In 1936, in the depths of the Great Depression, Dale Carnegie wrote his classic ‘How to Win Friends and Influence People,’ the granddaddy of all self-help books.  It was 300 pages and 75,000 words of advice for Americans hoping to enhance their popularity.   Now, 90 years later, winning friends and influencing people can be accomplished with two words and a punctuation mark: ‘F*** ICE!’  For the more demure, ‘ICE OUT!’ can be an acceptable substitute.

Never has it been so easy to garner affection and acceptance on the left.  Just trash ICE and you get standing ovations at awards shows, approval from your fellow lefties, and plenty of ‘likes’ on social media.  It’s cheap, there is absolutely no cost, and you can use the vile pejorative of your choosing:  Fascists. Sadists. Nazis. Gestapo.  Slave patrols.  More than a few malleable sorts have used those slurs to justify attacking ICE agents with rocks, Molotov cocktails, and even vehicles.

Some prominent politicians are leading the insult parade.  Senator Chuck Schumer, hanging on for dear life politically, calls ICE the ‘secret police,’ which is actually mild compared to the vitriol spewed by Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, Chris Murphy, and scores of others.  Even newly-elected, so-called ‘moderate’ Democratic governors Mikie Sherrill and Abigail Spanberger have joined the hit squad. Sherrill urges New Jerseyans to record videos of ICE, while Spanberger orders Virginia law enforcement to stop cooperating with the agency. It’s never too soon to display your anti-ICE virtue!

Athletes are also piling on.  One of the more grotesque slanders came from NBA head coach Glenn ‘Doc’ Rivers, who claimed that all ‘brown people’ in the USA, legal or not, should be terrified. Presumably, his nickname is not because Doc earned a Ph.D.  And teachers, many of whose students are failing miserably, are leading their kids in anti-ICE walkouts. Reading and math take a back seat to showing the proper hatred of ICE.  One wonders about a student whose mom or dad joined ICE to round up some bad guys and make America safer.  What does that young ‘un do when classmates – the hipsters, the Goths, the jocks, the theater kids – all walk out and call his parents murderers?

Here’s one of those thought experiments: Suppose an award winner at the Grammys had paid tribute to a few of the young women murdered by illegal immigrants.  Just as famed singers require one name only, conservative America knows some victims by their first names – Jocelyn, Rachel, Laken.  Mentioning them at an awards show might elicit a smattering of applause, maybe some quizzical looks, and it could be a career-ender for any artist with the courage to do that.

The vicious war on ICE has one bright spot. Visit social media, and you’re bound to see a post from some Democratic politician denouncing ICE. It’s a mandatory part of the office these days.  But browse the comments below, and you’ll see many, many people inviting ICE to visit their towns and even offering to buy them lunch. That’s hardly a scientific study, but millions of regular folks are very happy that ICE is doing its job. It ain’t always pretty, but thousands of very bad people have been removed from the United States.

ICE agents, most of them dedicated officers with good intentions, might take solace in something Dale Carnegie wrote nine decades ago in his famous book:  ‘Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn … and most fools do.’