'MacArthur Park'

As we witness the ICE raids taking place across the country - with their increasingly ominous escalation and brutality - I am reminded of something I witnessed last spring in a South Florida hotel. (I wrote about it in ‘Noel’s Notes: For What It’s Worth’).

There was a group of men in their twenties and thirties staying at a corporate hotel I frequent, that is tucked in amongst the swampy strip malls and mirrored glass office parks that line Biscayne Boulevard from Fort Lauderdale all the way down through North Miami.

These men were staying in this hotel for some sort of tactical training over the period of a week. They would be off-site most of the day and then come back in the early evening to do PT in the gym and pool area. I eavesdropped, observed and more than once drew their eyeballs and ire but I thought maybe it was just my pink Bermuda shorts.

They seemed the opposite of ‘woke’, in the tactical sunglasses and tats, and I am very obviously a progressive type so I’m used to the side-eyes.

I find the toxically-masculine MAGA regalia downright silly. In my experience real tough guys don’t need to advertise it. And I’m sure there’s a reflexive smirk initiated on my end whenever I cross paths with these types. These dudes had all the bells and whistles; from the ubiquitous barbed wire-encircled American flags and Nordic runes to the Guns and God swag.

The far right has always had a prolific merch operation - and of course the iconography is a huge part of the appeal - it’s how hate becomes easily homogenized. Masticated for dumbasses into xenophobic cartoons that guys with grease on their fingers find irresistible, like catnip for idiots.

True patriotism is being tested in this moment and the market for over-simplification is responding accordingly: don’t think - buy more MAGA.

Far right media is built upon the same platform. Overconsumption of crap - and at the same time, a rigorous discipline in not questioning the dogma. That is why this week was so disorienting for the MAGAsphere, as the bifurcation of its twin godheads began.

It was perhaps no accident that JD Vance and Kash Patel were already in place at the #1 and #2 MAGA bro-casts as the fight spilled out into public view. As Trump’s team knew it would, with his on-camera meeting with German Chancellor Merz, who all but ate his lunch.

Trump hid for almost a week beforehand to build tension. He knows the reality show aspect of his presidency is perhaps his greatest asset - and he exploits the chaos and drama endlessly. It becomes irresistible to the mainstream media, who he has always used in his narcissistic quest for attention. It was his first move back in the ‘80s with the NYC media and it’s still his go-to move today.

You could sense the anchors and pundits’ outright giddiness over what transpired this past week but the focus too quickly became who stood to lose the most in their Benzoed-imbroglio. Not, in my opinion, on where it should have been - on the lives already lost and the lives hanging in the balance due to their chaos and corruption.

The shuttering of USAID by DOGE has already cost over three hundred thousand lives, mostly children’s. While two billionaires bicker and brag about who bought who the election, in a stupor of chemicals and confusion.

Both men so consumed with their own self-interest as to not even give lip service to the lives affected by their actions. What we have seen from the Oval Office in these long four months will be the 21st century’s first big example of sociopathy. The Trump/Musk alliance is a moral failing for our nation.

If our planet, so imperiled in this moment, survives, the personality defects of American leadership will be studied for decades.

Trump didn’t hesitate to call up 2,000 National Guard troops to Los Angeles - despite no request from California’s Governor - in response to genuine outrage and protests over the brutality and overzealous militarized tactics of recent ICE raids.

Our Secretary of Defense (with a drinking problem) said he was putting Marines in Camp Pendleton on standby; threatening American citizens with one of the world’s most lethal fighting forces.

U.S Marines should NOT be deployed to downtown L.A. - the fact I even have to write that sentence is staggering. What we witnessed from ICE agents is not only undisciplined behavior, it also beggars belief that any of these folks have received proper training.

I have worked on logistics, handling talent on major events for two decades (Super Bowl Halftime, Times Square NYE, Presidential inaugurations, White House tree lightings, Global Citizens’ Fest, Grammys, TONYs, etc.). In that capacity, I observed up close a ton of law enforcement and military service members, interfacing with everyone from the Blue Angels and Thunderbirds I worked on coordinating Super Bowl flyovers with - to Homeland Security officers that made sure the public was safe for all types of events.

