Kristi Noem, a blanket, and the camps

By now you've probably seen the Wall Street Journal's inside look at Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and former Trump campaign manager turned Noem "top adviser" Corey Lewandowski. It was published last week, smack dab in the middle of Noem's efforts to shore up her credibility as her "department" continues its orgy of violence against Americans, defiance of courts and the Constitutions, and just for funsies fires off a military anti-aircraft laser next to an international airport, causing the complete closure of El Paso airspace because the same Homeland Security "tactical" teams that have proven unable to grasp the proper use of tear gas and flash bang grenades saw some floating party balloons and, naturally, thought it was a "cartel" invasion.

Which is a thing that happens now, apparently.

It's an intriguing story, and not because it outs Noem as every bit the self-absorbed idiot gasbag that we all already knew her to be. It's intriguing because you don't get a story like this unless a whole pile of federal officials who work with and for Kristi Noem hate her vapid preening guts with enough intensity to tell these insider tales to a national press outlet. Noem is, like everyone else in the Sedition Administration, infamously vindictive, and we'll likely get a follow-up story in a few weeks detailing Noem's frantic orders that everyone who's ever breathed the same air she has be subjected to polygraph tests until she has found who spilled her private beans.

My spellchecker wasn't willing to recognize polygraph when I started typing it, by the way. It saw me writing about Noem and Lewandowski and was certain I meant "polygamy," which is ridiculous. But it probably knows that polygamy is a real thing and polygraph testing, no matter how many times tv writers and woo-woo polygrexperts insist otherwise, is not, so touché.

Where was I? Ah yes. I was talking about Nazi Germany. And by that I mean I wasn't, but now I am and I promise you I meant to all along. I was getting there, eventually.

If you've never read historical accounts of the last days and aftermath of Nazi Germany, and unless you're a special type of polygraph polyglot you probably haven't, a quick summary goes like this: The fascist German government was obsessed with creating an image of strength, of masculinity, of glorious violence-fueled ascendence, and of its own unique ability to right all of society's wrongs through grotesque brutality. Its fascist adherents were convinced that there was such a thing as a Master Race and that it was them; they were equally certain that their own hard-conservative version of German "culture" was the only legitimate culture and that everything that deviated from it was, in fact, "deviant" and malignant.

That was the story that they wanted told, anyway. But then the war ended, their homes and documents were seized, and we soon learned that many or most of these supposed exemplars of the Master Race and Master Culture were, in fact, bumbling incompetents when it came to governing. That's not surprising, since fascism is explicitly predicated on contempt for government, expertise, and Knowing Stuff in general.

But it also turns out that they were, the whole lot of them, not so much a "master race" or even a "backup race" but instead were a cabal of compulsive drug addicts, pedophiles, sociopaths, psychopaths, grifters, pathological liars, and in general were the worst and most malevolent pieces of crap their nation could muster even before you got to the rampant criminality, industrial-scale murder machines, and eagerness to send every young man in Germany to a gruesome bloody death while they themselves sat in their palatial homes and did their pervert shit.

None of it was surprising, mind you. It stands to reason that the architects of the death camps would be the absolute dregs of the "culture" they claimed to be the champions of. Of course they were. Of course they were trying to run a global war while being blasted out of their minds. Of course their horseshit claims about Saving Their Nation From Undesirables was both projection and deflection: The only Germans who would have willingly followed a more honest name like the Drugs And Sexual Assault Party would be their fellow addicts and sex predators, and any even half-savvy political consultant will tell you a government coalition has to consist of a bit more than just that.

So the social movement of pathological liars piled on a million different lies about everyone who wasn't them while a paranoid lying freak named Adolf screamed gibberishingly about how only he could fix it, and it worked for quite a few years because it turns out a whole lot of normal people will believe anything you tell them, so long as you scream it at the top of your lying freak lungs.

That's the highly, highly condensed version, anyway. For more details consult your local library—but the point is that even as the Nazi Party's various functionaries consolidated power through propaganda and militarized their nation against gays, the sick, scientists, educators, issue experts, immigrants, and Jews, the Nazi thinkers doing the consolidating were mostly staggeringly incompetent, pathologically self-absorbed, horrifically abusive, and still somehow all convinced each other that they were the most brilliant and deserving motherfuckers to ever live.

And that is fascism, because only a cabal of self-absorbed but pathologically ignorant dipshits can be enamored by a political system that amounts to "what if we put violent but pathologically ignorant dipshits in charge of everything."

Anyhow, now that we've gotten that long aside out of our system: Let's get back to the original topic.

The new Wall Street Journal report portrays Noem and Lewandowski as insufferable dipshits who are widely presumed (including by Trump himself) to be screwing each other as they screw up everything from the DHS contracting process to federal disaster aid to Trump's precious "border wall." The portrait we get is one of government by personal grievance, retaliation, and self-satisfaction. Doing the "homeland security" part of the job appears to be a secondary consideration at best.

Since taking office, the secretary has also closely monitored how her national profile compared with other administration officials. Top of her list was Homan, Trump’s border czar, with whom she has been in a battle for power and influence inside the administration.

