Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution grants authority to the federal government:
“To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions; To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.”
Article II, Section 2 grants this authority, among others, to the President:
“The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States.”
This is the office that calls the military into national service.
Article VI, Clause 2—the Supremacy Clause—states:
“This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”
The Tenth Amendment cannot plausibly be interpreted to grant states the right to thwart the authority or laws of the national government. There is no such thing as “states’ rights.” States are granted powers; people retain their rights. State power exists only at the pleasure of the national government. The rights of the people are limited only by reason.
This constitutional framework provides all the authority the President needs to nationalize the Minnesota National Guard—or the National Guard of any other state—when necessary to provide troops for a legitimate federal purpose.
However, if there is any question about this authority, Congress made it explicit in the Insurrection Act (10 USC §§ 331–335, enacted in 1792).
Section 331 — Federal aid for State governments states:
“Whenever there is an insurrection in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.”
Leaders of states in rebellion against the national government often emphasize the phrase “upon the request of its legislature or of its governor,” while ignoring the subsequent sections, which override state consent.
Section 332 — Use of militia and armed forces to enforce Federal authority states:
“Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
Section 333 — Interference with State and Federal law further states:
“The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it— (1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State and of the United States within the State that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”
What is occurring in Minneapolis constitutes an insurrection. Minnesota is in rebellion against the national government. The governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, and the mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, are failing to defend the civil rights of the citizens of that state and of the Republic. The state is interfering with the execution of federal law.
The President not only has the authority to deploy the military into Minneapolis—he is obligated to do so. Failure to act would constitute a failure in the President’s core duties as Chief Executive of the United States. History regards as heroic those Presidents who act:
In 1871-72, President Ulysses S. Grant used federal troops to suppress domestic insurrection carried out by the Ku Klux Klan during Reconstruction. Acting under the Enforcement Acts of 1870–1871, particularly the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, Grant declared martial law in parts of South Carolina, suspended habeas corpus, and deployed federal troops to arrest hundreds of Klansmen. The KKK was effectively dismantled for a generation. Grant justified these actions because state authorities were either unable or unwilling to protect the civil rights of citizens guaranteed by the Constitution, making federal intervention both lawful and necessary.
In 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower federalized the Arkansas National Guard and deployed the 101st Airborne Division to enforce the Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education. Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus had used the state National Guard to block the integration of Little Rock Central High School. Eisenhower responded by removing the Guard from state control, placing it under federal command, and sending active-duty troops to protect Black students. Eisenhower acted under Article II authority and the Insurrection Act, making clear that state defiance of federal court orders would not be tolerated.
In 1962-63, President John F. Kennedy used federal force to enforce civil rights during confrontations in Mississippi and Alabama. In 1962, when Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett resisted the court-ordered enrollment of James Meredith at the University of Mississippi, Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard and deployed U.S. Army troops to restore order after violent riots erupted. In 1963, Kennedy again federalized the Alabama National Guard to enforce desegregation at the University of Alabama over Governor George Wallace’s objections. In both cases, Kennedy acted on the principle that when states obstruct federal law and deny constitutional rights, the President not only may act—but must act.
On November 5, 2024, I voted for a man of action. I voted for law and order. I voted for the United States Constitution. I have regretted some of the votes I cast in the past. I do not want to regret this one. Action is needed now. If the President does not act, the nation risks descending into civil war. History will judge harshly Trump’s failure to act in this moment.
“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.” —Preamble to the United States Constitution
Today, we mark the birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. Whatever his personal failings, King loved America enough to hold it accountable to its ideals, insisting that equality and freedom are not abstract aspirations but binding commitments. The torch of his dream helped guide the country out of contradiction. An assassin’s bullet made sure he did not live to see America thrown back into it.
Standing at the Lincoln Memorial, King reminded the nation that the American experiment is measured not by its words alone, but by whether it fulfills its promises to all its people. King’s dream did not reject America—it called the country to become itself, to judge individuals not by their identities, but by their character. The man came bearing republicanism, the belief that a nation’s power derives from the People, exercised through representative government, with citizens’ virtue and the common good as its foundation.
The Democratic Party stands King on his head. Indeed, the party of slavocracy and Jim Crow subverted America’s promise from its inception. The party now openly channels anti-American sentiment. As the Good Book teaches us, God places challenges or adversaries—sometimes symbolized as Satan—in a nation’s path to test it. These obstacles are meant to push the people to confront injustice, overcome both external and internal evils, and achieve a more righteous, perfected nation.
The answer to the polling question asking whether ICE should be abolished is a proxy for the deeper question: Shall we have open borders? A CNN poll finds that more than three-fourths of Democrats effectively want open borders—hardly unexpected. Only a little more than one in ten Republicans do.
But there is an even more profound question underlying that one: whether one believes a nation should have borders at all, which is another way of asking whether there shall be nations. The answer to this question is everything.
The divide between Democrats and Republicans is wide and unbridgeable. It has always been substantial, to be sure, but the gulf between the parties today is as deep as it was when the nation stood at the threshold of the Civil War in the late 1850s. The parties represent two different conceptions of the future: either an American future or a future without America.
“Welcome to America,” by Jacob Magraw-Wright
This is tragic, given that we are celebrating the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence—the document that put absolutism and monarchy on notice. Instead of a year spent reflecting on the greatness of the American Republic, we must devote our energies once again to confronting forces that seek to disunite us. I worry that the patriots no longer have the energy required to stand up for the nation. I fear that decades of emasculation and America-bashing have rendered too many men impotent. This moment will test whether America still has the stones to overcome obstacles thrown in its path.
I have been arguing since 2020—when it became obvious to anyone with open eyes and ears that the country was in deep trouble—that the real divisions in politics are not superficial or partisan, but profoundly moral and philosophical: populism versus progressivism, nationalism versus transnationalism, individualism versus collectivism, democracy versus technocracy, and republicanism versus corporatism.
The opposing sides of these binaries together constitute a larger binary: American versus anti-American. Each pair marks an axis of political identity. Together, they form a political grammar: to speak in one term is already to reject the other; to locate oneself on one end is to be positioned against its opposite.
These are not neutral preferences but rival camps. One cannot inhabit both sides at once. These are not positions along a spectrum but lines of division—populism or progressivism, nationalism or transnationalism, individualism or collectivism, democracy or technocracy, republicanism or corporatism.
This follows from the three foundational laws of logic.
The Law of Identity holds that whatever exists has a determinate identity; a thing is itself and not another (this is why, e.g, the transgender individual is an impossible individual).
The Law of Noncontradiction holds that the same thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respect; a claim cannot simultaneously affirm and deny the same predicate. For example, the alleged fusion of populism and progressivism is a falsehood.
The Law of the Excluded Middle establishes bivalence: every proposition is either true or false, with no third option between them. In short, either the people govern themselves, or they are governed by something else.
Consider what Democrats want (they confess this openly): big, intrusive government; control over the socialization of our children; administrative and corporate control over our bodies and choices—the medicines we take, the foods we eat, the media we consume, the words we say; the privileging of selected ethnic, racial, and sexual minorities over the rights of the individual; a disarmed population; bargain-basement wages for workers; the diminishment of Western culture through the imposition of multiculturalism; and global governance.
There is a word for what Democrats want: authoritarianism. Indeed, there is more than one word for it: totalitarianism, serfdom—many words apply. However, the following words appear in the Party literature and pronouncements only as glittering generalities: autonomy, democracy, freedom, and justice. Their plans will cancel the substance of each of them in action. In fact, as the record of history makes clear, they have already weakened all of these.
Columbia (c. 1890, artist unknown)
The Statue of Liberty was conceived by French abolitionist Édouard René de Laboulaye and designed by Frédéric Auguste Bartholdi as a celebration of liberty and republican government, a tribute to the American Revolution, and a symbolic nod to the end of slavery after the Civil War. Its full original name makes this clear: “Liberty Enlightening the World.”
Lady Liberty is a republican symbol. She had nothing to do with immigration. In France, the female personification of republican liberty is called Marianne. Emerging during the French Revolution, Marianne embodied the ideals of liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity)—a civic, secular figure representing the sovereignty of the people rather than monarchy or empire.
This shared republican imagery forged a deep symbolic connection between France and the United States: when France gifted Liberty Enlightening the World to America in the nineteenth century, the statue fused these traditions—Marianne’s revolutionary spirit with America’s own Lady Liberty—affirming a transatlantic commitment to republican self-government, popular sovereignty, and the universal aspiration toward freedom. America’s own Columbia guided the founding and expansion of the Republic.
“American Progress,” John Gast, 1872.
Like Columbia in the United States, Marianne served as a symbolic guide for a new republic, appearing in art, coins, and public buildings as a reminder that the nation derived its authority from its citizens. Its torch burned out; France lost its way. We mustn’t allow the nightmare antithesis of progressivism extinguish the flame of liberty in America.
Those who would put out liberty’s light have been at it for a long time. In 1903, transnationalists—cultural figures, philanthropists, and writers who elevated the message of an 1883 poem by Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”—repurposed the statue, mounting a plaque with Lazarus’ poem inside its pedestal. The poem was not commissioned as the statue’s mission statement. It was not displayed on the statue at the dedication (which occurred decades earlier). The plaque reflected Lazarus’s personal humanitarian views, not the views of the nation.
