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Wednesday
Here’s a news item with a silver lining. As reported by The Atlantic,
President Donald Trump’s plan to double the size of the ICE workforce has met a foe more powerful than any activist group….It is the ICE personal-fitness test.
Apparently more than a third of the applicants are failing. To pass, they must do 15 push-ups and 32 sit-ups and run 1.5 miles in 14 minutes. One career ICE official described the situation as “pathetic.”
A long-time observer of ICE videos, meanwhile, told an NBC reporter, “They’re out there looking like Buzz Lightyear …they’re fat…just ridiculous. They’re quirky, they’re dorky, they can’t run, they fumble their guns…they can even chase after their own cars.
Nor is the physical the only problem. Some of the new hires are also dropping out of the special federal-law-enforcement training academy after flunking exams on immigration law and Fourth Amendment limits on officers’ search authority. (And this even though they had access to their notes.)
There are even people with backgrounds in criminal behavior and drug use applying to ICE, along with Proud Boys and men who play at weekend warriors.
It sounds like Shakespeare’s Falstaff has been put in charge of recruiting.
In Henry IV, Part II Falstaff is drafting men to go fight in the latest war. Being Falstaff, however, he’s open to accepting bribes from those who don’t want to serve. Bullcalf initially pleads a version of Trump’s bone spurs excuse, contending he caught a cold while celebrating the king’s coronation. When this doesn’t work, he then offers “ten shillings in French crowns.” Mouldy does the same, and they get the result they desire:
Falstaff: Mouldy and Bullcalf: for you, Mouldy, stay at home till you are past service: and for your part, Bullcalf, grow till you come unto it: I will none of you.
When Justice Shallow observes that these two are far superior to Wart, Feeble, and Shadow, Falstaff replies,
Will you tell me, Master Shallow, how to choose a man? Care I for the limb, the thewes [sinews], the stature,bulk, and big assemblance of a man! Give me the spirit, Master Shallow.
He determines that Wart has this spirit, even though he proves entirely incompetent when it comes to wielding a firearm. Although Shallow, in a masterpiece of understatement, diplomatically observes, “He is not his craft’s master,” Falstaff claims to be satisfied:
Come, manage me your caliver [arquebus]. So: very well: go to: very good, exceeding good. O, give me always a little, lean, old, chapt, bald shot. Well said, i’ faith, Wart; thou’rt a good scab: hold, there’s a tester [silver coin] for thee.
Shadow, meanwhile, is so skinny that Faustus notes, “He presents no mark to the enemy; the foeman may with as great aim level at the edge of a penknife.”
And finally, Feeble:
And for a retreat; how swiftly will this Feeble the woman’s tailor run off! O, give me the spare men, and spare me the great ones.
According to the Atlantic article, official police departments have higher standards and pay higher standards. So there you have it: those who can, work for the police; those who can’t, for ICE.
Falstaff’s army.
