CLIFF’S NOTE: Sorry for the delay in sending today. As I explained in my earlier piece, we have a kid headed to college, so life’s a bit nuts around here.
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Today we have David’s video for you above—it’s brilliant. Watch it! It covers Trump’s faculties (“we have an ocean separating us, a thing called, an ocean”), which are headed in the polar opposite direction as his pants. David also shares Trump’s nuanced views on slavery.
It seems much like in Charlottesville, there are good people on both sides.
Another programing note: We are going to send out my column tomorrow, as there won’t be an “Amped Up.” Again, kid going to college. But tonight, we have a transcript of our recent interview with former congressional candidate and friend, Dr. Geoffrey Grammer.
Geoff’s a former colonel in the U.S. Army, and a decorated psychiatrist who's treated soldiers at Walter Reed. He talked to us about the frightening psychology of the new ICE recruits of Trump’s. Following are some crucial and concerning parts of the transcript:
TRANSCRIPT
Dr. Grammer: We haven't had anything like this in my lifetime and in historical memory in this country. ICE is just one aspect of what is becoming emblematic of our lives in America. I cannot think of a time in history that dehumanizing entire populations resulted in anything good, right?
That is a path to descent, to suffering and pain.
Within ICE, what we've seen is this sadistic cruelty. There are ways that you can detain people, and law enforcement practices and drills it. And they have rules and oversight if it's not followed.
Wearing masks and sunglasses and baseball caps with no name badges, no badge numbers, jumping out of an unmarked vehicle, throwing some to the ground because of their skin color or because of their accent—and no other evidence but that—and throwing them in the van and taking them to God knows where—this is not normal.
What I wrote about in the piece [in Salon] is we are all witnessing these horrific videos of cruelty, kids crying in the background. I don't know if you all saw recently, but there was one where they literally pulled a guy out of his car with his kid in the back seat, broke the window.
We make decisions for a lot of reasons, but mainly two major ways: either to alleviate anxiety or to receive reward, and the next generation of ICE agents are going to be drawn to the role, almost certainly not to alleviate anxiety.
But the reward they're looking for, is to participate in the sadistic cruelty that is on TV now.
Historically, law enforcement attracts people who want to help their communities, want to help their country, whether we agree with some of the stuff that happens or not. Those are honorable initiatives for many of them, not all, but many.
But now someone who joins, that's not the recruiting video anymore. You get to participate in the dominance of other people in a cruel way, and someone says, "I want to do that." What is that person going to be like? Are they going to uphold the laws of the Constitution? Are they going to uphold the directives of an autocrat?
Someone who enjoys that is very deviant from the typical person, right?
And when push comes to shove, if Donald Trump one day wants to flip that switch and move ICE from detaining people they think need to be detained into his own private security force to suppress dissent, these are people more likely to follow Trump than the Constitution. ‘
That is something we should all be afraid of, whether you're a citizen, a legal immigrant or an undocumented immigrant.
This is why I think we need checks and balances. At any given point in time, 1-2% of the population is going to have antisocial or criminal-like tendencies. That's just population-based stuff.
When we start to create organizations with unchecked power where we self-select people with that personality style it becomes self-reinforcing.
You can listen to more of Dr. Grammer’s important—and harrowing—analysis here.
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