What did the country think? A few decades later, in the 1920s, the nation, with populists and nationalists—in a word, patriots—leading the way, would sharply restrict the flow of immigration for more than forty years. The nation needs another forty years. The antithesis smears the patriots with invectives—“anti-immigrant,” “bigot,” “chauvinist,” “intolerant,” “nativist,” “racially prejudiced.” To hell with the antithesis.
Progressives are going full fascist right before our eyes. The street elements leverage anarchist and communist symbology, but the function is corporate statist. (Remember, Hitler called his politics “socialist,” too.) The neoconfederate attitude among Democratic Party leaders is the mark of the managed decline of the Republic. Those in the streets and those in the suites seek either the dissolution of the Union or a one-party state. The racist element is obvious in anti-white bigotry. The opposite of the American thesis could not be more explicit.
Whatever the problems one may have with the Republican Party—and I have a few—the choice in November 2026 is clear if one wishes to keep the United States of America. This does not mean we cannot have a system with multiple political parties. It does mean that the core of each party must have the foundational principles of the Republic at the core of their respective platforms. A stable constitutional republic can tolerate neither a movement nor a party that stands in the way of American greatness.
Many of us have seen these videos—or perhaps readers have experienced this personally, tragically, sometimes, even with a loved one—where a person shouts repeatedly phrases like “Fuck off!” or “Go kill yourself!”
You may have noticed that the phenomenon is almost exclusively associated with woke progressive types, especially trans-identifying individuals. I say “almost” to be charitable; I’ve never heard conservatives or liberals do this (strong executive function). There may be some, but there’s a reason why this is characteristic of those who identify as queer or woke, which I will come to.
The phenomenon has features indicative of mental illness, which may or may not be organic. Have you ever heard of perseveration? This is a state in which a person’s speech (or thought) becomes stuck in a loop, causing them to repeatedly chant the same phrase, often at the top of their lungs in monotone (or internally, such as in cases of selective mutism, which sufferers attest to).
This happens when executive control over language breaks down. Instead of choosing words deliberately, the brain locks into automatic, high-emotion speech patterns that repeat without flexibility. This feedback loop is a sign of dysfunction in the frontal lobe. It can result from a structural defect or chemical imbalance, external triggering in defective or primed individuals, or intoxication.
Brain-locking instances occur during intense emotional arousal, such as panic, rage, or stress, or when the deep animal part of the brain is disinhibited. We can call it “panic-chanting” or “rage-chanting” for shorthand. In these moments, the brain’s threat system overwhelms the parts responsible for inhibition and reasoning, causing speech to become aggressive, primitive, and repetitive.
Emotionally charged phrases like “Fuck off” or “Go kill yourself” are especially likely because they’re easy to produce and carry strong emotional force, even though the person may no longer be consciously intending their meaning (trance states often accompany the phenomenon).
In humans, such phrases are emotionally high-salience, socially aggressive, and conditioned through past use; the person deploys them whenever confronted by triggering stimuli. We see this in other mammals, as well, such as stressed cats howling. It signals that the mammal is potentially dangerous, but it also signals danger in primates, as well—even those with big brains. When a physically restrained detainee chants, “I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!” “Don’t touch me!” “I’m disabled!” or any number of other phrases common in police encounters, one must be especially cautious. The police understand this, which is why they deploy restraint holds or devices.
A person in a brain-lock cannot control their actions, obviously. This was why straitjackets and tranquilizing drugs and devices (which immobilize the person) have been part of institutional psychiatry for decades. Indeed, the phenomenon often suggests neurological injury or a psychiatric condition. When I cover the history of this in my course Freedom and Social Control, students often gasp, “How could we have been so cruel?” But the reality is that these interventions work; what is unleashed by internal dysfunction can be contained by external restraint. What appear as torture devices have a calming effect. Not wanting to experience them again builds in self-control (although some seek out weighted blankets and the like).
"Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off. Fuck off"
My wife heard this from the other room and said "It sounds like a chicken".
A classic example of a white liberal boomer female not minding her own business. The comments from the guys are priceless. pic.twitter.com/qXov8hhwoV
— Martyupnorth®- Unacceptable Fact Checker (@Martyupnorth) January 15, 2026
We see this in anti-ICE protests and transactivism (sometimes manifesting in the latter as literal barking), but we also see it in other public settings, such as the recent video of a woman who objects to men duck hunting. Have you seen this video? The hunters laugh it off, but it’s disturbing to watch.
We also saw it in a recent video in a park where a woman, after being asked a question by a reporter, David Zeer, childlike chants a limited catalog of short, insulting phrases. It can weird out even normal people. Zeer tries to reason with her, but it’s only by getting away from the situation that the woman calms down. She appears normal again at a distance. Even for otherwise normally appearing persons, when triggered, intrusive thought loops in humans collapse vocabulary into repetitive high-charge phrases. The phrases are simultaneously command-like, insulting, and profane.
REPORTER GETS HECKLED: "THIS IS THE STATE OF THE US RIGHT NOW"
Alcohol or drug intoxication can increase the likelihood of this kind of speech lock. Many observers have wondered whether the woman triggered by the Zeer in the park is intoxicated. Zeer encountered other people with this tendency that day, one of whom he was actually able to calm with his relentless calm demeanor (Zeer is a remarkably patient man). You can see that many in the park that day are emotionally dysregulated individuals.
This is not Tourette’s or coprolalia (involuntary utterance of obscene or aggressive phrases), but more like echolalia-like looping (repeating others’ words), only auto-generated.
As implied by the foregoing, the loop can continue until interrupted by an external distraction. Sometimes it resolves with a shock intervention, such as overpowering command voice, macing (CN gas) and pepper spraying, or flashbangs (stun grenades), but not always. Fatigue can also resolve the loop; I have seen people exhaust themselves incessantly repeating the same phrase. However, some people are almost indefatigable, which stresses out everybody around them, amplifying the danger.
Cops are human, too, which is why anti-ICE demonstrators blow whistles (I have taken to calling them “cicadas,” those annoying insects prominent in the southern United States where I grew up). The whistles are not to warn “neighbors” of ICE operations but to trigger a reaction from cops, which can then be used for anti-government propaganda. The chanting often begins as a tactic to provoke officers, then brain-locking follows.
Physical removal from the situation allows for emotional cooling, which is why police are quick to separate such individuals from reinforcers in the environment, putting them in the back of a patrol car. It’s sad to see. It’s tough to watch. But intervention or removal is often necessary for the sake of the person. The recent instance of a woman pulled from her car is presented by the media as overreach by law enforcement, but you can see all the signs of brain-lock in the video. The repetition is self-reinforcing: hearing the phrase triggers it again, creating a loop, which is why action is often necessary.
Another reason for removal is that brain-lock is often triggered in mob situations where it becomes contagious. A crowd of people can be swept up in the chanting—what we know as mass psychogenic madness—even those who do not suffer from whatever is disordering the brain-locked. Such is the madness of crowds.
If readers will permit me a moment of digression, which will become significant at the end, The Madness of Crowds was the title of a book by Douglas Murray published in 2019. Murray argues that modern Western societies have descended into a form of collective hysteria driven by identity politics, particularly around the topics of gender, race, sexuality, and transgender issues. He posits that these discussions, once grounded in the pursuit of equality and justice, have devolved into rigid, unforgiving orthodoxies that stifle nuance, free speech, and rational debate, often fueled by activist movements and social media platforms.
The phrase “the madness of crowds” originates from the 1841 book, in three volumes, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Scottish journalist Charles Mackay, an early study of crowd psychology that chronicled historical examples of mass hysteria.
Murray structures his critique around metaphors like “hardware” (biological realities) and “software” (cultural constructs), contending that misapplications of these concepts lead to societal divisions, victimhood hierarchies, and a “grand derangement” where facts are subordinated to feelings and power dynamics. He calls for a return to universal humanist principles to counteract what he sees as divisive, quasi-religious fervor in progressive causes, warning that such madness risks undermining the very progress achieved in civil rights.
In such cases of mass hysteria, especially after triggering, it’s no longer necessarily a deliberate attempt to communicate or insult, but a sign that emotional and speech systems are running without higher cognitive control. Mobs are especially dangerous, as we have seen in the anti-ICE protests or witnessed during the 2020 Antifa/BLM riots. It’s why Trump should invoke the Insurrection Act to interrupt the train before it reaches the station. (He should have invoked the Act early in the Antifa/BLM riots, but he got bad advice from those around him during his first term as President. See Send in the Troops.)
This is yet another reason why the manipulation of fragile people by Democrats is so objectionable. Democrats are quite cruel in this regard, especially when they affirm the delusions associated with people prone to chanting—delusions they often put into the heads of people they seek to control and weaponize. These are the people who are flooding our streets to protest ICE and Trump. You can see the depth of ideological indoctrination when leftists irrationally insist that Trump is a “fascist” or a “king.” It’s typical of the disorder we recognize as Trump derangement syndrome (TDS). You know from experience that such persons are impossible to reason with. The reasoning part of the brain is suspended. The vulnerable are primed with TDS.