Noem routinely berated staff if she saw Homan on TV and kept track of both their appearances to make sure she was on TV more than him, according to people familiar with the matter. On at least one occasion, she asked aides to ensure she drew a bigger crowd at a conference than Homan, who was speaking on a different day, one of the people said. [...]

Early in the administration, Noem allotted $200 million from the department’s budget to air an ad campaign featuring her warning immigrants in the country illegally—in English—to “leave now.”

The campaign annoyed Trump, who questioned White House staff about where the secretary found the money for the barrage of ads, according to a person familiar with the discussions.

That ... actually tracks pretty well with what we've already seen. Noem is an influencer-styled camera hog who spends most of her time promoting herself while obsessively monitoring her perceived competitors? Wow, go figure.

The report even notes that Border Patrol official Greg Bovino's notoriously violent "tactical" team reported directly to Noem—an apparent move to prevent Homan and other DHS competitors from interfering with or disciplining the team even as it continued to escalate its repeated attacks against protesters in Chicago and Minneapolis, which is apparently what Noem and Lewandowski wanted from the arrangement.

But the Journal's story is quite long, so I'd like to break it up a bit. While we contemplate Noem's apparent priorities and interests, here's an NBC News report from one of the many detention camps under Noem's management.

Over their four months at the Dilley Immigration Processing Center — a remote, prisonlike facility that has drawn mounting scrutiny over what human rights advocates describe as inhumane conditions — Nikita and Oksana say their children have endured indignities they never imagined possible in the United States.

Worms in their food. Guards shouting orders and snatching toys from small hands. Restless nights under fluorescent lights that never fully go dark. Hours in line for a single pill.

“We left one tyranny and came to another kind of tyranny,” Nikita said in Russian. “Even in Russia, they don’t treat children like this.” [...]

Kamilla, 12 — a dancer who loved to perform — now has partial hearing loss in one ear after what her parents say was a poorly treated infection.

Now back to the Journal's report on Noem. The Journal reports on an event now known as "the blanket incident," in which Noem angrily fired her Coast Guard pilot because he had apparently caused her to misplace a blanket.

In the blanket incident, Noem had to switch planes after a maintenance issue was discovered, but her blanket wasn’t moved to the second plane, according to the people familiar with the incident. The Coast Guard pilot was initially fired and told to take a commercial flight home when they reached their destination. They eventually reinstated the pilot because no one else was available to fly them home.

Damn, she expected her blanket to magically move from one plane to another without having to lift it herself, huh? And Lewandowski, as her "aide," didn't think it was his job either? That was a pilot job, huh?

No, there's no word on what made this particular blanket important enough to fire the Coast Guard pilot tasked with ferrying her and her "aide" around the country. Was it a treasured heirloom? Was there something hidden in the blanket that Noem would not be able to take on a regular, commercial flight? It's not clear. It was just a really important blanket, for reasons we may never know.

Back to NBC's report:

On Nov. 16, a mental health counselor recorded in Kamilla’s medical records that her mother reported the girl had lost her appetite after being “served food that contained worms.”

A week later, the couple said, children were told to gather in the gym for what they believed would be a Thanksgiving celebration. Excitement spread as families saw tables set with turkey, sandwiches, pastries and pies, they said. The children waited expectantly. But when a parent asked when the celebration would begin, Oksana said, staff told them the holiday meal was for employees, not detainees.

The children, she said, watched despondently as the feast was packed away.

Got it, teasing children with the thought they'd be getting food without worms in it. A detention camp classic, that one.

And switching back to the Journal:

In an incident last year that rankled some senior staff at the agency, Lewandowski made it known to top ICE officials that he wanted to be issued a law-enforcement badge and a federally issued gun, according to people familiar with his push. Officials are typically only issued a badge and a gun after undergoing law-enforcement training.

The administration was preparing to bring on Tom Feeley, a former top ICE official in New York, as its new director when Lewandowski asked Feeley if he would be willing to issue him and several other political officials badges and guns. Feeley declined, and he was subsequently passed over for the top job at ICE.

What's odd about this is that Lewandowski, who is definitely not an opportunistic manslut with a history of anger management issues so stop saying that, is designated as a "special government employee," a "designation under federal ethics law that allows private-sector employees to take advisory roles in government without relinquishing their outside salaries and investments, but caps government service at 130 days in a year." By that definition, there seems no scenario in which Lewandowski would need to be issued a federal badge and firearm, since he is not a "law enforcement" officer and has not been trained as such. He appears to have no justification for being issued a government-provided gun other than a personal desire to ... role play?

NBC:

Sometimes workers make light of their misery, Nikita said. He recalled showing an officer a piece of moldy cabbage. The guard, he said, put it in his mouth and declared it fine — before gagging and spitting it out.

And another small look at Noem's priorities, via the Journal:

Noem, a staunch critic of FEMA who has advocated for the disaster-response agency to be drastically downsized, shocked the agency’s staff when she showed up to its Washington headquarters for her first in-person briefing on Jan. 23, staff said. [...]

Staff were also told not to use the word “ice” in any public messaging about the winter storm because they didn’t want any connection to the increasingly unpopular immigration operation in Minnesota, FEMA staff said.

