Orchids hunger for your flesh

      If orchids vaguely frighten you — and I find them creepy — there's good reason. Orchids are saprophytic; that is, they obtain their food from decaying organic matter. Other plants, usually. But your rotting body would serve in a pinch.
    Orchids are also deceitful. The flowers of certain species mimic territorial enemies of bees. There's a great term for this, "pseudoantagonism," as opposed to the all-too-real-antagonism we humans experience. With the pseudo version, male bees strike at the insect-imitating petals, trying to drive the illusionary foe off, getting pollen on themselves in the process. Other orchids mimic the smell of nectar that isn't actually there, and hungry bees root around, looking for it, getting dusted with pollen in the process before flying off, disappointed.  

Slipper orchid

        

     Despite orchids' seedy reputation and behavior, my wife and I, being faithful, card-carrying members of the Chicago Botanic Garden, go every February to see the CBG light up the mid-winter darkness with their annual Orchid Show. This year's, "Feelin' Groovy," has a 1960s theme, and while perhaps not as natural a pairing as last year's marriage to subcontinental India, is not bad either. When was the last time you saw a yellow Volkswagen Beetle?
    Orchids are all about inclusivity — they're found all over the globe, including four species above the Arctic Circle. Some grow on bare rocks — several species grow on cacti. They're associated with the tropics, but several species thrive in deserts, and the environment you'd expect them in most, rain forests, are not really best for orchids. 
    They're luxurious plants, mostly good only for show or, in the disapproving words of the Encyclopedia Britannica, "the family is notably lacking in species from which products are derived." 
    With one big exception — vanilla, extracted from Vanilla planifolia. Found in Madagascar, Mexico, Indonesia, various Pacific Islands and ... wait for it ...  Puerto Rico, which I emphasize because, well, Puerto Rico is having its moment in the spotlight, are they not? Enjoying the same Bad Bunny Bounce that caused Democrats to hope that we aren't as royally fucked as we seemed to be last week. 

    Still, I think vanilla is a big enough deal to make the Britannica's "notably lacking" a little unfair. That's almost like saying wood is not good for any practical use beyond building houses ... and furniture. And paper. And cardboard. Okay, not quite like saying that at all.

    Not many orchids this year presented an appearance I consider "The Screaming Baby Face," which is good because ... 

    Oh hell. Okay, confession time. The only reason I'm writing these words is to have something to frame my photos of the Orchid Show, "Feelin' Groovy," which runs until March 22. That mission is accomplished. Tickets to the show are $16 if you are an adult living in Cook County, and $16 if you don't live in Cook County, which makes me wonder why the Botanic Garden makes the distinction at all. Plus $9 per person to get in. And $10 parking. 

     If that seems like a lot, remember: annual memberships start at $141 for an individual. It's worth it. We go dozens of times a year. The answer to the question, "Should we go to the Botanic Garden is alway, always, always, "Yes!" Even when there are orchids.

      
    

'None of us can do everything. But all of us can do something'

 

     Readers sometimes ask me what they can do.
     They don't need to explain exactly what it is they want to do something about. You either know already or never will.
     I take the question seriously. The news is both bad and good. On the bad side, there is not much any individual can do in a nation hurtling in a terrifying direction. We are all on the bus. None of us is driving. The cliff looms.
     On the positive side, there is always something, and taking action seems necessary, to some of us. If only to tell ourselves, "I did something. I didn't just sit by and watch it happen." Pointing and shouting "The cliff!" might not stop the bus. But it could help.
     Those protesting the presence of ICE proved that regular people turning up on ordinary days to witness and record extraordinary abuses have an effect. The bus did seem to veer, maybe even slow. For now, anyway.
     I tell people: Do what you can. You have skills; use those skills. I write stuff, much of which boils down to "The cliff!" It's my job. Others are prompted by some detail of the general national catastrophe.
     For retired Chicago TV newsman Phil Ponce, it was seeing that the two Border Patrol agents suspected of killing Alex Pretti in Minneapolis are, like himself, Hispanic.
     "I expected to see someone directly addressing the Latino ICE agents," said Ponce, 76, former host of "Chicago Tonight." He decided to be that someone.
     "I started thinking how Latino agents are interacting with their own community," he said. "What that might be like."
     He saw an opportunity.
     "I put in my mind the figure of somebody who believes in what he or she is doing as an ICE agent and thought, 'How could I meet them halfway, so I could have a conversation?'"
     Ponce spent days writing a script.
     "I agonized over it, trying to walk the line between being overly preachy and too sympathetic," he said. "I thought, 'How would I talk to my children if one of them were an ICE agent?' If I were talking to my own kid, I wouldn't yell at them. That'll not get you anywhere. That's not what a loving parent does. You have go respect someone, attempt to establish common ground."
     This led to "A Father's Message to Ice," a 2-minute and 41-second video shot last week. I saw it on Facebook and encourage you to take a look.
     He begins talking about himself:
     "My name is Phil Ponce. My parents were born in Mexico — I was born in South Texas, McAllen."