One sees the derangement when woke types claim that abstractions are real without evidence, such as with the claim of “systemic racism” or “white supremacy” attributed to conservatives, while ignoring the best case for systemic racism, namely Democratic control over America’s central cities (the “Blue City”), where they impoverish and make dependent minorities with predictable results, such as high levels of crime and violence. (I have published several essays on this topic on this platform over the years.)
One of the early indicators of a person susceptible to chant-triggering is the constant re-telling of the same stories—not over time or in different settings, but after having already told the story in the same setting. Most of us have met these types of people. I’m not telling many readers something they don’t already know. I could give examples, but out of respect for their identity and reputation, I won’t.
Such vulnerable types, many primed by indoctrination, others primed by unresolved trauma, are perfect subjects for the New Fascism, as we saw during the COVID-19 pandemic, where progressives were eager to see the state engage in a wide range of authoritarian action against those they are instructed to find disagreeable for one reason or another.
These types are drawn to cult-like movements. It’s why progressives seek affinity with Muslims. They fit perfectly the diagnosis detailed by Erich Fromm in his Escape from Freedom, where he specifies the authoritarian personality type. In previous essays, I have characterized such individuals as “zombies,” walking around chanting “Brains! Brains!” Or, alternatively, “parrots,” squawking things like “Trump’s a felon! Trump’s a felon!” or “Trump’s a pedo! Trump’s a pedo!” (See “Hey, Ma. The Zombies are Marching Again”; “Trump is a Felon!” The Squawking of Party Parrots.)
Some of them even come on my Facebook posts and chant and squawk like this. However, the platform X is full of zombies and parrots. I have had to systematically ignore transactivists who repeat the same phrase incessantly. “Trans women are really women!” or “Trans rights are human rights!” repeated a dozen or more times as a list. This happens in other settings, as well. Have you seen the woman? This goes on for several minutes. It is uncomfortable to watch.
I’ve been asked by Facebook friends why I don’t unfriend them. It’s because I’m charitable and tolerant. I pity them, frankly. However, I confess, I’m tempted to, and occasionally I do unfriend them. On occasion, I have had to block them. I had to do it with one individual during the Paris Games during the controversy over male boxers allowed to compete in the women’s sport. The man kept chanting insults. I banned him as much for the sake of others as for my own sake. Some individuals are insufferable and, unlike the police, I don’t have to deal with them on the street. The police have the patience of saints. I don’t have that much patience. But I try.
Earlier, I said that I have not personally seen conservatives or liberals do this. I also noted the phenomenon of the madness of crows. Reflecting on these observations, I want to close with a personal anecdote.
In 2011, during the protests over Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker and state Republicans eliminating collective bargaining rights for teachers (Act 10), I was caught up in crowd madness (I reflect on my participation in those protests and compare them to what occurred on January 6 here: The Relative Ethics of Occupying Capital Buildings). I had yet to shed the progressive influence on my politics, but my liberal core remained; nonetheless, after waiting in the cold for hours waiting for Walker to show up at a business meeting in Green Bay, after most of the crowd had gone home, Walker finally showed up (strategically late, I suspect), I joined the mob in chasing Walker’s convoy to the gates, which were closed by security, leaving the mob to chant “Recall Walker!”
There was a cadence to the chant that entrained me, and I felt the rational part of my brain retreat, leaving me in a trance-like state with Id exposed. Even though I opposed the government’s action (I believe in organized labor, albeit its co-option by progressivism has admittedly greatly weakened my sense of solidarity), I left for home feeling deeply ashamed at having allowed myself to get caught up in the madness. I was ashamed not only because, as a sociologist who teaches the problem of the mob abstractly, I should have known better, but as a man who strives to be reasonable, I should have concretely known better. As readers might imagine, Douglas Murray’s 2019 book helped quite a bit here. As did Mattias Desmet’s The Psychology of Totalitarianism, published in 2022 (see The Future of a Delusion: Mass Formation Psychosis and the Fetish of Corporate Statism for an application of that work).
I had never behaved that way before. And I have never behaved that way since. It was a wake-up call. Indeed, shaken by this moment, I began my journey back to liberalism, sparking a process of self-deprogramming by purging progressive elements from my thought (it took me nearly a decade to get all the nonsense out of my head). I, too, am a mammal, I recognized. But I also recognized that I have a capacity for reason. Because I am a higher-order mammal, I forgave myself, but only after making sure that I would never again allow my capacity for reason to be diminished by the madness of crowds. So ashamed by this, I have apologized publicly to family and friends, making enemies of those angered that I left the tribe. To my credit, except for heavy metal concerts, I only ever chanted once. Chanting with others to call back Judas Priest for an encore is getting my money’s worth. Chanting with crowds of radicalized others is dangerous business.
“ICE is made up of white males who were similar to Hitler’s brown shirts of the 30’s. They were disaffected by the results of the reparations of WWI, and felt powerless. 47 has given them purpose, which is extremely dangerous.”
I won’t disclose the identity of the person who wrote this because this is one of the most embarrassing things I’ve ever heard anybody say (hint: it is a Facebook user from Green Bay, Wisconsin). But it’s the premise in operation on the progressive side. As I have shown on this platform, rank-and-file progressives don’t deal in logical argumentation or facts; it’s all emotion and hyperbole with them. But those who control them know it’s a fallacious premise. There is no comparison to be made here. Hitler was a white supremacist who was eliminating ethnic and racialized minorities who had long been part of the German nation.
Addressing the factual claims made in the quote, the reality is that 45 percent of ICE agents are, to use the Democrat term of art, “people of color.” About 20 percent of ICE agents are Hispanic. Another 20 percent are black. And 5 percent Asian. Essentially, the argument is that Orange Hitler has a racially and ethically diverse paramilitary force rounding up your neighbors. Weird for a Nazi, don’t you think? It’s absurd on its face.
We’re not talking here about turnarounds at the border. We’re talking about going into American cities, identifying illegal aliens embedded in communities, and detaining and deporting them. Obama removed more ensconced illegal aliens than either Bill Clinton or George Bush. The thought of a Black Hitler with a racially and ethically diverse paramilitary apparatus forcibly rounding up your neighbors and deporting them is a difficult one to form in a rational mind, I know, but that’s apparently what happened—if we are consistent.
This brings us to another memory-holed fact. The recent news that has progressives running around with their hair on fire is that the ICE budget under Trump is greater than all the other federal law enforcement agencies combined. That might sound like a remarkable fact, except that that was also true under Obama.
Everything novel is ordinary. Only the perception is different. Donald Trump is Orange Hitler. Barack Obama is the most wonderful president of them all. Never mind that Black Hitler bombed and regime-changed the crap out of black and brown people around the world—even drone bombed American citizens. The Obama family portrait appears on social media platforms and the nostalgia hits hard: “Gosh, if we could just go back to this time.” Right, yes, because then we could deport millions of illegal aliens and progressives wouldn’t be out in the street showing their ass, attacking cops, and raving about Hitler.
But what about “Show your papers?” Isn’t that the master sign? Isn’t an ICE officer asking for papers “Naziism”? In the alternative universe progressives live in, sure, I guess. But in the real world? No. Not even close. If you’re an immigrant, you are required to carry proof of immigration status. There is no inherent right to be in the United States unless you are a citizen (even then, if you’re a naturalized citizen, you can be denaturalized and deported for cause).
Similar to the requirement during a traffic stop to present one’s driver’s license and vehicle registration (and, in 49 of 50 states and Washington DC, proof of insurance) , an individual over the age of 18 who is lawfully detained and suspected of being unlawfully present in the United States is required to produce immigration documents. 8 U.S.C. § 1304(e): “Every alien, eighteen years of age and over, shall at all times carry with him and have in his personal possession any certificate of alien registration.” The Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination does not protect a detainee from disclosing their immigration status.
This is not an invention of the Trump Administration. It is a long-standing immigration law, upheld by the Supreme Court. If you’re telling immigrants that they don’t have to provide immigration status to an ICE agent, then you’re not only making ICE’s job more difficult (which you are not allowed to do), but you’re also making the life of those illegal present more difficult by increasing the likelihood that they will resist the officer, which puts them at risk of harm and further charges. It also puts the officer at risk, which we have all seen.
I hear that the RINOs (“Republicans in name only”) are telling Trump that he should back down and talk about amnesty. Wasn’t that the plan all along—foment rebellion against the federal government, force Trump to act, accuse him of authoritarianism, and confirm the false premise that Trump is a Nazi? But the historical comparison is not 1930s Germany. It’s the 1860s United States (see The New Confederates and the Return of States’ Rights). The Democrats are in rebellion against the Union. Tim Walz, Jacob Frey, JB Pritzker, Brandon Johnson—they’re leading an insurrection against the federal government. They’ve even turned the children against the Republic—the second coming of Mao’s Red Guard—closing schools and leading them in protests. That loudly tells us that it’s time to once more bring down the hammer. Send the military to Minneapolis. We cannot tolerate civil war. mae an example of Walz and Frey.
The MSM is warning its audience that Trump will invoke the Insurrection Act to declare martial law and stop the mid-term elections. They’re spreading mass psychogenic madness. The Act exists because it is necessary (which is why Democrats endeavor to weaken its authority; see Posse Comitatus and the Ghosts of Redemption). 10 USC §§ 331-335, Sec. 332, concerning the use of militia and armed forces to enforce federal authority: “Whenever the President considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, he may call into Federal service such of the militia of any State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to enforce those laws or to suppress the rebellion.”
