This brittle strength
In my last blog post, I brought up the bastardisation of strength at the heart of a lot of fascist, and this administration’s, actions. But I think it’s important to dig a little deeper into the particular weaknesses the administration shows by apparently believing it weak to admit error.
I make mistakes all the time, as I’m sure you also do. We are none of us perfect, and I’ve found a great deal of adaptability in the ability to admit error. When it’s clear I’m wrong, I state it and move forward, apologising where my mistakes have caused problems for others. I don’t say this to point out some amazing insight on my part (which it is not) but to show it in contrast to how DHS deals with its agents murdering people in the street. Because they’ve done it again.
Noem and Bovino’s statements
Here’s Kristi Noem on the day of the murder:
At 9:05 a.m. Central time, the Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officials and officers were conducting targeted operations in Minneapolis against an illegal alien whose criminal history included domestic assault with intentionally inflicting bodily harm, disorderly conduct, and driving without a valid license.
An individual approached US Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. Fearing for his life and for the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots. Medics were on the scene immediately and attempted to deliver medical aid to the subject, but he was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect also had two magazines with ammunition in them that held dozens of rounds. He also had no ID. This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.
And here’s Greg Bovino’s statement on the same day:
At 9:05 a.m. Central Standard Time as DHS law enforcement officers were conducting a targeted operation in Minneapolis against an illegal alien, Jose Werta Chuma. You can see this illegal alien on the screen to my left and right. That is Jose Werta Chuma whose criminal history includes domestic assault to intentionally inflict bodily harm, disorderly conduct and driving without a valid license.
During this operation, an individual approached US Border Patrol agents with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The agents attempted to disarm the individual, but he violently resisted. Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers, a Border agent fired defensive shots. Medics on the scene immediately delivered medical aid to the subject, but the subject was pronounced dead at the scene. The suspect also had two loaded magazines and no accessible ID. This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
Obviously these were coordinated statements. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with this, but in the coordination we can see what they felt important to emphasise or imply.
The DHS officers were conducting a “targeted” operation against a particular undocumented person.
This undocumented person is a criminal and has done these bad things.
While we were there doing our jobs, a separate person came up to us with a gun.
The actions of our agents were intended to disarm this second person.
That person violently resisted being disarmed.
“Fearing for his life and the lives and safety of fellow officers” a Border agent fired “defensive” shots.
Unidentified “medics” were there “immediately” and tried to save the “suspect” but could not.
This person had more ammunition for their gun, and isn’t it weird we couldn’t find his ID?
The intention of this person was to kill multiple law enforcement officers.
Or, to sum up the statements and obvious implications, “Someone tried to interfere with us doing our jobs, coming at us brandishing a gun. We tried to disarm him, but he stopped us from doing so, so he forced us to kill him. Isn’t it weird that this guy had a gun and even ammunition for it? He was obviously trying to murder a lot of our agents.”
Right out of the gate, the administration makes statements describing actions that resulted in tragedy but were, unfortunately, necessary.
It is mostly bullshit, of course. But what makes it stupid is that it undermines their own credibility in the eyes of anyone with with even half a toe in objective reality. Much as people like to describe MAGA followers as “brainwashed,” the truth is more nuanced than that. There are, of course, fanatics who in every new event keep watch for the direction they are meant to jump, but most people are not like this.
There is a concept in Russia call vranyo; a particular form of lying in which someone lies to you, you know they are lying, they know you know they’re lying, but they lie anyway and you both go along with the pretence they are speaking the truth. It’s often used to describe some blatant lie by the government, such as when Vladimir Putin “amazingly” found ancient artefacts on a dive. However, such lying requires a certain degree of control that the Trump administration simply does not have.
This is one of the fundamental errors by the administration and one, I hope, that ends in the unravelling of their entire project.
Why this tack is stupid
If we look at the statements above, you can see where they have set themselves up for failure.
The statements emphasise that Alex Pretti (the man they murdered) approached those agents with a handgun. The obvious implication of the words “with a [gun]” is that they’re somehow relevant to the shooting. Certainly, DHS is trying to give the impression that Pretti threatened the officers; that if he was not brandishing then he was at least holding the gun. This impression is further pushed by mentioning extra clips of ammunition (and, separately, the pictures of the handgun on a car seat), and this is used to support the idea that he wanted to “massacre” law enforcement. They want to give the impression that Pretti was not just dangerous but known to be dangerous by the agents who shot him.
Looking at videos of the event, you can see a masked officer shove a woman hard onto the ground, Pretti moving from helping a second woman to put his body between the officer and the first woman, then getting sprayed directly in the face with a chemical weapon for his troubles, before he is driven to the ground by multiple officers, struck repeatedly. You see his gun being removed from his person after never being in his hands, and finally, after his gun was taken, you see him shot repeatedly by officers at first while restrained and later once they step away and continue to shoot into his motionless body.
These videos are everywhere. People will see them. That Pretti had a handgun, that the officers didn’t even know about until after they had restrained him, will convince some the shooting was justified. But most who see the videos will think otherwise and, worse for the administration, will see what they said and think not just that the administration is lying, but that the administration is lying to them.