There is a way officers carry themselves, a composure and discipline of movement that is completely absent in what I observe in videos of ICE raids. For the most part these are not professionals. Their shoes being a major tell.

Police and federal agents almost always wear steel-toed shoes and boots in the field. I travelled the world with an ex-NYPD officer who did security for some major acts I road-managed. He would wear steel-toed shoes on a day off in Barcelona.

We are supposed to believe these out of shape guys grabbed the night-vision goggles (for a raid in daytime San Diego), helmets and tactical vests but decided to leave on the three year-old Sketchers and the hoodie that his wife bought him on sale at Kohl’s.

Half of them look like they get winded climbing into their pickup trucks and break out into a sweat over a meat and three lunch. It doesn’t add up.

For the past year I have wondered about the team of men I observed training in that Florida hotel.

Their operation was well-funded, and they moved amongst themselves like they already considered themselves a band of brothers deployed in hostile territory.

They had the attitude of would-be warriors - if not the discipline and skill set - or any publicly defined marching orders. These were secret soldiers - training in more or less plain sight. To me it appeared as if someone was building and prepping an army and because it was South Florida, I had assumed its tentacles reached straight into the heart of Mar-a-Lago.

The Rococo mansion of the most corrupt man to ever hold office, who turned on his own Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in his first term for refusing to fire on unarmed civil rights protestors in Lafayette Park.

Trump’s response to General Mark Milley’s refusal to order troops to fire on civilians: ‘shoot ‘em in the legs or something…’

I figured Mike Flynn or even Erik Prince was at the top of whatever dark arts org chart was behind these training groups. They were putting the assets in place they would need to challenge the election - and I wondered how many other places in the U.S. were hosting similar camps. Like a Boy Scouts for budding fascists.

Of course the election was over early on that awful day in November and they had no ‘unrest’ to confront. Trump could claim a victory and his ‘landslide’ would go unexamined and unchallenged. He had won decisively in the eyes of the national media and that was all that mattered.

There wouldn’t be another January 6th, so what next?

I believe we are seeing that now and it is incumbent upon all of us to bear witness. Trump, just this morning, proclaimed via post that masks would not be allowed at any upcoming protests. Meaning his private army of so-called ICE agents would be free to hide their faces but not the folks protesting their authoritarian actions.

They are clearly targeting law-abiding innocent men, women and children based only on their immigration status, which often times is well within the law.

They are humiliated, punished, imprisoned and deported any way, without due process. All to satiate Stephen Miller and the quotas he has put in place to please his boss and satisfy his own fascistic nature.

It’s reprehensible, it’s dark and it’s coming to a city near you.

It’s also certainly not what so many brave young souls stormed the beaches of Normandy to fight for in the last century. They conquered fascism and liberated a continent from what we are now potentially facing - what happens when the darkest impulses of man are left to fester.

Or worse, when people become numb and turn a blind eye to the horrors being committed on their neighbors. When they chose to look away instead of bearing witness. Free people don’t fall in line, they fight with all the tools at their disposal; while non-violence is the way for civil protests, we must understand Trump has unleashed forces very capable of violence.

Which is what makes this moment so critical and fraught - and once again frames in brutal relief the fact that we have a would-be dictator on our hands.

Next weekend there will be tanks of the streets of Washington, DC. Trump is throwing himself a military parade but we should be aware that he may command more than one army.

We only need one U.S. Army, of course, and while we honor the service members who have given so much over so many generations we must never, ever use military troops against our own people. Most especially to fulfill the desire of a man who has only his own demented interest at heart.

I now believe the folks I saw training have been absorbed and deployed into the ranks of the ICE officers. They’re obviously always masked but many videos look to be the same sort of recruits I saw in Miami. My guess is that the guys I observed training were probably in some sort of regional training, where they were chosen as platoon leaders to then go back and train their local associates.

That theory is further born out through observation of the videos, as there are clearly different levels of competency at play in some of the larger raids but they all have the underlying aura of over-aggression and a desire to intimidate.

It’s a reality show to the far right and Trump is gambling on the ratings being good.

Keep this in mind when you find yourselves at protests. Speak up and speak out but be careful not to feed the beast we are going to defeat.

Love always wins. Be safe and well.