Sec. 333, elaborates: “The President, by using the militia or the armed forces, or both, or by any other means, shall take such measures as he considers necessary to suppress, in a State, any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination, or conspiracy, if it—(1) so hinders the execution of the laws of that State, and of the United States within the State, that any part or class of its people is deprived of a right, privilege, immunity, or protection named in the Constitution and secured by law, and the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection; or (2) opposes or obstructs the execution of the laws of the United States or impedes the course of justice under those laws. In any situation covered by clause (1), the State shall be considered to have denied the equal protection of the laws secured by the Constitution.”
The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, the beta male who wept before the golden coffin of the persistent life-course criminal offender George Floyd, has said the quiet part out loud: two governments are at war with each other. “We are in a position right now that we have residents that are asking the very limited number of police officers that we have to fight ICE officers on the street,” Frey said, to the astonishment of the city’s police chief Brian O’Hara standing beside him. “We cannot be at a place right now in America where we have two governmental entities that are literally fighting one another. Why are we put in this position?”
The answer to the question is not the one Frey gives. The reason for the conflict is straightforward: Democrats are obstructing the federal government in its obligation to secure the integrity of the American Republic and to protect American citizens and legal residents.
In this war, there can be only one victor: the Union. Traitors cannot be allowed to win. Ever. The Supremacy Clause in Article VI, Clause 2 of the US Constitution declares that the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties constitute the “supreme Law of the Land.” Federal authority overrides any conflicting state laws or constitutions. Moreover, it binds state judges to apply federal law. By establishing federal preemption—where federal law prevails in cases of conflict—the clause is a foundational element of American federalism, promoting national unity and consistent enforcement of law across all states.
“Americans hate what’s going on in Minneapolis,” the polls say. “They think Trump is too heavy-handed.” How did the rebellion against the American Republic work out for Democratic presidential candidate George McGovern and his party in 1972? What did Richard Nixon say about the “great silent majority of my fellow Americans” in that November 3, 1969, televised address—the majority that gave him the largest popular-vote margin for a Republican nominee in US presidential history? Beware the polls, Democrats. Ask why they’ve consistenly wrong for you for so long. The polls, lawfare, assassination attempts—none of this stopped the people from returning Donald Trump to the White House.
“But ICE is shooting people in the streets!” The police kill between 1,000 and 1,300 civilians every year, the vast majority of them US citizens. Whether the police were prepared to kill “one of their own” was never a question. You know what got those citizens killed? They threatened the lives of others. Why should it be different for those who are not our own? These are not our neighbors. They come here and establish ethnic enclaves. From their sanctuaries, they defraud and subvert the United States—more accurately: Democrats use foreigners to defraud and subvert the United States. (See Do Actions Have Consequences? Double Standards on Liberty and Separation.)
Those fatalities and injuries are legally justifiable because they occur in response to a perceived threat to the safety of law enforcement and the public. On average, fewer than eight police officers per year are charged with manslaughter, and very few of those cases result in convictions. As for the deaths occurring in the context of immigration enforcement, Renée Good, an American citizen, tried to run over an ICE agent. He defended himself. He almost certainly won’t be charged with manslaughter—but Renée’s partner, Becca, likely will. (See Loretta and Richard: The Renée Good Shooting and Correct Attribution of Blame.)
The three men—Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, Alfredo Alejandro Ajorna, and Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma—who attacked an ICE agent in north Minneapolis were Venezuelan nationals; all three are in the United States without legal status. Sosa-Celis, the target of the operation, fled a traffic stop, crashed his vehicle, and struggled with an ICE agent, after which Ajorna and Hernandez-Ledezma emerged from a nearby apartment armed with shovels and broom handles and joined the attack. The men struck the agent, leading the agent to fire a defensive shot that wounded Sosa-Celis. Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg. Isn’t that what progressives want? “Why can’t officers shoot them in the legs (or tires)?” There you go. And still they scream “oppression!”
Cartoon by David Suter
What we see is a handful of shootings taken from a universe of shootings and presented as an extraordinary event. Renée Good’s case isn’t the first time a woman has been shot by police because she weaponized her vehicle. And Kamikaze Karens aren’t the only ones weaponizing cars against ICE agents. The two individuals shot by border control agents in Portland, Oregon, Luis David Nico-Moncada and Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, both Venezuelan nationals in the US, weaponized their vehicle against the agents. Both are associated with Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational criminal gang. See a pattern? Get the corporate state media out of your headspace, and you likely will.
Despite the fall of legacy media, the propaganda organ of the globalists, The New York Times, most notably, still has enormous influence in America—indeed, in the world. They’ve even deluded European observers (who are themselves rapidly losing their nations). China and Russia are eating it up. The reporters of the MSM have seen the videos. They know the facts. They know what the videos and facts show. They’re gaslighting the public. You’re being told to disbelieve what you see plainly before your eyes. George Orwell’s words in Nineteen Eighty-Four haunt us: “The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” But, like the devil, the Party only has the power you give it.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.” Have you heard this (commonly attributed to G. Michael Hopf, from his 2016 novel Those Who Remain)? They say it’s not always true. But it’s true enough. Beta males and Kamikaze Karens are determined to stop the strong from making the nation great again by making the government weak. Did a weak nation win the Civil War and WWII? How did Americans build the freest and most technologically advanced country in modern history? With weakness? (See Wokedom and the Problem of Lethal Altruism.)
We’re better than this, comrades. The rank-and-file progressive needs to go home and let patriots save a nation. They can watch history unfold on their screens. If they won’t, then the federal government must make them. This isn’t the Civil Rights struggle. Social justice is a cover for the managed decline of the American Republic. The left has been co-opted and deranged.
“Toxic masculinity!” Whatever. It’s toxic empathy that’ll bring down a nation. We can’t let this happen. Send in the troops.
It’s weird when people tell me I’m a fascist because I say civilians should obey police commands. “You mean lawful commands.” No, I mean commands.
“Stop, Look and Ed” is the 16th episode of Season 2 and the 42nd episode of Ed, Edd n Eddy.
Who determines what a lawful command is? The detainee? Do they know the law better than the cop? Maybe. Hardly ever. Certainly not according to the cop.
My wife and I watch cop videos all the time where detainees tell officers they have no authority to treat them that way. As someone who understands a bit about criminal law and procedure, almost all the time they’re wrong—and it gets incredibly tedious watching them be wrong almost all the time.
“Don’t touch me” and “let go of me” are especially annoying. Resisting never goes well. They end up with more charges when, had they simply obeyed commands, they might have been able to leave the scene. Even in the rare instance where a detainee breaks free and runs (which mostly happens when the officer is female), they’re eventually caught, and it goes much worse for them.
There are lots of other annoying objections. “What did I do wrong?” Something, probably, since you’re interacting with an officer. “I don’t have to show you my license.” Were you driving? Then you absolutely do—and your registration, and most likely proof of insurance. (Keep these items in a plastic baggie so you don’t have to dig around in your car.) “I’m not getting out of the car.” Yes, you are. “Don’t break my window”—followed by shattering glass and lots of screaming. WTF? You didn’t get out of the car, dude. “Give me my phone.” “I need to call my father.”
“I can’t breathe” is the classic. I can’t give you an exact probability, but you will almost certainly hear this during an evening of cop-watching, especially if the detainee is Black. I never knew so many people had asthma. My wife and I look at each other and telepathically share the same thought: You’re talking an awful lot for someone who can’t breathe.
Sometimes, the person just wants to cause a scene and force an altercation. This happens a lot. I’ve seen detainees go into full histrionics and exhaust themselves in the parking lot of a fast-food restaurant or in a ditch by the interstate. I’m like, aren’t you embarrassed? Then some seem inexhaustible. I watch drunks struggle and wonder how that’s possible. When I’m drunk, I’m a worthless struggler.
And then there’s the obvious Cluster B personality disorder. My God, there are a lot of those. “Go fuck yourself” or “kill yourself,” delivered with that truly hateful face, is the dead giveaway. Police officers have the patience of saints with these people. There’s no reasoning with a Cluster B type. I feel so sorry for the parents. You know their life was—and probably still is—a living hell.
When the civilian is right, it’s usually about First Amendment issues—and these are professional auditors (YouTubers) who understand the law because they need to, so they can mess with rookies for content and clicks.
There are also times when police act inappropriately. But in most of those cases, the person being detained or arrested isn’t objecting to that; they’re objecting to something the officer is actually getting right. I think to myself, that wasn’t cool—but the detainee has no idea he’s being screwed over.
The point is that a detention or arrest is generally not the time to get into a discussion about criminal law and procedure. Things go much more smoothly if the civilian obeys commands, makes mental notes about what’s said or done, and raises objections later—with a supervisor, a defense attorney, a DA, or a judge—after tensions have cooled.
The problem is that people think they know far more about the law and procedure than they do. Even if they have a hunch they’re right, they’re unlikely to express it in a cogent or persuasive way. Hate to break it to you, but often cops are smarter than you are. And however smart they are, police officers are generally not interested in entertaining arguments—no matter how cogent or persuasive.
