Assorted shutdown fallout has started to make news, and the mistake you might make is thinking of these circumstances as collateral damage or unintended consequences or anything other than bonus meanness.

When the Trump administration decided it was worth a shutdown’s negative PR to try to jack up people’s health insurance premiums (because after all these years, Tan Suit Bad!), these are the kinds of things that helped them embrace their path. These folks depend on the public digesting a different rationale for each transgression, but the minute people start considering acts in context with the others, the excuses fall apart.

When a shutdown means suspension of reporting accurate economic data, that is part of the point. Alternate realities are allergic to hard stats.

When a shutdown puts hunger back on the table for low-income single mothers and children, that is part of the point. They deserve what they get for trying to get by without a man.

When a city’s legal minority population suspends its annual parade or festivities because they’re afraid ICE might target the event, that is part of the point. It was never about legal/illegal or “doing things the right way.” It is about feeling intimidated and, ultimately, getting the fuck out of this country.

Similarly, do you still have friends wondering how ICE could make phrases like “ICE casual tear gas” a reasonable thing to Google?

“It seems reasonable to expect that in an American city, you could go a block away from your own house and not worry about getting tear gassed when you’re just getting home from preschool.“

It used to be reasonable. Those were good times.

Sort of like when your government wasn’t using a 5-year-old autistic girl as leverage to lure her father into ICE custody when they could have gone through conventional channels.

See the consistency of the agenda behind the headlines, and call it out. Others have said it, but it’s never been more true: The cruelty is the point.

Right between the pretty lies they tell …