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Ashland v. Ashland or, don't let the grit blind you

Ashland 

      Chicago's gritty history can lead one astray.
      My friend Bill Savage certainly winces at the "gritty" epithet as "a thoughtless reflex" and urges his students not to use it, as a cliche left over from Chicago's coal-stoked days, similar to the Al Capone, rat-tat-tat gloss that obscures much more than it reveals.
     So it was ironic that the reputation, like a piece of grit, temporarily blinded me to our city's sylvan deep past after reading my WBEZ colleague Erin Allen's fine Sunday piece on why Ashland is sometimes an avenue, sometimes a boulevard, of course quoting Bill, a Northwestern professor and Chicago history expert who is assembling a book on Chicago's grid (and man, am I looking forward to that). 
     Finishing the article, I had one question Erin didn't address (in print; it was raised on the radio): why "Ashland"? An evocative name, and I immediately imagined some 19th century slag heap on the west side of the city.
     Sad.
     I lunged for my copy of "Streetwise Chicago" by Don Hayner and Tom McNamee and was reminded that the past is more than our little shoebox diorama perceptions.
     After observing the street was formerly named Reuben Street, it says "Ashland" was chosen "in honor of the Kentucky estate of Henry Clay, which was surrounded by ash trees."
     Oh right. Ash trees. Never thought of that. Which is doubly shameful, since I planted a beautiful cimmaron ash next to my house and enjoyed its shade for 20 years, until the goddamned emerald ash borer to it, despite my best efforts. 

    In my defense, there actually is a Chicago neighborhood named for sooty refuse. Any idea?

    Ashburn. Ashland is a reminder of the numerous Kentuckians who gave up trying to make it in the hardscrabble Bluegrass State and moved to the greener fields of Illinois (including, remember, a certain carpenter named Thomas Lincoln, whose son Abe would thrive here). 
    Ashland, the estate, is in Lexington, Kentucky and the 672-acre homestead (well, 17 acres of it, anyway) is on the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and boasts a blue ash over 400 years old. Seems well worth a visit. 

     Funny, I was reading about Henry Clay — important congressman who, leaving for Washington, ordered that no tree was to be cut in his absence, defeated for the presidency by Andrew Jackson, twice, in 1828 and 1832 — just yesterday, in Matthew Pinsker's excellent "Boss Lincoln" which I plan to write about for President's Day. Lincoln called Clay his "beau ideal of a statesmen" though declined to visit him at Ashland when he was in Lexington, for reasons mysterious. That's the thing about this job — you can head off in one direction, and end up back where you started.

Also Ashland

Hotel's brush with greatness

 

"Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" by Gerhard Richter

      Hotels are not famous for fine art. Just the opposite. Once showcases for generic mass-produced canvases ranging from kitsch to trash, lately they lean toward cutesy black-and-white photos echoing the visual cliche of the moment. Vintage cars. Soda signs. Cowboys.
     So you are forgiven for missing the fact that, for years, what would become the most expensive painting ever sold by a living artist hung largely unnoticed in a Downtown Chicago hotel lobby.
     It was "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" by Gerhard Richter, who is still alive. In fact, Monday, Feb. 9 is his 94th birthday. Richter is having a banner year, with a big show in Paris, and since my going is out of the question, the second best thing is to tell how one of his major works ended up next to the front desk at the Park Hyatt Chicago on Michigan Avenue, and why it is now gone.
     The Pritzker family — the clan of Illinois' courageous governor — runs the Hyatt chain of over 1,000 hotels. In 2000, wanting something to jazz up its new crown jewel, the Park Hyatt Chicago, a 70-story edifice at the corner of Michigan and Chicago, the Pritzkers decided to dig deep.