This interaction means a lot to you. To the cop, how many times has he dealt with someone like you? All the time. Like all humans, cops rely on typifications to reduce the complexity of a noisy world. If you feel like a number, that’s because you are—the fourth disagreeable asshole tonight. Don’t be a disagreeable asshole. Don’t add to the noise.
When I’m called a bottlicker for advising people to obey commands, I ask what the world would look like if every detention or arrest turned into an in-depth academic debate about law and procedure. It would be like dealing with a child who never accepts hierarchy or cooperates with authority. Does that irritate parents? Have you ever been a parent? Will a kid get more out of childhood by being a good boy—or by being a squirmy little jerk who collapses on the discount-store floor every time he doesn’t get what he wants? Do we really have to go through this again?
The cop knows more than you—or at least you should presume he does. He’s probably right that you did something stupid or wrong. Let him think whatever. Follow his commands. You’ll get more out of life by being a good boy than by being a squirmy little jerk.
So here’s how to interact with police officers so you can either go home—or go to jail—without a busted mouth, a broken arm, or worse.
Stay calm and be polite. Even if the cop is an asshole. A command voice can feel like assholery—let it go. Be a Vulcan. Don’t talk much—or at all.
You have the right to remain silent. Shut the fuck up. You cannot help yourself by talking. Anything you say can and will be used against you. Nothing you say has to be used to help you. Exceptions: “Do you have any guns in the car?” Answer that question—truthfully—with your hands on the steering wheel and the interior light on. Turn the light on as the officer approaches. If you haven’t, ask permission before doing so. Don’t reach for anything unless instructed. If you are a non-citizen, federal law (INA §264(e)) requires non-citizens over 18 to carry proof of immigration registration. ICE can demand to see those documents, and you must show them if you have them. “Do you have any drugs in the car?” Do not answer. Don’t answer any other questions.
You have the right to refuse searches. Say: “I do not consent to searches.” The officer may search anyway, but you’ve preserved the objection, which may prove useful at trial.
Keep your head about you. Officers will say things to get you talking. They may delay arrest to avoid reading Miranda. Anything you say—Mirandized or not—can be used against you. Officers can lie. They will gaslight you.
If you’re with someone, warn them. If you have time, say: “Dude, don’t say anything. Cops will split us up and lie about who said what. If you value your freedom, shut up.” Say it fast.
Ask if you’re being detained or free to go. If you’re not free to go, you’re being detained. Don’t hassle the officer. He has a tough job, and you’re probably not the first person tonight to annoy him. “That’s his problem”? No—it’s yours. You’re his problem. Don’t be one.
Don’t attract extra suspicion. Keeping a low profile is wise. “Profiling is wrong.” So?
Don’t run. Don’t resist. Don’t fight. Don’t even look like you might run, resist, or fight. The cop wants to go home alive, and he’s not waiting to see what you’re about to do. You want to go home too, right? Righteous indignation is a poor substitute for breathing. Your pride will recover.
Never touch a police officer. “You can’t touch me.” Yes, he can. “Then I’ll touch him back.” No. Touch him and it’s a felony—if you’re lucky.
Be a good witness and report misconduct later. Observe quietly. Don’t be the guy demanding names and badge numbers in the moment. Just look and remember.
You don’t have to let police into your home without a warrant. Ask if they have one. If they don’t, they can’t come in. If you invite them in, they’ll go wherever they want and won’t leave until they’re satisfied—or until they find your stash. Cops are like vampires: once invited, they’re in.
Finally, police can pat you down for weapons. It’s not a search. It may feel humiliating. What—have you never flown before?
These rules are derived from this little video. Watch it. Share it with your friends. Be a good citizen: follow the law and cooperate with the police.
From the same publications that led with would-be cop killer Renee Good’s beach-and-sky pregnancy photo, here’s People magazine’s obituary for Scott Adams.
Victoria Edel penned it. She triggered a firestorm. People magazine apparently just changed the authorship of the obit from Edel to “People Staff.” Edel has locked her X account. People are rightly upset at her. Adams meant a lot to a lot of people.
To be sure, Edel wrote these words, but it was People magazine who signed off on the obit. They’ve not taken it down (yet). So this is how People magazine wants you to remember Adams: the “disgraced Dilbert creator.”
From a universe of good and useful deeds, the magazine took a few minutes of Adams openly and honestly expressing shock at the fact that, in the context of surging black-on-white crime under the Biden regime, nearly half of all blacks surveyed by Rasmussen said that it was not okay or were not sure whether it was okay to be white, and made that the headline. Adams was connecting action with opinion, inferring that white people are not as safe as they might have felt they were. The public isn’t supposed to make connections like that, so Adams must be forever remembered as “disgraced.”
That’s not the only reason the establishment cancelled Adams, of course. The establishment used Adams’ remarks that day as an excuse to punish him for supporting Donald Trump—the same way they used a tweet by Roseanne Barr to cancel her show (see Canceling Roseanne Barr; see also Democrats’ Closing Argument: Comedians We Don’t Like are Racists). Had Adam’s occasional deviations from official narratives mattered, they would have cancelled him for asking how the Holocaust narrative settled on the number it did. Even emphasizing that he didn’t doubt the Holocaust happened, asking about the number is usually enough to get a person tossed out of polite society. At least one woke scold rushed to the comment section, encouraging readers to look into Adams’ alleged “Holocaust denialism.”
Progressives still insist that cancelling is not a real thing. But Scott Adams was literally cancelled. His Dilbert cartoons were pulled from syndication for his sin of political incorrectness. Roseanne Barr was literally cancelled because she was politically incorrect. They not only deplatformed Barr on Twitter (this was before Elon Musk saved free speech by purchasing the platform), but also cancelled her television show. The establishment disgraced them both (and many others) because they had opinions that ran afoul of the elite-appointed commissars.
If the public didn’t like Adams’ observation, they didn’t have to read Dilbert. If the public didn’t like Barr’s tweets, they didn’t have to watch her show. But we know that they would have continued reading Adams and watching Barr because the majority not only like a good laugh (which is why late-night television is moribund and surely going away soon), but also because they share Adams and Barr’s sentiments, even if they are afraid to say them out loud, their speech constrained by the woke scolds surrounding them. Figures like Adams and Barr spoke for those who are afraid to speak for themselves in public (Barr still does, but on a much smaller platform).
Adams and Barr’s sin is that they expanded the scope of mutual knowledge. And for that, corporate power is prepared to give up millions of dollars in revenue in the same way they’re prepared to lose money on the hack comedians they put before the public of late-night TV (Kimmel, Fallon, Colbert). Censor the voice of the people; amplify the voice of the establishment—that’s the formula of hegemony. Thankfully, it’s losing efficacy, in part because people like Scott Adams and Elon Musk have made themselves useful.
Scott Adams left the world with parting words, which I share below. Some will find his conversion to Christianity to be the most significant. For me, his charge to “be useful” is the takeaway. Usefulness is not just about helping other people. Since I decided to be useful, I’ve been much happier. Adams sacrificed a great deal to be useful. You can tell that he believed it was worth it. It was for me; Adams was an inspiration. I appreciate that he changed his mind last summer and decided to hang on for a while longer. I will miss his coffee talks. I will miss him.
Scott Adams left the world with these parting words. Some will find his conversion to Christianity to be the most significant. For me, "be useful" is the takeaway. Usefulness is not just about helping other people. Since I decided to be useful, I’ve been much happier. Adams… https://t.co/07Tnd0mf26
“The media may not always be able to tell us what to think, but they are strikingly successful in telling us what to think about.” —Michael Parenti, Inventing Reality
“The law should be like death, which spares no one.” —Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws
We have to address the double standard that’s in play on the progressive left—and in the media that organizes the corporate state narrative. There is a constant barrage of propaganda from progressive leaders, including those in public office, that ICE is coming into communities, taking illegal aliens into custody, and breaking up families. It’s ugly, these leaders note, and the mass media is supporting the narrative by highlighting its ugliness. Behind this is a double standard that deceives the public about law enforcement activities and family separation.
I warned you that when Trump came into office and started enforcing immigration law as promised (why the public returned Trump to the White House in a landslide), it would be ugly. How could it not be? People are taken into custody against their will. There’s a great deal of crying. Screaming. Going ragdoll. Sometimes those taken into custody resist, and force is used. Sometimes people get hurt.
However, when a citizen breaks the law, if he is apprehended, he is taken into custody and, if charged and convicted, often sent to jail or prison. Here, too, is drama. The drama happens every day in America—hundreds and thousands of times a day. Sending parents to prison breaks up families. Loss of liberty and family separation are consequences of breaking the law. They are an inherent part of the criminal justice process. It’s the decision of the lawbreaker that causes his loss of liberty and separation from family. The alternative would be not to enforce the law.
One could never grasp the extent of family separation among the citizen population from watching the media. But, from a statistical standpoint, family separation caused by the US criminal justice system dwarfs that caused by immigration enforcement. Each year, police make roughly 7.5 million arrests, and about 1.9 million people—overwhelmingly citizens—are incarcerated at any given time, routinely separating parents from children through arrest, pretrial detention, and imprisonment.
