We used to ask ourselves how we’d know.
How we’d know when it was really happening. When democracy was actually dying — not just limping, not just wheezing, but fully collapsing into the grave, dragged by its ankles while someone in a red tie lights the Constitution on fire and pisses on the ashes.
This is how.
They arrested Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, New Jersey — a man who was literally standing outside an ICE facility, in his own city, protesting peacefully like it’s still legal to have a conscience in America. They charged him with trespassing. On what? Reality?
And now, the Department of Homeland Security says members of Congress are next. You read that right. Not indicted. Not investigated. Just arrested. Like shoplifters. Like enemies of the state. Like people who had the audacity to care.
Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez, and LaMonica McIver were doing an oversight visit — something that used to be called their job — when ICE accused them of body slamming a female officer.
Body slamming. Because apparently, these elected officials trained in the WWE off-season and came in with steel chairs.
No video. No names. Just the lie — because you only need one when the goal isn’t truth, but power.
AND THEN THEY CAME FOR THE JOURNALISTS
Aaron Parnas, a reporter who’s been shouting into the storm, said what every dystopia starts with:
“They’re threatening to arrest me.”
Why? Because he’s covering it. Because he’s not waiting for CNN to run it through the neuter machine. Because he said the quiet part loud.
We used to joke about living in a fascist state. Now it’s not funny. It’s not even ironic. It’s just headlines like:
-
“ICE Arrests Mayor for Standing Outside”
-
“DHS May Arrest Congress”
-
“White House Considers Suspending Habeas Corpus”
All delivered in the same tone as “Gas Prices Tick Downward Ahead of Memorial Day.”
THIS IS WHAT FASCISM FEELS LIKE: BORING, BUREAUCRATIC, AND BRUTAL
They’re not marching in with jackboots. They’re emailing press releases.
They’re not burning books. They’re feeding the algorithm.
They don’t need to build camps — they already have ICE.
The mask isn’t slipping. It’s off. It’s on the floor. It’s been turned into a MAGA patch on someone’s flak jacket while they fingerprint the mayor.
Stephen Miller — whose soul is made of asbestos and expired dog food — is now whispering that maybe habeas corpus has outlived its usefulness. That maybe undocumented immigrants are technically an “invasion.” And that maybe we should just start locking people up with no charges at all.
And he’s not saying this in secret.
He’s saying it on national TV. With legal citations. Like a guy doing Yelp reviews of Guantánamo.
Suspending habeas corpus means you can be arrested — and no one has to tell you why.
No judge. No lawyer. No charges. No phone call.
Just… gone.
It means you can be disappeared like a failed app update.
It means we are not a country anymore.
We’re a holding cell with a flag.
And it’s not just some theoretical nuclear option for wartime.
They’re actually considering it. Right now.
Because Trump wants revenge. And Stephen Miller wants to be the guy who hands him the blade.
AND YET… THE WORLD TURNS
The stock market didn’t crash.
The press didn’t mobilize.
Most Democrats are probably still “monitoring the situation.”
And you can feel the silence start to settle — that awful, complicity-soaked stillness.
Because deep down, we all know what happens next.
First they jail the dissidents. Then they jail the dissent.
Then you wake up one day and realize the loudest voices are either behind bars or behind paywalls, and the only thing left on television is military parades, Christian nation rallies, and reruns of The Apprentice: Executive Edition.
So we have a choice.
We can scream. Loud. Obnoxious. Relentless. Like the fire alarm they want to ignore.
Or we can stay quiet.
Hope we’re not next.
Pull the blanket over our heads while the knocks get closer.
But here’s the thing:
If they arrest a mayor, a member of Congress, a journalist — and nothing happens — they’ll keep going.
You know how this story ends.
And you know damn well it doesn’t end with a whimper.
So scream. Write. March. Yell at your senator.
Light up the damn phones.
Put signs in your window.
Organize your neighborhood.
Get louder than their silence.
Because this isn’t politics.
This isn’t 2024 vs. 2020 vs. 2016.
This is the fucking abyss.
And it’s looking back at you.
This is how it starts.
Unless we stop it.
This post has been syndicated from Closer to the Edge, where it was published under this address.