when that didn’t work, charged Reid with a misdemeanor and had a nonsense trial. Bates took the stand, and, as with Larimore, it wasn’t just that Bates had no real injuries. She was also so unbothered by it that it was literally a joke. The judge allowed jurors to see text messages Bates had sent where she called her injuries “boo-boos” and called Reid a “libtard.” Last month, a DC jury declined to convict, taking about two hours to deal with this absolute slop.
Bovino is overseeing the brutal occupation of a city and has
some very peculiar notions of what is legal. He’s told his officers that they
can “go
hard” against people and arrest them for making verbal threats to officers.
He’s cool with firing
pepper balls at protesters because “If someone strays into a pepper
ball, then that’s on them. Don’t protest and don’t trespass.” Not really a fan
of the First Amendment, is he?
Bovino’s problem is that no one has actually done anything to him. There’s a quick solution for that: just lie about it. So, when Bovino wanted to tear-gas the Little Village neighborhood last month, he lied and said he was hit by a rock. Unfortunately for Bovino, there was video showing otherwise, so he had to admit that there was no rock, no harm.
Judge Sara Ellis entered a temporary restraining order barring Bovino and his merry band of fascists from using tear gas without warnings and riot control weapons unless it’s necessary to protect the life of someone or prevent a catastrophic outcome, and required they wear body cameras. But Bovino just ignored her and kept letting his officers use tear gas, flash-bangs, and pepper balls with no warning.On Thursday, Ellis entered a preliminary injunction, saying
that Bovino had lied about his actions and those of the protesters. Her
injunction extends the restrictions from the earlier temporary restraining
order and also
bars Bovino’s brownshirts from using tear gas or pepper spray on
anyone who does not pose a threat.
But that’s the problem here. The administration is insistent
that its agents are under attack 24/7. Kristi Noem’s hyperbolic insistence that
violence against ICE officers is up has led to some truly unique math.
Except we know they are not. Every day brings new videos of
federal agents doing things like dragging a teacher out of the daycare where
she worked, while children looked on.
Would you like to know how DHS “set the record straight” on
this? By saying that, in going into
the building — the one she works in — the teacher was “recklessly
endangering the children inside.” Dunno. It seems more reckless to have armed
thugs pull her out of the daycare.
In September, a federal agent killed
a man after pulling him over shortly after he dropped off his kids at
school. DHS said Silverio Villegas Gonzalez was driving toward the agent, so he
had to respond with lethal force because he was “fearing for his own life.”
Yeah, about that. The body cam footage showed the ICE agent
saying, “I got a cut,” showing his bloody knee, and saying he had some cuts on
his hand and elbow. “Nothing major.” That sure doesn’t sound like someone
fearing for their life. It does, however, sound like the actions of someone who
is a little tiny baby, so scared of who knows what that he had to kill a man.
Fake tough guys
DHS has created a contradictory world, one that can’t hold
together. Are the ICE agents the most impervious stormtrooper supermen around,
here to save us all? Or are they so vulnerable that they crumple if they
receive the slightest scratch? It can’t be both.
The federal government keeps painting a front-facing,
meme-driven picture of ICE, one where they are impossibly tough and skilled,
and they get to crack heads because it is so violent out there. But when they
are forced to tell the truth in court, their injuries are comically minor, the
kind of thing you wouldn’t even go home from work for.
So, which is it? Well, it really is both.
When DHS’s goons are a roving band of masked armed men,
they’re tough as hell. And why not? They spend their days arresting
schoolteachers and tear-gassing kids from a safe distance away. They’re pretty
impervious to harm. That said, they also are little babies, because they don’t
believe there should be any consequences for their actions, and even the
smallest harm they suffer is an outrage, something they simply can’t
comprehend.
So, they can posture all they want, but we know what’s
underneath all that tactical gear and rage: nothing but the softest little
underbelly.
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