     “When we were building the hotel, my cousin, Nick, said, ‘Let’s go all in and get a great piece of art,'" Thomas Pritzker, then CEO and now executive chairman, of the Pritzker organization, told Sotheby's in 2014. “So he chose the Richter."
     Richter is an abstract German artist whose work is something of the love child of impressionism and photo realism. "Domplatz, Mailand (Cathedral Square, Milan)" was commissioned in 1968 by the Siemens Corp., the German technology conglomerate, for its Milan headquarters and shows a blurry black-and-white image of the Cathedral Square there.
     Hyatt bought the painting in London for $3.6 million — not exactly cheap to begin with — and hung it in the Park Hyatt.
     I could pretend I know about the painting because my thumb is pressed on the pulse of all things cultural. Though the truth may be actually even cooler, in a lunch bucket vibe way. I've never stayed at the Park Hyatt. The only reason the hotel is on my radar is because it was erected during the late-1990s building boom. Tower cranes were everywhere and, curious guy that I am, I started wondering about the cranes — how do they get up there? — so I took a closer look.
     In 1999, crackerjack photographer Robert A. Davis and I visited the crane atop the nearly-completed Park Hyatt. That adventure bonded me to the place — being at the tip of the crane boom as it swung out 600 feet over Michigan Avenue will do that — and I made a point of circling back to see what it looked like when finished.
     The Richter caught my eye; it's hard to miss being 9 feet square. Guiding out-of-town guests through their Magnificent Mile window shopping, I'd detour into the hotel to check it out.
     The painting hung in the lobby for 15 years, except during 2002, when the hotel lent it to the Museum of Modern Art for a traveling retrospective of 40 years of Richter's work that included the Art Institute of Chicago.

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Puerto Rican Chicago history

     I usually watch the Super Bowl — for the commercials — but this year I think I'll pay a bit more attention to the on-field activities, since my wife and I began enjoying this football business watching the last two Bears playoff games.
    It'll certainly be exciting to see Bad Bunny perform. Not that I could name a song of his if you put a gun to my head. But the way MAGA swooned onto their fainting couch of faux victimization when he was named, and, laughably, created an alternate halftime show starring the Michigan excrescence, Kid Rock, well, one wants him to shine. He seems a nice person, based on his Carpool segment with James Corden, which you might want to take a look at. I really admired Corden's opening question: "When did you tell your family you were going to call yourself 'Bad Bunny' and not 'Benito'?"
     Bad Bunny is very proud of his Puerto Rican heritage. I learned something of Chicago Puerto Rican history when I wrote "Every goddamn day." Puerto Ricans are one of the city's most significant ethnic groups, and imagine many are swelling with pride seeing their guy in the spotlight

     The community exploded into Chicago's consciousness in 1966, after Puerto Rican teens clashed with the police:

June 20, 1966 

     Jose Cruz is not his real name. 

     Anonymity is in order when your life is splayed out in the newspaper in detail, from what you earn as a punch-press operator ($2.22 an hour) to the rent you pay for your second-floor West Side walk-up ($25 a week) to the fact that you purchased your refrigerator and television on the installment plan ($27.18 a month).

     “They belong to me,” Cruz tells the Daily News, jumping the gun. They will belong to him if he makes his payments, the kind of detail that can trip up an immigrant. 

      The story in today’s paper is notable for its ordinariness. Cruz is not a criminal or a victim; he has no complaints and the most modest of dreams: “I would like to move out someday to a larger place.” 

      But the profile does appear in an extraordinary context; a city suddenly waking to its Puerto Rican community. The week before, 100 police and 1,000 Puerto Ricans clashed on the Northwest Side. A police car was overturned and burned, firemen pelted with rocks, their trucks looted. The shock came not so much from the episode’s violence but because it happened at all. 

      In 1950, there were 255 Puerto Ricans living in Chicago. That number rose to 32,371 by 1960. Now it’s 65,000 and, during the riot, “to the police it seemed all of them were on W. Division St. between Damen and California.” 

      In the ensuing hand wringing, the Daily News runs a front-page editorial, in Spanish—“Puerto Ricans must not be strangers in our midst,” it says, translated. “Their culture—the oldest in the Western hemisphere—and their language—revered in world literature—must become part of the life in Chicago. This cannot be done by violence.” 

      Why the riot? Some blame is placed on a failure to communicate. Charles H. Percy, Republican candidate for US Senate, suggests teaching police Spanish. Then there is the difficulty of the scale of life in Chicago: 85 percent of Puerto Rican immigrants come from small rural towns. 

