Don’t underestimate the blind indoctrination that has occurred across the US, especially in the South. I work with fairly intelligent people, even young ones, who still fail to wrap their brains around the very idea that the government and authority…might not be on their side. That such innately evil things could be perpetrated by elected officials. You have, literal, generations who have grown up watching Fox News, which has slowly poisoned the entire political discourse (it really wasn’t until COVID that the hospital stopped defaulting to Fox News on the public televisions).
Even after the execution in Minnesota, they are still “trying to walk the line” that Alex Pretti shouldn’t have been there with a gun, that “it was a split second decision”, that we don’t see enough events prior, that it was all done “in the heat of the moment”, even that people shouldn’t be out protesting at all. People around here have been raised under the impression that patriotism and supporting troops/law enforcement somehow means being blindly loyal and to assume that if someone is killed, it was THAT person that did “something” wrong to justify it. I’m doing my best as “the crazy liberal” (typically said in jest, especially as I’ve referred to myself as such), but it’s still a cultural wall that is still fairly hardy here in Oklahoma. And then you have the older ladies my mother sews with who, being raised in this area, at best follow along with what their husbands/fathers have dictated or simply chose to bury their heads in the sand.
Maybe my innate cynicism has let me view things with a more open mind. Maybe, coming from Iowa before the education system went to crap, I’m just better educated?
The big issue I’m seeing with ICE is that, as an entity, it has and still provides a meaningful service. The problem is that, under Noem and Trump, it has become poisoned by lack of regulation, lack of oversight, and a stuffing of unqualified people given the false impression of the scope of their authority. There needs to be an agency to fulfill the “proper role” of ICE, but after the past year? ICE, as an entity, has become too toxic to be allowed to exist, and probably DOES need to be purged and a new agency established to replace it. However, as with all things these days, it’s “all or nothing”. And the messaging will get muddled because it’s not a simple enough issue to address in slogans.