Donald Trump Wants This Chaos. It Means More Power in His Hands.

These people are very clearly under orders, of at least the nudge and wink variety, to shoot first and ask questions later. Besides, when they watch their leaders smear the people they just executed with their itchy fingers, what lesson do we suppose they take away? Good, said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem before her body was cold, committed an act of “domestic terrorism.” Pretti, Noem announced on Saturday, literally within minutes of his execution, “attacked” agents. If you’re wearing a badge and a mask and carrying a gun, you hear that clearly as a green light to do it again. And just in case you didn’t, Noem added: “We will continue to let this process go forward and not allow people like Governor Walz and Mayor Frey not to lie about what actually unfolded on that street.”

There will be more executions, of citizens and non-citizens alike. Every victim will be smeared by the state. Protests will mount. Rage on the left will grow. Eventually, at some point, someone on the anti-MAGA side of this argument will cross a line. An ICE officer will be shot.

Then what? Well, first of all, they’ll make a martyr of this modern-day Horst Wessel. Maybe Kid Rock will write a song about him, as the Nazis did about old Horst. And then will come the real business, the day Miller probably anticipates with an almost sexual excitement: martial law will be declared. I’m not sure it will even require the shooting of an ICE agent—just more ICE shootings leading to a degree of unrest that reaches critical mass. For these people, that would be excuse enough.