I am lost

Every day, masked ICE agents attack. And every day, I am increasingly confused, lost, scared and terrified.

So today, in Chicago, an ICE vehicle made a u-turn, then sideswiped a parked car. The ICE agents stopped their van and got out—presumably to make sure the person they hit was OK.

But, no. They left their ride with masks up and covering their faces. They drew their weapons. They approached the driver’s door, forced it open, dragged out the screaming woman, and arrested her.

If you don’t believe me—here you go …

And I’m not gonna lie: I am lost and confused and terrified. I don’t understand how this is happening here in the United States of America. I don’t understand how masked agents, lacking name tags or ID, can (legally, morally) grab anyone they choose and take them away. I don’t understand how the people filling these jobs don’t see how they are behaving as folks once did in Nazi Germany. I don’t understand how people like Kristi Noem and Mike Johnson and Stephen Miller can think this is all OK. I don’t understand how this isn’t the main story atop every single American newspaper, on every single American news website. I don’t understand how Fox News and Newsmax—even Fox News and Newsmax—are comfortable with this level of authoritarianism. I don’t understand why the Democratic Party isn’t holding a massive rally outside the U.S. Capitol, with video after video of kidnapped Americans. I don’t understand why Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffeies never discuss this. I don’t understand what they’re doing.

Mostly, I don’t understand what we, the people, are supposed to do. This is a new moment for the United States of America. A new low. We have troops infiltrating cities. We have a president declaring war on a political viewpoint. We have an attorney general working directly for one man. We have lost everything—everything—we were supposed to stand for. We have become a joke. No, not a joke. A disgrace. We have opted to surrender our democracy to a lifelong conman and his merry band of sinister Christian Nationalistic assholes. We are, very quickly, becoming the very thing we’ve spent our history fighting to defeat.

We have done this.

We are living this.

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do.

But I am, sadly, increasingly confident this ends not peacefully.

This ends with violence.

And it sickens me.