      “The Puerto Ricans come here with an inability to cope with the problems of the city,” Rev. Daniel Alvarez, head of La Casa Central, a social service agency, tells the Daily News. “They don’t find the proper services, they run out of money, they lack the ability to find employment, and they get trapped. . . . They borrow money, they risk everything they have for the $106 one-way ticket to Chicago.” 

      That ticket is significant. Puerto Ricans are “the first ethnic group to come to the United States predominantly by airplane.” The suddenness of the transition—no long voyage, no wait at the border—adds to the shock. Despite difficulties, Puerto Ricans are on their way to becoming the second-largest Latino group in the city. 

      “All these things bring problems, problems that did not exist at home,” says Alvarez. “We are trying to solve them. But it will take time—and understanding.”

Works in progress: Jack Clark

 

Sun-Times delivery truck, 1961 (Photo courtesy of John Chuckman)

     This was a bad week for newspaper fans, with the Washington Post cutting a third of its staff so Jeff Bezos can firehose more money at Donald Trump. Though honestly, the place is supposedly losing $100 million a year, which even for Bezos starts to add up. Today's offering is from our periodic correspondent Jack Clark. I've just begun reading his new memoir, "Honest Labor: Writing & Moving Furniture" — great title, right?

     I’m a newspaper junkie. Every morning I take a walk to my local Walgreens to pick up the Sun-Times and the New York Times. Six dollars. It’s a small price to pay for my daily fix.
     I read the Sun-Times with breakfast but I save the New York Times for late at night, usually just before bed. I got into this habit back in the days of old when you could pick up the early edition of both morning papers the night before.
     When I was a kid, my father would sometimes send me to the local newsstand around 10 p.m. to pick up one or both papers. So, like a lot of other addicts, I blame it all on my upbringing.
     Sometimes, the papers would be late, and a line would form, usually me and a bunch of old guys waiting for those speedy trucks to arrive. Remember those posters on the side promoting Royko or Ann Landers, or some other newspaper star. Neil must have got there a time or two.* The Tribune trucks were white, the Sun-Times blue. (I think the late, great, Daily News trucks were red, but I’m not certain anymore.)
     When I was a teenager, up to no good in the middle of the night, I used to love to watch the newspaper trucks as they came west down Madison Street, hopping from one side of the street to the other, paying no attention to traffic laws as they made their deliveries. They’d drive for blocks on the wrong side of the street if that’s how the stops worked out. The cops never bothered them, except to get a free paper or two to help while away those slow overnight hours.
     As years went on, the papers came out later and later, 11 o’clock, midnight, one in the morning, and then they stopped coming until dawn. I was not happy about this, but I had no one to blame but myself.
     One day the Tribune called. No. They didn’t want to hire me. They’d already explained that they didn’t hire guys like me anymore — guys without a college education. The days of Ben Hecht and Mike Royko were gone. Instead, they wanted to talk to me about subscribing.
      I’d been getting these calls regularly for decades. I was always polite when I declined their offer. If they pushed, I’d give them various reasons: I like to get a little exercise in the morning or I pick up the paper on the way home. I made it a point to tell them I read the Trib every day, and I did until the Zell years came along. (I had friends who’d read the New York Times but not the Chicago papers. I could never understand it. Didn’t they want to know who died?)
     But this one day, the Tribune would not take no for an answer. “Do you know how much money you could save with a subscription?” the guy asked. This was always their biggest selling point, that I was needlessly throwing my money away.
     I explained that I’d been needlessly throwing my money away my entire life. It was now well past the point where saving a couple of bucks a month on newspaper consumption was going to make any difference to my standard of living.
     “Okay, I’ll throw — in Sundays free for the first month,” he said.
     “Look, I’m out of town a lot. I don’t want the papers piling up on the porch.”
     “You just call. We’ll hold the deliveries until you get back.”
     “Yeah. But all I have to do is forget to call one time and every thief in the neighborhood will know nobody’s home.”
     “Look, what can I do to get you onboard here?”
     “Nothing.”
     “If I gave you the paper for free, you wouldn’t subscribe?”
     “That’s right.” And then I made my mistake. I decided to show him how smart I was and explain the real reason I would never subscribe. “Look, why would I want to read the home edition?” This was the one you got with your subscription. It was the very first printing. “It doesn’t come until six in the morning. I can pick up the late edition at one?”
     There was dead silence on the line for a while. I thought he’d actually given up. My genius had won the day.
     “Would you say that again?” he said very slowly, and I had a sudden feeling of nausea.
     I knew I was compounding my mistake but I couldn’t stop myself. I said it all over again.
     I’ve never admitted this publicly before. So before we go on, I’d like to apologize to all the old-timers who liked to read the paper before bed, to all the insomniacs waiting for the sun to come up so they can finally get a bit of sleep, to the newspaper truck drivers, to the cops and cab drivers, to the doormen and security guards, and late-night waitresses and short-order cooks, all those night owls trying to kill a little time before dawn. I’m truly sorry.
     I done it. I confess. I’m the guy.
     Within a week, the Tribune stopped sending the late edition out overnight.
     I was driving cabs at the time and hanging around a White Hen Pantry on Lincoln Avenue. It was a good stop for fresh coffee, a friendly place where they’d let you use the washroom. You could hang around and take a bit of a break and talk to the cops, fellow cabbies, and the newspaper-truck drivers who were all doing the same thing.
