Unreliable narrators don’t fail because they lie once. They fail when the lies pile up so high that no one—neither they nor their audience—can keep them straight.
Those were the concluding sentences of my previous post, written shortly before news broke of the murder of Alex Pretti by the federal brute squad in Minnesota. In the three days since, we have fast-forwarded to the brink of a world envisioned by George Orwell.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality, was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him…
And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists; its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
—1984, by George Orwell
Later in the weekend, Governor Walz said that we are at an inflection point. I would ratchet up that assessment by saying we may have reached THE inflection point—what Orwell called the final, most essential command. Consider the following examples of “the Party” telling us to reject the evidence of our eyes and ears:
Just hours after the murder of Alex Pretti, Kristi Noem held a news conference in which she claimed:
The individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers “brandishing” a firearm.
“This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and kill law enforcement.”
“The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently.”
“Fearing for his life and the lives of his fellow officers around him, an agent fired defensive shots.”
Stephen Miller (White House Deputy Chief of Staff / Homeland Security Advisor) called Alex Pretti a “domestic terrorist” and said he “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.”
Border Patrol Commander Gregory Bovino asserted that Pretti planned to “massacre” federal agents.
Donald Trump referred to Pretti as “the gunman.”
Nothing out of character there. Run-of-the-mill deflection, denial, and deception from this administration. It’s been routine for the last twelve months.
What’s not routine this time is that nearly every sentient adult whose head isn’t neck-deep in sand has seen one or more of the videos documenting the crime. We’ve seen the whole thing, starting with Pretti as an observer, recording on his phone as Border Patrol officers pushed two protesters to the curb, one of them to the ground. We’ve seen Pretti, holding his phone and moving between one thug and the woman on the ground, getting pepper-sprayed for his trouble. We’ve seen—through stop motion, freeze-frame, and close-up detail—and heard as Pretti was taken to the ground, held down by several officers, beaten with the butt end of a chemical spray weapon, relieved of the gun in his waistband while his hands were pinned by his head, immediately shot in the back once, and then nine times more.
The backlash has been as stunning as the murder itself. Inspired by citizens in Minneapolis, large public protests have erupted spontaneously across the country, drawing comparisons to the national unrest around the January 6, 2021 insurrection—not because this is a violent uprising, but because, like then, a moment of political violence has broken the usual partisan defenses that once protected leaders from accountability. This time, however, Team Trump has been unable to weather the storm with its usual counteroffensive. Instead of unified Republican support, a remarkable number of GOP lawmakers have openly called for an independent, transparent investigation into the shooting and the broader immigration operation, with prominent senators publicly criticizing Homeland Security leadership and demanding answers. Moreover, Senate Homeland Security Committee chair Rand Paul has sought testimony from the heads of Customs and Border Patrol, ICE, and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services before his panel, signaling serious scrutiny rather than automatic deference.
Several GOP governors have also spoken out against the kind of “enforcement” Homeland Security has imposed on Minnesota. Texas governor Greg Abbott (yes, I double-checked) said, “The White House has to recalibrate on what needs to be done to make sure that respect is going to be re-instilled in law enforcement.”
The most powerful message came from Chris Madel, a Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota. Announcing his decision to drop out of the race, he called the immigration enforcement operation in his state an “unmitigated disaster” and said, “I cannot support the national Republicans’ stated retribution on the citizens of our state. Nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so.”
Though Trump is retrenching, he will keep trying to impose his will on the country. But, the past few days have exposed the chink in his armor. Lies and intimidation work only as long as people believe or stay silent and intimidated. Our weapons are our voices and our publicly standing up. We will be met with more lies and probably greater oppression and violence. History teaches that regimes thus gradually lose legitimacy. Should increasing numbers of previously silent Republican lawmakers find their voices, that time will arrive sooner. However long that takes, take heart in Winston Smith’s axiom in 1984:
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.