And a new (Monday) report from The San Antonio Current:

A 2-month-old baby detained at Dilley’s South Texas Family Residential Center has fallen ill and has been described as “choking on his own vomit,” according to Univision reporter Lidia Terrazas.

The child had a medical episode at approximately 3 a.m. Saturday, Terrazas reported in an Instagram video after speaking with the infant’s mother.

“His life is in danger,” U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro said in a live video shared to Instagram Monday afternoon about the child, named Juan Nicolás.

And the Journal:

The pair have lately been using a luxury 737 MAX jet, with a private cabin in back, for their travel around the country, according to people familiar with the matter. DHS is leasing the plane but is in the process of acquiring it for approximately $70 million.

Ah.

You would imagine I have a point to make in all of this, but I really don't. I've happened to be thinking a lot about the rise of Nazi Germany and its subsequent collapse, of late, and on a completely unrelated note I've been thinking about the multi-billion dollar spending spree Noem's Department of Homeland Security has been on as they buy up empty mega-warehouses across the nation (the economy has been slumping recently) to convert them into a massive network of detention camps, even as the current detention camps continue to be exposed for their inhumane and often-dangerous conditions and regime officials take to television to, mostly, feign outrage when anyone suggests the imprisoned families deserve anything better.

Mostly, though, I've been contemplating all those post-World War II discoveries that exposed Nazi Party leaders as astonishingly, almost incomprehensibly indifferent to what was going on around them—so long as their own personal careers, carnal desires, and appetite for luxuries were sated.

They did not particularly care when government functions started to creak under their supposed "reforms." They cared not at all when those creaking functions resulted in hardships, and when war created far more hardships. They were indifferent to the day-to-day management of the detention camps, and remained indifferent as they became death camps.

The camp guards, whose position in the party granted them only a fraction of the luxuries that the upper brass considered their due, could be as violent or as cruel as they liked. Camp officers were encouraged to squeeze food budgets as much as possible, to use medicines either sparingly or not at all, and to work anyone capable of work until there was nothing left of them. There was no interest, from the higher ups, in adhering to even the most primitive decency; one only advanced in the Nazi Party by showing contempt for decency. For mocking it. For calling it decadent, one of the many tendrils of empathy-laced communist thought that needed to be purged in order to reclaim national greatness.

Because that is what the fascist moment demanded. You did not have a government of devoted functionaries; it was a government of hackish, sneering dolts who backstabbed their way to higher and higher echelons and who spent most of their days ignoring the details of their duties in favor of preening, self-satisfaction, self-promotion and personal perversions.

In the camps, there might be not be enough blankets for the families being held captive—and the higher ups didn't give a damn about that, and you could kiss your place in the party goodbye if you mentioned it to them.

But they themselves, in the meantime, might have a dedicated aide whose job it was to always have their own favorite blanket on hand, so that they would never suffer the indignity of being cold while traveling from office to banquet or from banquet to office.

And that was how the regime sorted itself. The biggest sycophants, along with their families and lovers, were elevated, and precious few of them gave a shit whether any of the actual work of government got done because it was easy enough, in an government made up of equally incompetent bootlickers, to manufacture an endless string of excuses for why everything that happened was always some less-connected official's fault. And nobody thought it was even slightly odd to be flitting from opulent ballroom to decadent banquet while the nation collapsed into violent horrors and economic disasters because the grandiose idiots who declared themselves exemplars of the "proper" culture thought it was their God-given right to be decadent while everyone else shivered and starved. They were important; they were entitled to it.

They were vain beyond the point of all reason—that's what I'm saying. They were incompetent because they punished anyone who tried to correct them, and self-absorbed because, in their minds, the only job of government was to be self-absorbed; how could they know how to run a nation when they came in on a promise to purge all of the government "intellectuals" who had the audacity to know things?

Drug addicts. Sexual predators. Hoarders of art and of wealth. Mirror-obsessed narcissists who thought themselves above all others by birth and name and right. Those are the people who filled top party ranks, after gaining the public trust by insisting that it was instead the gays and the immigrants and the non-Christians who were behind all the drugs and perversions and secret conspiracies.

It's astonishing to think that a modern nation with a modern press, an obsessively capitalist society of oligarchs whose fates depended on government competence and basic law and and order, a society that deemed itself the pinnacle of science and of culture both, could be decimated at the hands of dishonest criminal perverts in the rough span of a decade, but that's what happened.

But that is neither here nor there. Where were we, really? Where did I start out, before getting sidetracked so badly?

No, that wasn't it.

Closer, but—ah, that's it. We were talking about the Journal's look at Kristi Noem. And I was wondering whether Noem even knew what her ostensible government job was, given how little we've seen of her actually doing it.

Oh, and I was wondering whether she ever solved her blanket problem.

Having to keep track of your favorite blanket all by yourself? It doesn't feel like something a top party official should have to concern themselves with. Not when they've been put in charge of billions upon billions of dollars—and can squeeze out even more than that, if those managing the detention camps know not to splurge on food, and blankets, and medicine.