By contrast, ICE arrests are on the order of around 150,000 per year, with tens of thousands in immigration detention at a time. Even accounting for large numbers of border “family unit encounters” (which Trump effectively stopped with his border control measures), immigration enforcement operates at a vastly smaller scale.
Ordinary Americans can’t know this because, while family separation is a common and normalized consequence of criminal law enforcement for citizens, it receives no media or political coverage. Instead, they are bombarded today, every day, all day, with linear and social media images and reels of the ugliness of immigration enforcement.
“If the press cannot mold our every opinion,” writes Michael Parenti in his 1986 Inventing Reality, “it can frame the perceptual reality around which our opinions take shape.” This is a significant observation: “Here may lie the most important effect of the news media: they set the issue agenda for the rest of us, choosing what to emphasize and what to ignore or suppress, in effect, organizing much of our political world for us.”
Beneath the mediated perceptions, the same principle is in operation in both instances: there are consequences to breaking the law, and family separation is a potential consequence. If one works from principle, then either he believes that all civilians, whether citizen or immigrant, should be held accountable for lawbreaking, or he believes that no civilian, regardless of immigration status, should be held accountable for lawbreaking. There is no choice from the established principled position. It is an either/or. Which is it?
If you assert a principle I am unaware of, and believe there should be a double standard, that citizens should be held accountable but not immigrants, then the question you must answer is why immigrants should be granted immunity from the consequences of breaking the law, while citizens should be denied such immunity. Why would you believe this? What explains the double standard you advocate? What is the principle in operation? The principle needs to be announced and explained, and the public needs to agree that the principle makes sense, before it can be allowed to determine policy. This is a democracy operating under the rule of law. So why should the rule of law be suspended for immigrants?
To all those who support immigration enforcement in the abstract but are troubled by the ugliness of law enforcement action, ask yourselves: if you were to see a glut of media reports showing the ugliness of citizens being taken into custody and families separated, then would you conclude that we should stop all law enforcement? To be sure, there are those on the fringe who advocate for the abolition of policing in principle, but that’s probably not you.
If you say “no,” which I think most of you would, then you mustn’t let emotions carry you away when you see illegal immigrants taken into custody. Progressive leaders and the mass media have selectively weaponized empathy to lead you away from principle. They are programming you to react emotionally and not logically. You have already agreed that lawbreakers should be held accountable. Work from the rational part of your brain, not the emotional part. This does not mean that you shouldn’t have compassion and sympathy for the plight of people taken into custody. It means you put principle over reaction.
If you say “yes” after a gut check, then you don’t really believe in immigration law even in the abstract, because you don’t believe in policing generally. You’re a functional anarchist who is putting the safety of his own family in jeopardy, since the certain result of leaving illegal aliens to reside in the United States will be an increase in crime and violence in your neighborhood. And it you move to depolice at scale, then your neighborhood will descend into anarchy.
Expect the rationalization from progressives that citizens have a higher rate of crime than immigrants. You might ask whether that comparison is between citizens and illegal aliens, not immigrants overall. However the fact is specified, even if it were true, it is immaterial to public safety, since it is certain that a percentage of immigrants will break the law, and that means that more immigrants will increase the volume of crime.
Moreover, many illegal immigrants are, by definition, criminals. Under federal law, Title 8 USC § 1325, it is a misdemeanor to enter or attempt to enter the United States at an undesignated place or time, to elude immigration inspection, or to enter by false or misleading statements. Title 8 USC § 1326 makes it a felony for a person who has previously been removed or deported to reenter, attempt to reenter, or be found in the United States without authorization, with penalties that increase based on prior criminal history. That covers a great many illegal aliens.
To be sure, mere unlawful presence, such as overstaying a visa, is generally a civil violation rather than a crime, though related conduct may be criminalized under other statutes, including 8 USC § 1324 (harboring or transporting undocumented persons), 8 USC. § 1306 (failure to register), and 18 USC §§ 911 and 1546 (false claims to US citizenship and immigration document fraud), but violation of civil law is still illegal conduct. Just because an action is not criminal does not make it legal.
To close the loop on this, although unlawful presence may be a civil matter if no criminal activity is present, the law is still enforced by ICE, authorized by the Immigration and Nationality Act, codified in the same title: 8 of the US Code. 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(1)(B) provides that any noncitizen present in the US in violation of law is deportable, forming the principal basis for civil removal proceedings initiated by ICE.
It doesn’t stop there. Title 8 USC § 1182(a)(9)(B) imposes civil consequences for accrued unlawful presence by rendering a noncitizen inadmissible for three or ten years after departure, depending on the length of unlawful presence. DHS’s authority to inspect and determine admissibility derives from 8 USC § 1225, while the procedures governing civil removal proceedings are outlined in 8 USC § 1229a. ICE’s authority to arrest and detain noncitizens pending removal is provided by 8 USC § 1226, and related civil registration requirements appear in 8 USC §§ 1302–1304, all of which operate within a civil, not criminal, enforcement framework, but nonetheless fall under ICE’s purview.
Another rationalization one hears is that ICE officers are glorified mall cops, or, alternatively, private contractors. ICE agents receive their foundational training primarily at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers (FLETC) in Glynco, Georgia, which serves as the main academy for other federal law enforcement agencies.
Training differs depending on the agent’s role. Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers, who handle immigration arrests and removals, complete an eight-week program that covers immigration law, constitutional protections, de-escalation techniques, firearms safety and qualification, defensive tactics, emergency driving, and physical readiness. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) special agents, who focus on criminal investigations such as human trafficking and smuggling, undergo a longer pipeline that combines the Criminal Investigator Training Program at FLETC (around 12 weeks) with agency-specific HSI training (around 13 weeks), providing more in-depth instruction in investigative techniques.
Across all programs, ICE training emphasizes constitutional and statutory law, investigative skills, firearms and defensive tactics, fitness and physical readiness, and de-escalation strategies. After academy graduation, officers enter a supervised field training phase and continue receiving ongoing education, refresher courses, and specialized instruction throughout their careers. So, not mall cops or private contractors. Federal law enforcement officers.
There’s no way to rationalize one’s way out of this. If you are an alien who is not authorized to be in the United States, your illegal presence is subject to law enforcement action. Any attempt to interfere with law enforcement action is criminal, as I showed in yesterday’s essay, Loretta and Richard: The Renee Good Shooting and Correct Attribution of Blame. And be aware that they use real bullets.
Those separating ICE from other law enforcement bodies are arguing from a false dichotomy. They’re assuming or demanding a double standard without a principled reason for their demand. So, the next time you are arguing with progressives, demand from them the principle in operation. If they have one, then tell them to elect representatives who will codify the double standard. Until then, hitting the streets to interfere with ICE operations is the same as interfering with any other law enforcement activity. It’s a crime. Those doing the interfering should be rolled up with the illegal aliens with whom they ally—personal liberty and family separation be damned. Actions have consequences.
Imagine a scenario in which a woman, let’s call her Loretta, wearing a red MAGA hat, her dog Skeeter in the back of the truck, and her husband, Richard, in the passenger seat, parks a truck perpendicular to traffic, blocking the road, to interfere with a permitted gay pride parade, which police officers are protecting with their presence.
Loretta and Richard don’t like gay people. They’re part of a small group of conservative activists who drive around disrupting gay pride parades. The police have been given the heads up about Loretta and Richard and their little group of disrupters.
While Loretta dances to country music in her truck, Richard gets out to record the situation with his cell phone, which the couple will later post on their social media accounts for clicks. They mean to fuel a wider movement against the LGBT community with their content.
One cop, Bob Jennings, circles the truck on foot to assess the situation, videoing the interaction for the record. He passes by Loretta, who, with a smirk on her face, says, “I’m not mad at you, bro.”
Jennings moves to the back of the truck, where Richard awaits to taunt him. Richard continues to harangue Jennings as the officer walks along the passenger’s side, Skeeter looking on cluelessly with his tongue hanging out of his mouth.
While this is happening, other officers arrive at the driver’s side and order Loretta out of the truck, pulling on the locked door handle.
As Jennings walks around to the front of the truck, completing his 360° survey, Richard smacks the side of the truck and yells, “Drive, Loretta! Drive! Drive!” Loretta guns it and strikes Jennings in the hip. Only a few months before, Jennings had been dragged several hundred feet by a suspect fleeing in a car, the officer’s arm trapped in the window. It took 33 stitches to close the wound on one of his legs.
Simultaneously with the truck’s acceleration, Jennings reacts in a split second and discharges his weapon. Three shots ring out, one or more of the bullets striking Loretta. Loretta is dead, foot still on the accelerator, her truck careens into parked cars down the street.
Jennings, in shock at just having to kill a woman, exclaims, “Fucking bitch.”
If you ask me whether this was an appropriate exercise of lethal force, I would, without hesitation, say yes. I would have to say this because the facts are plainly in front of my face. The fact that I disagree with Loretta and Richard’s actions—I’m pro-gay, and they’re assholes, for the record—must be entirely put aside if I am to be objective in my assessment. The officer did what he was trained to do—what he had to do. It is not only that the MAGA couple were wrong for trying to kill a law enforcement officer; they had no business being parked perpendicular in the street in an attempt to interfere with a permitted gay pride parade. Loretta and Richard put Loretta in that situation,
Would anybody out protesting today over the Renée Good shooting give two shits about Loretta (and whatever happened to Skeeter)? Would they condemn Jennings for enforcing the law so that a permitted gay pride parade could proceed over the objections of anti-LGBT activists?
