The worker had woken up hungover, kinda had been up late using apps and alcohol. A thousand ways this story could have started. Was driving in against the after work traffic. Had a third shift gig at the detention center. Had heard there were protestors again. Since early morning, there had been about four dozens or so, a lot in yellow shirts, he heard. Most of them were still milling around, chanting whatever they had been paid to chant. The police department sent units … to remind those idiots to stay out of the street – and stay alive! The worker could have thought a million different versions of this. Felt any number of ways towards the mounting ire in the public’s demonstrations against anti-immigrant policies. All of it was stupid, over his pay grade, hopefully just goes away. Overnight crew started later in the night, so he was kind of hoping they’d be on to the next social justice march by the time he had to clock in.

But here it was. How things were working out. He got tense. Decided he was angry – not at his sense of helplessness, at libtards, hippies, bots. Who can say when this worker decided to adopt the perspective of the in-group, huddled in solidarity against the othered public. The in-group that protects itself … from threats. The others he apparently came to see as a threat to his group, and therefore himself.

How can I make this assumption? Draw this induction…? Well. This worker drove his truck into a group of elderly, children and clergy at the terminus of his journey that early evening.

When he rolled up the small length of block, they looked even more ragtag than the photos his buddies had texted earlier. Bunch of oldies, really, along with a few mousy women – Barrington moms, groan – a cluster of bearded hipsters in gray t-shirts.

They all needed to get real jobs or go back to nursing home, he thought as he pulled into the driveway.

It was pretty easy for him to look right through them. I cant see you do-goodniks. It was suddenly fairly easy to imagine that anyone stupid enough to get in the way of a giant, growling truck certainly had coming whatever they got from its fenders. It wouldn’t–couldn’t!–be his fault.

And there they all were, when a worker for a private prison, contracted to the federal government’s immigration paramilitary, made the decision to disregard the humanity of several fellow American citizens, to wield two tons of metal and rubber in a carelessly menacing, passive aggressive display of disloyal incivility. When he decided to break an old man’s leg. Injure several others. So he could claim it was just to get to work on time.

The organizational culture in the private prison facility is one tool he and other workers have to help blunt that doubt. The steady diet of party propaganda is another, terrifying him while they goad his need for easy answers, consumable bromides designed to soothe away the stinging sense of injustice, inequality, unfairness, exploitation, alienation … the list goes on, but the cure is simple. I cannot, as a disciple of the teachings of Yeshuas of Nazareth, blame the man for his ideas. He was prey to them, the same as the next mind it’s own pernicious comforts. But his actions; I can demand more from the Good German.

Never Again needs us all. We can stand together and out our bodies on the line. Will we? Will you?