From twelve thousand kilometres away, I’m watching the United States tear up its founding document in real time.
The country is in a Cold Civil War. It’s fought on two fronts: online, where narratives are deployed within minutes of a killing to pre-empt sympathy for the dead; and on the streets, where federal agents operate as an occupying force in American cities.
Minneapolis just became the front line.
In three weeks, federal immigration enforcement has killed two citizens, deployed tear gas and pepper spray in residential neighbourhoods, detained tribal members and other American citizens and denied congressional representatives the right to inspect detention conditions. The pattern isn’t enforcement. It’s occupation. And it directly contradicts everything America claims to stand for.
The information front
When Alex Pretti was shot by Border Patrol on January 24, the administration’s response was immediate. Within minutes, officials labelled him a “terrorist.” Right-wing influencers called him an “illegal alien.” Neither was true. Pretti was a 37-year-old American citizen, an intensive care nurse at the Veterans Administration hospital who spent his days saving the lives of those who’d served their country.
Wired documented the smear campaign as it unfolded.
Wired: The Instant Smear Campaign Against Border Patrol Shooting Victim Alex Pretti
The playbook is consistent: kill, then control the narrative before facts can be established. This is information warfare, and the target is public sympathy.
The same playbook was deployed after Renee Good’s death on January 7. A 37-year-old mother of three, shot in her car. The administration claimed self-defence. Witnesses disputed it immediately.
The street front
Hours after Good’s death, ICE agents used chemical irritants outside Roosevelt High School during dismissal. Children watched a staff member get detained. Pepper spray drifted across the playground.
Three days later, congresswomen tried to inspect Fort Snelling. They glimpsed twenty detainees, no beds, before DHS expelled them. Congressional oversight, the foundation of civilian control over federal agencies, was denied at the door.
By mid-January, tear gas hung over Minneapolis neighbourhoods. Oglala Sioux tribal members were detained. American citizens were arrested at a Target.
The contradiction America can no longer ignore
This is the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. The founders wrote those words to articulate a nation free of tyranny.
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Rights they called unalienable. Self-evident. Not granted by government, but inherent to all people.
What Minneapolis reveals is that America in 2026 has inverted this entirely. Rights are not unalienable. They’re conditional. They depend on neighbourhood, on appearance, on whether federal agents decide you belong. The enforcement apparatus built to protect those rights has become the primary instrument violating them.
The US Founders knew this danger intimately. They’d lived under arbitrary detention, under armed agents who answered to a distant executive, under a government that treated oversight as obstruction. They built a republic specifically designed to prevent it.
Watching from Australia, the horror isn’t just the violence. It’s watching a nation systematically betray the ideals it built its identity upon, while waving that same flag.
Two hundred fifty years after declaring independence from tyranny, America is running the founders' experiment in reverse.
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Postscript: Just in case you think it’s “fake news” that ICE Agents are pepper spraying people who are already subdued, here is a media report from MSN that confirms it.