Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Here we are again, standing in that uniquely American space where sarcasm becomes a coping mechanism because reality keeps insisting on doing improv without a script—or a conscience.

According to the official bedtime story, Trump and his garden-gnome honor guard at ICE haven’t even been at this whole “aggressive enforcement” thing for a full year. Barely a season, really. The paint is still drying on the policies. The jackboots are practically new. And yet—miraculously, tragically, inevitably—we’ve already arrived at the point where a U.S. citizen is shot and killed in Minnesota, and the explanation arrives pre-packaged, shrink-wrapped, and labeled “defensive.”

Defensive.

That word is doing Olympic-level gymnastics these days.

Because apparently “defensive” now includes armed federal agents killing the very people they are sworn—at least nominally—to protect. One imagines the PowerPoint slide: Step 1: Escalate. Step 2: Fire. Step 3: Call it self-defense. Transparency achieved.

And of course, Trump and his loyal ICE gnomes—grim little figures polishing badges and talking tough—are shocked. Shocked! Who could have predicted that unleashing militarized tactics, vague rules of engagement, and a culture that treats force as a personality trait might end with a body on the ground? Certainly not the people who have spent years insisting that more guns, more fear, and fewer guardrails somehow equals “law and order.”

What’s especially rich is the insistence that this all happened too soon to judge. “It hasn’t even been a year,” they say, as if constitutional rights come with a trial subscription period. As if we’re supposed to shrug and say, Well sure, a citizen died, but give authoritarianism a chance—it’s still learning!

The line, we’re told, hasn’t been crossed. No, no. The line was apparently somewhere behind us, and we sprinted past it while shouting about caravans and crime statistics scribbled in Sharpie. When the state kills a citizen and reflexively labels it “defensive,” that’s not an accident—it’s a preview. It’s the beta version of a system where accountability is optional and uniforms function as moral absolution.

And Minnesota—quiet, cold, unassuming Minnesota—becomes the stage for this little morality play. Not a border. Not a war zone. Just America, doing what America does best when fear replaces judgment: pretending this is normal.

So yes, Trump and his ICE gnomes will scowl for the cameras, mutter about threats, and insist there was no alternative. There’s always no alternative when you design a system that refuses to imagine one. But let’s not kid ourselves: when the government kills its own citizen and calls it self-defense before the blood is dry, that’s not enforcement.

That’s the sound of a line being erased—carefully, deliberately—while we’re told to stop asking questions and admire how firm the handwriting looks.