     “Where’s the Tribune?” Everybody wanted to know.
     The Sun-Times drivers didn’t know but they knew something was going on, and they looked worried.
     A couple of days later, a Sun-Times driver told me the Tribune was now waiting to deliver the late edition until after the home edition was out. The drivers were still starting at their regular time, but the Tribune was holding the trucks at the loading docks. Nobody knew why and I didn’t say a word. A week later, the Sun-Times trucks disappeared too.
     That persistent salesman probably got promoted to Vice President.
     In my defense, I’d like to say, shouldn’t they have known this without me telling them? How could they not know what time the various editions of their own newspaper went out? Well, that salesman probably didn’t read the paper, only the balance sheets.
     I’ve often wondered how many new subscriptions they got and how many readers they lost in the process. Was it really worth it?
     It was a bad couple of years for me. I finally solved the problem by buying both papers in the morning and saving one for night. That didn’t alleviate my guilt, of course. But with enough time you can get over almost anything.
     And then there was a wonderful period, which I obviously didn’t deserve, when I could pick up the next morning’s New York Times at my local 24-hour Walgreens as early as midnight. This was especially wonderful because it was printed at Freedom Center, the Tribune’s printing plant. This was so funny, that I could get a New York paper hours before any Chicago paper, that I thought of writing about it. I managed to stop myself. Too late I’d learned a valuable lesson. Sometimes you’re better off not showing people just how smart you think you are.
      Some of my favorite memories of my North Side neighborhood were walking out of the great Monday night jazz jam at the old Serbian Village and walking across to the Walgreen’s to get the New York Times on the way home.
     I got to be friendly with the driver. I’m pretty sure he worked for Chas. Levy Circulating Company. If he saw me crossing the street, sometimes he’d hand me a free paper and I wouldn’t even have to go into the store.
     Those days are long gone now, and my crime hardly matters with all the other crimes that have beaten the newspaper business into the ground.
     I haven’t seen a newspaper delivery truck in years. At the Walgreens, which is no longer 24 hours, the newspapers now arrive in ordinary cars.
     The other morning it was two degrees. I was bundled up in layers under a down jacket, with a hat and two hoods on my head. When I got to the Walgreens there was no New York Times. This happens now and then with both papers. Personal cars break down, delivery people get sick, or somebody steals the papers from where they were left in front of the closed store.
      It’s not a big deal. I don’t need my NYT fix until night. So I try to remember to pick one up in my travels that day. But at two degrees, I wasn’t planning to do any traveling, so I picked up the Tribune instead.
     This is something I almost never do. It’s not because I don’t like the Tribune. It’s a pretty decent newspaper again and I do have a dirt-cheap online subscription for when I’m out of town. It’s not even the price. Four-dollar is twice what the Sun-Times cost. It’s the same price as the New York Times.
     And there’s the rub. Later that night, when I turned to section two of the Tribune, there was a story about Trump’s deportations. Not only had I already read it the day before in the New York Times where it originated, I’d already paid four dollars to read it.
     The New York Times is worth four dollars even on their worst days. They have reporters all over the country and all over the world. They don’t rely on other newspapers or wire services to fill their pages, and that comes with a cost.
     And then, to top it off, when I got to the sports section, the Trib didn’t have any coverage of the Bear’s game the night before. You want four bucks and you can’t even stay up a little late for the most important Bear’s game in years? And I’m supposed to give you four dollars. Dream on.
     And the Sun-Times has had its own problems with pricing. I don’t usually buy the Sunday paper. The New York Times is six dollars that day, and that’s really about as much as this junkie wants to spend. I’ll take a quick look at the Sun-Times headline and if it’s something especially interesting, I might pick up a copy.
     The last time I did this, the Walgreens tried to charge me six dollars. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. There’s no arts section. No book section. The comics are a joke. Bring back Willy ‘n Ethel and I might give you a few extra dollars. The way the paper is now, it’s no different than a normal daily edition. It’s only a bit thicker because it’s stuffed full of advertising inserts. I wondered if those advertisers realized how many readers they were going to lose with the new price.
     I took a closer look at the front page and then pointed to the price on the cover. $5 Chicago. $6 elsewhere. “I think this is still Chicago,” I said to the clerk.
     “But that’s how it rings up,” the girl said, and she had this helpless look on her face. Here was another geezer talking in some incomprehensible language. I knew it was a hopeless battle and told her to keep the paper.
     I was going to complain to the Sun-Times about their new price but I knew I wouldn’t have to. Many other people would do the work for me, and the price has since gone back to the more reasonable three dollars.
     I could write on and on about my love affair with newspapers, but this is probably enough for now.
     I know I’m lucky to have the Walgreens so close. It’s only a block from home. And it’s more luck that they carry the New York Times. Some Days they only get one or two copies. I’m pretty sure I’m their steadiest customer at least some of the time. I’m out of town for months on end and I know that one of these days, I’ll come back and the New York Times won’t be there waiting for me.
     Of course, before long, it will all be gone. The age of the newspaper will be over. The only real question is, who dies first?

