If you want to tell the story of ICE, tell the story of one kid

The power of photography is incredible, and the deluge of images and video coming from citizens and professional journalists in Minneapolis is a demonstration of that power. 

The five-year-old with a bunny hat and a Batman backpack being ushered into a vehicle by what we can only think of now as thugs (employed by ICE) after being used to lure his father out of the house is a prime example. 

A private citizen shared the photo with the school district, which then gave permission for it to be widely distributed. 

It's a tough sell for even the most avid supporters of removing undocumented immigrants to get us to believe that this kid should be a focus of the intense roundups in Minnesota. The original lies about deporting the worst criminals have been shown to be excuses to go after pretty much anyone... particularly if "anyone" is not clearly white. 

That the United States contains a substantial number of racists is also tough to dispute. After all, Trump was quite clear when labeling the entire country of Somalia as barely human, unworthy of anything other than scorn and hate. His explicit racism was hardly mentioned by the news media. His racism and our current regime's racism is simply baked into the pie, so to speak.

The world is often quite cruel to children, as we continue to see in Gaza, just as an example. We see video and photographs of slaughtered children on a daily basis, if we care to look. 

The most cruel among us simply describe those deaths as unfortunate, as the result of the actions of their parents and other adults. Our five-year-old's father probably is undocumented. That makes him a criminal, technically, though it's a civil offense that hardly requires masked thugs with automatic weapons and full tactical gear to effect arrests.

At this point, there is no "fixing" the increasing problems with untrained and unrestrained ICE agents. They are clearly not what we would think of as law enforcement. They are not suddenly going to behave as our police behave. They aren't going to behave as our professional military behaves. 

ICE agents are, as a group and by design, using superior power and weapons to bully and taunt and forcibly remove people weaker than them. I worry that our professional military, for whom we ostensibly pray and offer support, is also suffering irreversible ethical and moral damage... that the reputations of all being forced to do the bidding of committed racists will not recover.

Trump and his minions have bombed many countries in the past year and a number of people within our country have been killed. The common thread is that those being bombed and killed are weak. In fact, most of humanity is weak when compared to a military force backed by the most deadly and powerful weapons and funded by a country with nearly unlimited resources.

I am ashamed today to be an American.