From Pine View Farm

“Ve Vere Just Followink Orders” (Updated) 0

The number of reports of gratuitous cruelty, mixed with a large dose of bigotry, by those charged with patrolling the nation’s borders during the last month has been staggering; I’ve noted a few of them in these electrons.

Innocent citizens and non-citizens, distinguished personages and ordinary persons alike have been detained solely because of the sound of their names or the color of their skin.

Will Bunch writes of this today; here’s a snippet from his article.

“The men and women who reportedly handcuffed small children and the elderly, separated a child from his mother and held others without food for 20 hours, are undoubtedly ‘ordinary’ people,” American University professor Chris Edelson wrote. “What I mean by that, is that these are, in normal circumstances, people who likely treat their neighbors and co-workers with kindness and do not intentionally seek to harm others. That is chilling, as it is a reminder that authoritarians have no trouble finding the people they need to carry out their acts of cruelty. They do not need special monsters; they can issue orders to otherwise unexceptional people who will carry them out dutifully.”

It was a striking piece, but now a few weeks later the situation seems actually worse than what he wrote, with these so-called “unexceptional people” actually finding “fun” in carrying out brutal policies for America’s new strongman in the White House.

Read the rest.

Addendum, Later That Same Day:

Yes, it can happen here.

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