* Editor's note: Never. Who do you think I am? Jay Mariotti?
 

Epstein files circus hides sex abuse horror in plain sight

"Char Dolly" by Parsons & Charlesworth (Chicago Cultural Center)

      Sure I'm in the Epstein files. Big city columnist, jiggling the ice in my glass aboard the Hollinger corporate jet as it winged its way toward...

     Maybe I shouldn't even mention it. But Jon Stewart confessed his cameo in the scandalous files — a tossed-off suggestion that he narrate a documentary being contemplated — and as my lone appearance is similarly benign, perhaps I should.
     The risk is that doing so further perfumes this true horror with another spritz of triviality.
What the heck, we're on the topic already. I'm not a fan of trigger warnings. But this subject is so grim without the warm glow of celebrity and euphemism the media habitually slathers over it. I like to be direct. If that might upset you, many interesting articles await elsewhere in the paper.
     Jeffrey Epstein was a rich pedophile who raped children, secured for him by his pander, Ghislaine Maxwell, who went around seducing vulnerable girls with tales of money and power. They were debauched by Epstein and a revolving cast of famous pals who no doubt imagined that the girls were consenting. But children can't consent to their own molestation. It's still rape.
     Epstein initially got a tap on the wrist, until the Miami Herald ran a three-part series in 2018 that sent Epstein back to prison, where he killed himself, most likely.
     The Epstein files would not die, however, and became a hobbyhorse of the lunatic right, when they thought the case would besmirch Bill Clinton. When it turned out that their beloved hero was also involved, big time, their interest waned.
     My instinct was to pass on the tawdry mess. Who cares if Bill Gates supposedly cheated on his wife? Nothing in the Epstein files could lower my rock bottom opinion of Donald Trump. If you haven't figured him out long ago, you never will.
     Only two things are worth observing here, and since I haven't heard either said among the 24/7 media chicken ranch squawking on the subject, I will point them out.
     First, evil needs a framework. The ICE and Border Patrol agents who shot Renee Good in the face and put 10 bullets into Alex Pretti would not, I believe, have done so independently, had they strolled out into the street last summer and encountered these two on their own. The federal government first had to hire them, train them, supposedly, outfit them with weapons and, crucially, give them permission to suspend any sense of basic human decency.
Permission is key to hurting others. Bullies are cowards, and must be reassured it's okay. Think.      Why would any super rich guy need to visit Jeffrey Epstein? They have their own planes, their own willing assistants who could scour local roller rinks for underage victims. But they didn't do that. They needed Epstein to assure them that is allowed, on his plane or island. He created a setting where they could be as awful as they wanted to be.

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