Things are bad.

2026 is off to a wild start politically. I don’t even go on social media regularly, perhaps once a month I’ll peek at Instagram and Facebook. Rarely I’ll wind up on Reddit and if I do it’s because either my dad sent me something or I clicked on something from my RSS feed, which is also where I get my news. The images of our helicopters in Venezuela look imperialist. Recent events involving a group named after a certain state of matter has contributed a great amount of powder to the proverbial keg and its only a matter of time until something even bigger sparks it.

I’m an average guy. Probably the most average guy, statistically speaking. I’m early to mid 30s in age. White. Straight. Married. Homeowner. College educated. Blue collar job where I fold the American Flag in its prescribed triangle everyday. I would love to start my own family. I was born with a civic duty to this country. I was taught to resist tyranny. The constitution says it is my duty. These new, masked, essentially modern brownshirts from the Weimar Republic are something different. They terrorize the population in ways traditional military and law enforcement don’t.

I spent many holiday weekends in college in bus terminals in major cities along the east coast. They can be notorious sketchy places at certain times. It was not uncommon to see police or even uniformed guardsmen with bomb sniffing dogs making patrols in Port Authority. It’s always something to take note of, but their purpose was clear, especially in a big city like NYC. Protection of the public.

I hold the utmost respect for the military as well, as imperialist as this country has become I understand the allure the military has to young men willing to enlist and what it means to our culture. I have had ancestors in America since 1725. One fought in the Revolution. another in the Civil War. Both on the winning side. A grandfather who volunteered in WW2 as soon as he graduated and luckily didn’t see combat, else he likely would have been cannon fodder in operation paperclip. My brother spent 4 years enlisted in the Navy and luckily also didn’t see combat. I spent a week on a Navy ship with him once and appreciated the technology, engineering, organization, and might of the US military during that time and can appreciate what our military has accomplished, to an extent, but more importantly what it can offer to an individual.

That said, ice is different. As contentious as things have become, police work and the military have a level of civic duty baked into the heart of their existence. Masked men with little training wearing vests they purchased on Amazon disappearing people without due process into unmarked cars is the exact level of tyranny I was taught to resist. Yet I feel like I’m going crazy watching people defend their actions. She was driving less than one mile per hour and he simply stepped to the side firing shots and walked away after? Did he really feel ‘peril’?

When I was 16 I escaped from and then ran back into a literal conflagration. My parents house became engulfed in flames in the middle of the night and after escaping I realized 2 friends and my younger brother were still inside. The garage was engulfed, vommiting flames from the mouth of where the garage door used to be. My brothers room was above it. I didn’t know what I was running into. In that moment, I had no fear. Luckily we all survived.

It’s hard to watch that video and not think of the time my life was in peril and I didn’t think twice about going into save 3 people. I don’t really talk about this, it happened as instinct, I never got any medals or awards for my actions. In fact, only a threat from the responding police officer to arrest me because I had marijuana in the house. Perhaps that’s why I view those given authority with disdain, they never see the full picture. They look for reasons to use their authority. Power corrupts, this is known.

With all of the power and responsibility this man is supposedly entrusted with, out of all the outcomes this agent could have chosen, he chose the one outcome that allowed him to exercise his authority to the fullest extent, to deem himself judge jury and executioner over a minor transgression, and commit the ultimate act of violence, murder. I simply can’t relate to the kind of person who when confronted with a multitude of options, decides to take the path of ending one’s life. Perhaps to those sorts of people that makes me a some sort of coward, but I wonder how much fear this man would have felt if confronted with a burning building and innocent people trapped inside. I know I sleep well knowing the kind of person I am.

Every bit of dystopian fiction I’ve ever read is coming to life and I’m worried we are powerless to stop it.