Pretti only “approached” the agent to put his body between him and the woman he assaulted. At no point did he reach for his gun. The administration is now in a bit of a bind, but that’s not the problem.
A part of their statement was technically true but extremely misleading. Pretti was there with a gun. They’ve built into the statement some wiggle room to claim they are telling the truth.
How do you think they will look when they try?
They’ve invited the question “why do you say he approached officers with a handgun when he didn’t?” and then don’t have good options for response. They decided that pushing a maximalist case was a good idea, because they think they have more control than they do (to be clear, they do presently have a frightening level of control). They believe that pushing obvious horseshit will fly—and it will with a large amount of their base, but nowhere near enough for their project to work.
If you tell people “don’t try help a woman we shoved to the ground or we’ll murder you and lie about it,” they tend to get real pissed. When you tell a bunch of people who’ve claimed to support the second amendment that if you legally carry a gun the state can murder you, the ones who actually believed what they claimed will be real pissed. If all this is happening to someone who presents as a straight white dude, it’s easy for even the most bigoted MAGA supporters to identify with him and, for those not already lost to the cult, this will make them real pissed.
All of this is an unforced error by an administration that is not just behaving like a fascist regime, is not just stupid, but is so stupid they put up roadblocks for themselves.
That gives me some fraction of hope in these times.
A smarter fascist
Another approach would be to muddy the waters, to pretend to be acting responsibly by not commenting, support your officers in general, and to imply that this is all the fault of your political opponents. Here’s an example:
While attempting to disperse the crowd, a protestor confronted our officers, interfering in an active operation. He resisted arrest and, as he did so, agents discovered a gun on his person. Border agents acted immediately to neutralise the threat posed to them and the public. As is standard practice, we will perform a full investigation into the circumstances surrounding this incident, and we will not comment further. We would like to thank all of our officers for their hard work, who are operating in the difficult conditions created by state and local officials, who seek to inflame tensions in our communities and with the people we are sworn to protect.
What’s galling is that this is only a slight deviation from the standard law enforcement response to an officer shooting. Instead of modifying a standard response to imply blame lies elsewhere, DHS decided to present a case so detached from reality it will serve to convince many of their own supporters that they are lying. And the manner in which they did so can’t help but come across as insulting.
These statements from DHS are phenomenally dumb. As in, they had to go to a lot of effort to do something this stupid. I’m not worried there’s a risk they’ll copy the example above because they are incapable of taking that approach.
All of this stems from the unprecedented deployment of thousands of DHS officers to Minnesota, with the apparent primary aim, and certainly with the result, of terrorising Minnesota residents. That this has not already led to the impeachment and removal of Trump, Vance, and Noem is a national disgrace, but even with their stranglehold on the Republican party “we can murder you” is not a winning political message. Support for ICE is plummeting. They have gone too far, not just morally (a point they crossed a long time ago) but also well past their capabilities.
The retreat
The Trump administration appears to be backing down in Minnesota. I do not believe they actually are, but they are certainly making the noises they feel necessary to move the news cycle along. Bovino has reportedly been removed, and Noem could very well be next. Stephen Miller is apparently trying to off-shore his portion of the blame in a desperate fashion.
It is the nature of fascist regimes to push and push to see how much they can get away with and then, upon finding the limit, retreating until circumstances allow them to try again. You could look at current events as an example of that retreat, and take no comfort in it. Certainly I do not. But to believe this is a sign that the administration will succeed in their anti-democratic efforts is, I feel, unwarranted.
To begin with, their replacement for operations in Minnesota is Tom Homan, who along with Miller is one of the architects of the family separation policy and so is yet another hardliner. Though he will likely make things less theatrical than Bovino, the officers on the ground aren’t suddenly better people. Pretti was not targeted by the regime; he died due to a policy decision that, for the most part, remains in place. It is unlikely that Homan, even if he wanted to, could change enough to prevent significant levels of violence.
More than this, though, I want you to think about just how far this administration pushed, after Rachel Good was killed, even after Alex Pretti was killed. Their actions were deeply unpopular, obviously so, and yet they still kept going all the same. Their wackadoodle concepts of masculinity, of power, and of strength are so deeply ingrained it is impossible for them to help themselves.
Their feedback system is also broken, for they appear to listen primarily to the opinions of those who reflexively mirror them. They are told they are correct, they are strong, they are righteous and high on that appraisal miss the fact they are stuck in an echo chamber, hearing only themselves. Their minds are partially unmoored from base reality and yet they are still governed by its rules. They don’t know when to stop, not in a moral sense (that was long ago) but a strategic one. They will continue to make mistakes because they have removed themselves from the signals that might prevent them.
So they will push and push and push and not notice that they have managed to push themselves off a cliff. Their hate does not remove the pull of gravity, and they will fall.
The question is, how much damage will they cause to America, to its people, and to the world at large before they do?
We who value the wellbeing of our fellow human beings will be called to greater kindness in the face of such pointless horrors. Take care of yourselves and those others you can.