$167 Billion for the US Gestapo

The giant bill that the Republican party put in Saturday night is very long and and full of a ton of things designed to end democracy and the rule of law and enable fascism. The reason it is so long and was put forward late Saturday night was to conceal all of that as long as possible. The Democrats are trying to slow it down. But with only a few hours to read it, we can still figure out plenty. By far the most important thing in it is that it tries to finalize turning ICE into the Gestapo. Every fascist leader needs his Gestapo, Mussolini's Blackshirts, Franco's Guardia Civil, Salazar's PIDE/DGS, Stalin's Cheka/NKVD/KGB, Pinochet's DINA, Videla's SIDA, Ceausescu's Securitate, Fidel's DGI, Pol Pot's Santebal, Hoxha's Sigurimi, Mao's Red Guards, all the many Mukhabarats....the list goes on.

The establishment of the Gestapo in Germany and its growth into the personal fist of the Fuhrer shared many of the hurdles that its establishment shares in the US. The main problem was Germany at the time had a tradition of local law enforcement and a national military that was exclusively focused outside of the national boarders. That's the way it works in Democracies. But after the Nazi's took power, they changed that and created a powerful heavily armed national force, that had no rules and oversight, focused on whatever the Fuhrer wanted it to focus on. Hitler never trusted the military, he knew that they were largely loyal to the state and to the military itself, not to him.

This Leader has been casting around for his Gestapo. The Secret Service was a possibility. The equivelent is what Hitler built his Gestapo from, but some of them proved during his January 6th coup attempt and subsequent testimonies, to be more loyal to the law than to him. Along with his ally in congress Alabama football coach Tommy Tuberville, since senior military promotions must be Congressionally approved, he has been focused on replacing the senior military leadership with loyalists, and importantly, the JAGs who asses the legality of orders. But the US military is too big and too focused abroad. Nationalizing the California National Guard didn't really work as hoped. In general all this has simply created chaos, exhaustion, and division within all armed parts of the US Government. But then finally, ICE has inserted itself into the role perfectly.

It already existed, making it conveniently camouflaged with the pretense that it has some real, ongoing, and important function. Just as the Nazi's settled on Jews as the main "Other" with several back-ups like gay people, communists, Marxists, trade-unionists, Roma, and anybody else at any given moment, in the US now the preeminent Other for the regime is "foreigners". This is not a legal term and ICE has illustrated to us and to the Leader that it is not concerned with legal precision. "Foreigners" means those perceived to be from outside who better watch their step and who owe the regime complete obedience and loyalty. So if international students, legally in the US, speak their mind, no matter what they say, they can be arrested and deported. The point is to create fear and obedience using international students as a test case for the rest of us to take note. It's working.

Also, and it's not happenstance, the person probably most trusted by the Leader is Steven Miller, a ghoulish, racist creepo. He has been frustrated by the fact that the Biden administration deported virtually all the undocumented people convicted of a crime. There just aren't that many in the US. But that has allowed ICE to pass with flying colors the willingness to break the law test. And all of this is performative anyway and the guy who is in charge of the preformative cruelty against foreigners, Steven Miller, is the Leader's most trusted confidant. The head of ICE is Todd Lyons, a dim, loyal, obedient, politically irrelevant Bostonian. Perfect.

ICE's budget now is $9 Billion a year. This bill before the Senate gives it a budget of $167 Billion per year. For context, the total US budget is 6.7 Trillion, with 4.9 Trillion coming in. Social Security is 1.5 Trillion. Health, Medicare, defense, interest payments are each 900 Billion. Veterans benefits and the VA as well as education are 300 Billion each. The entire State Department, all international embassies, and all US international assistance was 63 Billion. Through normal legal and transparent procurement and expenditure methods there is no way ICE could spend even a tenth of this in a year. And as anybody who worked for the government knows, if they get those funds, if they want to keep getting funds, they have to spend them.

So what is all this money for?

The first thing is buying loyalty. They will have an unlimited budget to simply give ICE officers money. And they will. People who join and are comfortable being in this Gestapo, surrounded by so many people who fear and hate them, tend to be the people who want to hold and express power over those around them. Having lots of money is one way to express power and privilege. For this type of person, they like the way this will feel and they like imagining it.

ICE will quietly invest in and buy private businesses. Because they are authorized by the state, and pretend their reason for existing is to investigate foreigners, they have access to crazy volumes of data about individuals. This is information valuable and can be put to commercial uses. Also, as grand corruption gets further baked into the national government, it will more and more become the norm and expectation that ambitious regime friendly Oligarchs will make friendly state entities aware of investment opportunities. Most of the Egyptian economy is owned and operated by the military. It's a tried and tested method to tie together the Enforcers with the Oligarchs.

For many people, "privacy" seems like somewhat of a niche preoccupation. "I have nothing to hide", "can't be bothered", etc. Fair enough. But among those in the government who focus on security, there is now the ability to to have what is often called an Integrated Surveillance Profile of each of us that includes financial, bio-metric, behavioral, location, and communication data. So yea, you. It's also referred to as Total Information Awareness (TIA), tying together all of the many many data streams about each individual. There are all sorts of things they can do with that, rank people in terms of how supportive or critical they are of the regime, etc. Plenty of facial recognition and license place readers out there, many run by private companies, and only a patchwork of obsolete, easy to ignore regulation. Reasonable to presume that with this volume of money, ICE can find a pretext to go after you, since you reposed a "migrants are lovely" video seven years ago. It will all be "a part of an ongoing investigation". They could do whatever they want to you. That's the point.

With ICE, it's important to understand the Russian term "compromat". This is a key element of how many corrupt societies operate. It means the illegal thing you have done that can be used to secure your obedience. In many corrupt governments, you can not even enter the system if there is no compromat on you. In some places, it is the only system that will "pay a salary". This is because if there is no compromat, you are free. You can opt out, you can leave, you can be a whistleblower, you can do whatever you want....you are free. But if they have a compromat on you then you are not free and will obey. And when you get used to obeying, even if it was originally coerced via a compromat, you will eventually justify it to yourself, tell yourself that everywhere and everyone is like that, and actually whatever corruption or cruelty you are perpetrating is justified, necessary, and even noble.

So what do we do?

The most important Republican senators on this vote to create the new US Gestapo are Thom Tillis NC, Paul Rand KY, Lisa Murkowski AK, Rick Scott FL, Ron Johnson WI, Mike Lee UT, Cynthia Lummis WY. If you vote in or are from one of these states or any state with a Republican Senator you have a special obligation to contact them. But the same really goes for any Republican Senators. Find some cardboard, make a sign using the Senator's name, get five friends to go to their constituent office, take pictures of each other and send them to the Senator's office and post on social media. For the many lock-step goose-step Republican Senators trying to keep this quiet, don't let them slink and slither into a silent quick vote. For example John Cornyn's constituent office in Dallas is at 5001 Spring Valley, on the North West corner of Spring Valley and the Toll Road, Suite 1125E. Hope to see you there!

Be sure you let everybody you know know what they are doing via any means you can. Just put an hour into this. Please.

If you write about this on social media rather than here, no problem. Please use #GestapoICE.

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