We all know they wouldn’t. We all know they would say Loretta had it coming. And they would demand Richard be held to account for the attempted murder of a police officer. After all, Richard gave the command for Loretta to gun a locked-and-loaded pre-positioned two-and-a-half-ton truck at a law enforcement officer. Some, if not most, of them would even argue that the goal in that moment was to run over the cop.
But they would arrive at this assessment not because they’re exercising objective judgment but because Loretta and Richard are not members of their tribe—they’re members of the enemy tribe. The cop justifiably killed Loretta because she was protesting a gay rights parade. The homophobe deserved it. Fucking transphobe. Loretta’s actions affirm the progressive characterization of MAGA as the worst people on the face of the planet. It was a righteous kill.
How would MAGA respond? Would they be out on the streets of American cities with bullhorns blocking traffic? Or do you think they would wonder why Loretta and Richard fucked with law enforcement that day? Would Loretta even get a candlelight vigil? I can see conservatives heckling a gay pride parade as it passed by their houses. But that’s free speech. Interfering with the parade? Maybe. I can’t speak for MAGA. I can tell you what I think, though: Loretta had it coming. Not because I support gay rights (which I remind you that I do), but because Loretta tried to kill a police officer, or at the very least put herself in a position where death was a likely outcome. And Richard gave the command. (The police need to arrest and charge Richard.)
Folks shouldn’t be blocking traffic—whoever they are. Folks shouldn’t try to run over police officers—whoever they are. What Loretta and Richard did was objectively illegal. Loretta and Richard put Loretta’s life in danger. If I am to claim to be a rational person, I have to call it as it is.
A day or so ago, on the X platform (find me and follow me on @andrewwaustin), where my follower count has been dropping (I suspect) due to my defense of ICE operations in Minneapolis, I was asked whether I am capable of analyzing the officer’s use of lethal force in Minneapolis without prejudice.
I responded that I am not sure any human is entirely free of prejudice. I’m a left-liberal who believes in limited government, including constitutional constraints on policing. I’ve taught criminal justice courses for thirty years—not from a criminal justice administration perspective, but from the standpoint of critical criminology. So yes, I have biases, if we choose to call them that.
I left the conversation there, but, to clarify, I view these biases more as a normative framework than in the usual sense of the word, but I am happy to call them prejudices for the sake of discussion. These prejudices predispose me to prioritize civil liberties and critique state power.
Reflecting on this, it surprises me that anyone could read my posts as representing anything else. While I have evolved on certain issues, I have never departed from my core liberal values, which I have held my entire life. In fact, my recent evolution has been toward an even greater degree of liberalism. It is my liberalism that prevented me from being absorbed into the progressive worldview that enveloped me during my years in graduate school and as a college teacher.
That said, my commitment to civil liberties and skepticism of state power does not prevent me from recognizing that what happened to Renée Good is a textbook example of appropriate use of lethal force. I think I just demonstrated that in the hypothetical scenario I provided above.
I have also been asked on X, in my capacity as a criminologist, whether I am familiar with the Department of Justice’s policy on lethal force in situations like this. Yes, I am, and I am happy to clarify it now: The DoJ generally prohibits firing at a moving vehicle unless all of the following conditions are met: (1) the vehicle is being used in a way that poses an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury; (2) the threat cannot reasonably be mitigated by other means (for example, moving out of the vehicle’s path); and (3) deadly force is necessary to stop the threat.
I can also clarify the law governing those who interfere with federal law enforcement action: 18 USC § 111 makes it a federal crime to forcibly assault, impede, interfere with, intimidate, oppose, or resist federal officers performing their official duties, with penalties varying from fines/imprisonment (up to 1 year for simple assault) to more severe penalties (up to 3 years or 10 years if a dangerous weapon or bodily injury is involved).
I have reviewed the video from every available angle. The video the struck officer, Jonathan Ross, records during his investigation is the clearest video of the event, as it provides a 360° view. The video is easily reviewable on the Internet. Ross walks in front of the car, moving to Good’s left, continues past Good on the driver’s side, and around to the back of the vehicle, where he is taunted by the other woman outside the car, Becca Good, Renée’s wife. The taunting continues on the passenger side. At the same time, another officer approaches the driver’s side door, which is locked, although the window is down, and commands Good to exit the vehicle. Good then puts the car in reverse, backs up, and turns the wheel toward the officer as he starts to cross back in front of Good, completing his 360° tour of the vehicle. When Ross is in front of the vehicle, Becca repeatedly shouts, “Drive, Baby! Drive! Drive!” Good accelerates on Becca’s command. The officer does not have time to move out of the vehicle’s path and, in the split second he has to react, discharges his weapon as he is struck.
This is the exact same fact pattern in my hypothetical scenario at the top of this essay. Only the ideological identity of the actors was swapped.
I should not have to repeatedly walk readers through this sequence of events. They can just watch the officer’s video for themselves and determine whether they can see what happened for what it is, or whether they’re guided by motivated reasoning, which results from their prejudices warping their perception.
Motivated reasoning is the cognitive process in which a person forms or favors conclusions based on their beliefs, desires, or emotions rather than on objective evidence. Sometimes this is unconscious. They really do see something other than what a reasonable person sees. Without deprogramming, it is impossible to persuade such a person. Other times, a person can see where the facts take him but rationalizes them to save the viewpoint he feels compelled by tribalism to preserve. Such a person may be just as impossible to reach with logic and facts and the truely deluded believer.
One sees rationalization in the act of dissembling, where the person disguises his own recognition of the facts by arguing that the officer should not have walked in front of a vehicle. Perhaps there is an opening here to reason. While police officers are generally trained to avoid standing directly in front of a vehicle whenever possible, in real-world situations, officers often must move around vehicles to perform duties like arrests, documentation, providing aid, and a myriad of other reasons, which can and often do place them in dangerous positions.
Training emphasizes minimizing risk, but it cannot eliminate every potential threat, and a second of objective thinking would guide a person to that understanding. Ross was performing a 360° survey of the situation. How could he have anticipated that Good would attempt to run him over? Can one really fault him for assuming initially that she had no homicidal intent? He was returning to the passenger side when she accelerated, deliberately positioning her vehicle to interrupt his path. He had begun to draw his weapon a moment before, finally seeing intent in her eyes. Whether he should have been there is largely immaterial; what matters is that she chose to rapidly accelerate toward him (had the wheels not spun on the frozen pavement, she would have run over him).
We hear other rationalizations, as well, such as shooting out tires. This is similar to the shoot them in the legs fallacy, only more absurd. Even supposing he was in a position to do that, does anybody believe that a flat tire would stop an SUV from traveling the short distance needed to run over the officer?
In the end, none of the rationalizations one can dream up are relevant to the question of lethal force justifications. The only relevant matter is the criteria I earlier stated.
From the vantage point of this video and the known context, an objective assessment of the fact pattern and context cannot see the incident as anything other than a legitimate instance of justified lethal force. I regret that Good was killed—not only because of the loss of life, but because her death is being used to further a political agenda that is destructive to the republic.
We have to tell the truth if we want to save lives and the republic: Good’s death was the consequence of the choices she made that day. Her wife may have culpability (I think she does), but no one outside the dyad does—at least not criminally. However, others are indirectly responsible for Good’s demise, chiefly the Democratic Party. Party rhetoric endangers the lives of its followers by telling them to confront and resist law enforcement (see Wokedom and the Problem of Lethal Altruism).
Those who demand that Officer Ross be tried for the murder of Renée Good are entitled to their opinion—but they are not entitled to riot in an attempt to coerce the state into prosecuting a crime that did not occur. This is a case of justifiable homicide. Nor are those who oppose ICE operations entitled to interfere with those operations. It is a federal crime to do so.
Beyond the fact pattern and correct attribution of blame, we must make something very clear: every individual has the right to self-defense, including law enforcement. Officers and soldiers do not forfeit this right because they are serving in the cause of public safety or national security (in the case of ICE, it is both). Society should internalize this principle: civilians must avoid behaving in ways that officers could reasonably interpret as a threat. Parents should teach this to their children.
At the same time, progressives should refrain from teaching young people that police are inherently classist or racist. This goes for clergy, journalists, politicians, and teachers, too. While critiques of policing as a system are valid (I do it all the time in my classroom), the individual officer is a working person, just like the majority of civilians. Moreover, whatever the critique of police as an institution and the function it serves, the evidence for the following claim is irrefutable: without public safety, the lives of working people would be more degraded than they already are.
I have now watched a great many videos of progressives committing federal crimes across social media platforms over the last several days. Not nearly enough of them are being arrested. My hope is that the patience of federal officers will wear thin and they will start hauling these insurrectionists to jail. Democrats should be a responsible party and inform their followers about the law and the potential consequences for violating it. That Democrats are encouraging their followers to rebel against law enforcement is a deeply troubling development. Why they are doing this should be front and center in all of our minds. We have to ask this question because the corporate state media won’t.
