Over the past year, US residents have been subjected to the abuses of an increasingly lawless authoritarian state. Our constitutional rights are violated on a daily basis.1 How did we get here?
The denigration of respect and concern for our fellow humans has been instrumental. Whether we want to consider moral philosophy, everyday expressions of empathy and compassion, or religious edicts such as “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Luke 6:31), the actions of Homeland Security (ICE), the State Department, CDC, DOGE, etc. have exemplified the callous disregard for human life.
This has been quite ironic, since much of the wreckage has been done in the name of a punitive, perverted version of Christianity practiced by white christian nationalists such as Russell Vought, the OMB bureaucrat who vowed to traumatize federal employees (reported by ProPublica in 2024):
“We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected,” he said. “When they wake up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can’t do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so.
“We want to put them in trauma.”
Elon Musk, the notoriously unempathetic billionaire, gleefully put USAID in the woodchipper. A year later, an estimated 757,314 people have died from the funding cuts.
As Adam Serwer wrote back in 2018:
. . .
The Trump era is such a whirlwind of cruelty that it can be hard to keep track. This week alone, the news broke that the Trump administration was seeking to ethnically cleanse more than 193,000 American children of immigrants whose temporary protected status had been revoked by the administration, that the Department of Homeland Security had lied about creating a database of children that would make it possible to unite them with the families the Trump administration had arbitrarily destroyed, that the White House was considering a blanket ban on visas for Chinese students, and that it would deny visas to the same-sex partners of foreign officials.
And it's gotten much, much worse. 2
Detained Immigrants Detail Physical Abuse and Inhumane Conditions at Largest Immigration Detention Center in the U.S.
...interviews with 45 people report physical and sexual abuse, medical neglect, and intimidation to self-deport.
Immigrant families protest inside Texas facility housing 5-year-old boy, father detained in Minnesota
AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes
Kaden Rummler said in an interview that he was in agonizing pain and underwent an extensive six-hour surgery to his left eye after he was injured at a Jan. 9 protest over the fatal shooting of a woman by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer in Minneapolis. Rummler said he has no depth perception and can no longer drive.
[The video is horrible to watch. Other protesters have been blinded by these "less lethal" weapons. Another had a finger blown off.]
And then we have cosplay Kristi, in a staged photo-op, posing in front of actual Salvadorian gang members who have been imprisoned in CECOT for years. NONE OF THEM WERE DEPORTED FROM THE US, according to the CBS-censored 60 Minutes episode. Another lie, another piece of social media propaganda for DHS.
The Lies
They're too numerous to mention.3 Don't believe your own eyes... Kristi says that ICE agents feared for their lives when Alex Pretti brandished a gun [i.e., took video with his camera], so it must be true.
“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
― George Orwell, 1984
1 Free speech (1st amendment), the right to assemble (1st), imposition of religion (also 1st – see supposed discrimination against Christians and state-sponsored services with Pete Hegseth's misogynistic pastor), probable cause (4th), due process (5th), and birthright citizenship (14th), for starters.
Plus — new! — the Second Amendment!
Are guns barred at protests, as Kash Patel said? In most states, no“You cannot bring a firearm loaded with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple.”
Compare to these election denialists on January 17, 2021.
Scott Olson/Getty Images
Armed demonstrators protest outside of the Michigan state capital building in Lansing, Michigan.
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