by William Skink

Tonight I went downtown for a date night with the wife (and baby) because grandma and grandpa had our other wild creatures for the evening. We got a good 20 minutes in the wine bar before baby got fussy, requiring that I take a quick stroll outside to calm her down.

The first person I saw, a woman walking toward me, appeared slightly disoriented and was audibly talking to herself, muttering profanities. I took a left down the alley to avoid her. I looped around to Pine street, where the new art park will soon be installed, and as I walked toward Higgins I noticed another mentally unstable person who I recognized from the shelter, primarily because he pulled a knife on me as I escorted him from the building one day. For that offense he got a disorderly conduct ticket, a misdemeanor.

The systemic atrophy that keeps unstable people from getting the help they need, for me, is more threatening than the possibility of becoming a victim of a statistically rare mass-casualty shooting event. Obviously that perspective won’t be a part of the unfolding narrative that will ensue this week after the deadliest mass-casualty shooting event to happen on American soil went down early this morning in Orlando.

Regarding the political narrative, the reaction from opposing camps will be the same stale, predictable reactions we have become disturbingly accustomed to. To put it in terms of the presidential campaign, The Donald will demonize followers of Islam, while Hillary will perform the liberal alchemy of transforming tragedy into a call for gun control.

And both will be wrong.

If what is initially being reported holds up, the assailant of this massacre doesn’t fit the quick mold of an Islamic fundamentalist or a deranged killer that more gun controlling regulation would have stopped. He had a firearms license that not just anyone can obtain, and despite the reported catalyst of seeing men kiss in public, dad is saying his alleged killer son wasn’t religious.

And then there’s that company he worked for, G4S:

In a surprising discovery, the Palm Beach Post first reported that according to state records, Orlando shooter Omar Mateen – who as we reported earlier was licensed as a security guard and also holds a firearms license – was employed by the US subsidiary of G4S plc, a British multinational security services company, whose US-headquarters are located in Jupiter, Fla, and which also happens to be the world’s largest security company by revenue.

The article cites a claim by Judicial Watch that G4S has been contracted by Uncle Sam to essentially drive and dump illegal immigrants in locations like Phoenix, avoiding those bothersome bureaucratic processes the Feds would be required to adhere to, were they doing the dumping. From the link:

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is quietly transporting illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to Phoenix and releasing them without proper processing or issuing court appearance documents, Border Patrol sources tell Judicial Watch. The government classifies them as Other Than Mexican (OTM) and this week around 35 were transferred 116 miles north from Tucson to a Phoenix bus station where they went their separate way. Judicial Watch was present when one of the white vans carrying a group of OTMs arrived at the Phoenix Greyhound station on Buckeye Road.
…
A security company contracted by the U.S. government is driving the OTMs from the Border Patrol’s Tucson Sector where they were in custody to Phoenix, sources said. The firm is called G4S and claims to be the world’s leading security solutions group with operations in more than 100 countries and 610,000 employees. G4S has more than 50,000 employees in the U.S. and its domestic headquarters is in Jupiter, Florida. Judicial Watch is filing a number of public records requests to get more information involving the arrangement between G4S and the government, specifically the transport of illegal immigrants from the Mexican border to other parts of the country. The photo accompanying this story shows the uniformed G4S guard that transported the OTMs this week from Tucson to Phoenix.

Fodder for the right, and fodder for the less-right (because the left doesn’t exist).

As for G4S, I can’t imagine a private security firm’s business culture could contribute to a monster that so efficiently dehumanized socially constructed “others” he was capable of laying waste to a gay nightclub in Orlando. I’m sure the Democrats and Republican in Florida who have taken G4S money this election cycle will want to know more about the kind of business G4S is doing in the states, right?

I wish I could do myself the favor of just avoiding the news cycle this week. It’s June in Westeros, so I might as well enjoy it. Besides, it’s too late to build any more walls.

Winter is coming…