That’s what these so-called protests are: insurrection. As I have shown in several essays on this platform, the US Constitution is largely a response to the problem of insurrection in early America, the Articles of Confederation providing the national government with insufficient authority to address the problem of mob violence. The Founders gave the federal government the authority to deal with the problem. The Trump Administration now must act on that authority. (See Our Constitution and the Federal Authority to Quell Rebellion; Concerning the Powers of The US Constitution—And Those Defying Them.)
A surprising number of authoritarian leaders and psychopaths (serial killers in the extreme case) were poets. Did you know that? Josef Stalin was a poet. (You probably already knew Adolf Hitler was a landscape painter.) Stalin’s poetry was well-regarded in Georgian literary circles. The overlap in such cases typically reflects ideological performance and self-mythologizing egoism rather than genuine artistic humility. Not difficult psychoanalytical work. This is not to say that all or even most poets are psychopaths, just that poet and monster are not mutually exclusive categories.
What about mothers? Isabel Perón, the Argentine political figure noted by identitarians for being the first woman in the world to serve as president, while not a mother, manufactured a motherly image, which her regime weaponized to manipulate the masses. Her regime repeatedly used emergency powers, suspended civil liberties, censored the media, and pursued political repression against opponents. Her regime tolerated and enabled street-level violence.
Renée Nicole Good was a poet and a mother of three. Certainly, you know this by now. The ubiquitous picture of her was taken during one of her pregnancies, standing against a beautiful backdrop of beach and sky. She won an award for a poem she wrote. Almost every corporate state media story leads with the woman’s bona fides—as if they matter.
People magazine put this image on the cover of their story about Renée Good
Progressives work from emotion, not reason. To be sure, the emotional manipulation is selective; they use it to humanize their side, while dehumanizing their opponents, dulling the emotional response to victims on the other side. But it’s emotional manipulation nonetheless.
This is how Democrats control their ranks: the rational manipulation of irrational signals, signs, and symbols. It’s why Democrats substitute sophistry for logical argumentation. It’s why they teach the art of fallacy-making in colleges and universities rather than the finer points of logic and critical thinking. It’s why feelings and movement ideology are invited to corrupt science and medicine.
The reality is that poets and mothers are quite capable of doing bad things, even killing people—children, husbands, and, yes, law enforcement. Those with such wonderful qualities (presuming the poet mother was good at these) are quite capable of possessing authoritarian personalities and psychopathic tendencies.
We’re often lectured about the problem of the state as father. Granted. But the state as mother is not equivalent? Aren’t they both parens patriae? Might the latter be even worse? What is the ubiquity of an image of a woman with a swollen belly meant to make us pine for? Surely it’s not natalism. How is the womb’s security any better than the authoritarian desire seeking father-rule? Is this the “warmth of collectivism” Mamdani is promising New Yorkers? He did tell his followers that “rugged individualism” is “frigid” and needs to be replaced. Replaced with what? Mutterrecht?
Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noam
It couldn’t be that. Assertive women on the right are stripped of motherly attributions, their outward appearance mocked. DHS Secretary Kristi Noam has three children, too. She’s “ICE Barbie.” Don Trump Jr.’s now ex-fiancée, Kimberly Guilfoyle, is (not really) a “dominatrix” (which is fine as long as you’re a drag queen reading books to children at a public school library). And why wouldn’t they be mocked? Progressives think cosplaying porn stars and prostitutes makes a man a woman. Their ideal mother is the antithesis of Columbia, the republican icon devoted to rearing virtuous citizens prepared to defend constitutional democracy.
That’s the profound propagandistic utility of selectively elevating art and motherhood to symbols of political efficacy. More immediately, poetry and motherhood are elegant (i.e., crude) distractions from the relevant question: What radicalized Renée Good? What turned her into an attempted cop killer?
That’s a rhetorical question, of course, which is why progressives are selective in their pretentious wonderment over poetry and motherhood: the question answers itself. The depth of ideological distortion compels me to answer the question anyway.
Remember that scene from Conan the Barbarian (1982), in which the cult leader Thulsa Doom (played by James Earl Jones), portrayed as a charismatic figure with absolute power over his followers, silently gestures to one of his female devotees, who immediately steps off a cliff to her death without hesitation?
The moment powerfully illustrates the extent of his control and the total devotion of the cult members. It is a cinematic example of what French sociologist Émile Durkheim described as altruistic suicide, where an individual’s identity and will are completely absorbed by the group, and death is embraced as an act of loyalty, obedience, or sacrifice rather than personal despair.
I want to leave a sociological note here to emphasize the horror of what Democrats are doing in seducing true believers into putting their lives at risk by interfering with law enforcement.
Émile Durkheim
For Durkheim, suicide is any death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim, which the victim knows may produce that result. He includes not only a woman who explicitly takes her own life, but also a woman who knowingly places herself in circumstances where death is a likely outcome. The latter case is also suicide.
For example, when a woman interfering with ongoing law enforcement operations is told by authorities to get out of her vehicle, but instead backs up, points it at a police officer, and steps on the gas, she does so with the knowledge that her actions are likely to provoke a police response that may result in her death.
It’s like when a man who wants to die points a gun at a police officer. Even if he does not intend to shoot the officer, he knows that pointing the gun at him will likely result in the officer shooting him in self-defense. He will have committed suicide as surely as if he had put his own gun to his head. (Bonus: the BLM cult can claim that systemic racism killed another black man.) (See Suicide by Cop and Victim-Precipitated Homicide; Death by Cop Redux: Trying to Save the Narrative in the Era of Trump.)
Perhaps the man who provoked the police into shooting him is suffering from one of the other types of suicide Durkheim identified. The pertinent one in the Minneapolis case is altruistic suicide, which occurs, as depicted in the scene from Conan, when an individual is excessively integrated into a social group and places the group’s interests above her own life. Conan is fantasy, to be sure, but altruistic suicide is a very real phenomenon.
According to Durkheim, in such contexts, personal identity is absorbed by collective duties, expectations, and values, such that the individual feels morally obligated to die for the group. We see this not only in this case, but in a video dropped yesterday where a woman is begging ICE officers to shoot her. She does this for moral reasons, which she states explicitly.
This is the psychology of martyrdom, which is then used by political or religious movements (and woke progressivism is both) to advance the cause. We see this in Islam, and it helps us understand why the progressive left allies with Islamism in the Red-Green movement. The woke see in Islam the collectivist totality they desperately want to control their lives.
Erich Fromm characterized this phenomenon as the “escape from freedom.” It’s a core feature of the authoritarian personality. People feel lost in an open society where they are expected to chart their own path through life as autonomous persons; so they seek the warm comfort of collectivism (as the mayor of New York City would have it). They want an authority to tell them what to do so they don’t have to think about it. They stop thinking for themselves and obey the commands of the group.
The abandonment of autonomy and reason, which in itself appears a pitiful choice, is sublimated as a greater cause beyond the individual. Ideology gives freedom’s escape transcendent meaning and purpose. From this standpoint, suicide is not seen as a personal tragedy but as an honorable or necessary act, one tied to strong norms of duty, loyalty, or sacrifice. Thus, the escapee wraps about herself the cloak of nobility and moral superiority. This is why virtue signalling is so highly prized among woke progressives—and why those external to the tribe are depicted as evil.
There are many historical examples of this across time and space: ritual suicides, soldiers who die willingly for their country, or, as in the case of Renee Good, individuals who sacrifice themselves to uphold pathological subcultural ideals, such as the notion of social justice.
Durkheim argued that this type of suicide results from too much social integration, where individual autonomy is minimal and social pressure to conform is overwhelming. Erich Fromm roots this phenomenon in a personality type that prepares some individuals to lose themselves in the mob—not in a situational sense (most of us are frighteningly susceptible to this), but as a way of life. Eric Hoffer calls this type the “true believer.” Look at the left today. A synthesis of these views completely describes them.
Woke progressivism has indeed become a cult. There are several signs of this, such as in the irrational religious-like gibberish we see in critical race theory, queer theory, etc. As if that weren’t dark enough, members of the Democratic Party groom emotionally weak individuals whose strength of autonomy is such that they are easily absorbed into the group, and have them behave as zombies for a cause they have convinced them is worthy of sacrificing their lives. Many true believers are manufactured in the assembly lines of public schools, including colleges and universities. As adults, the Party uses the finished commodities as weapons of political warfare.
At this stage in the development of the machine, millions have been ensnared in a mass psychogenic illness with increasing probability that some of them will put themselves in situations that are likely to result in death, which the Democratic Party exploits as propaganda to push its project of managed decline of the American Republic. The more the true believers put themselves in harm’s way, the more instances Party leaders can use as proof of the authoritarianism and violence they project onto the defenders of the American Republic, those who promote the wicked doctrine of rugged individualism.
Altruistic suicide is not the only pathology associated with the Democratic Party’s political method. We see a similar pathology with the Party’s advocacy of so-called gender affirming care, which destroys the lives of emotionally dysregulated and psychologically vulnerable youth, a destruction they invert as “trans joy.” We see another among inner-city blacks who have been idled and made dependent on welfare. Indeed, the high death rate associated with gang violence is characteristic of altruistic suicide, with a healthy dose of another type of suicide Durkheim identified, namely fatalism.
freedom and reason 