You know, do you just think about, like, under Democratic administrations, whether it's Obama or

Clinton or Biden, the kinds of things the right-wing media, pundit class, and even electeds

could, like, churn up into the idea of, like, Obama's secret police, Biden's secret police,

like the IRS for Obama, right? This kind of orienting fear that the kind of

libertarian side of the conservative movement has had for a long time, that the federal government

gets too strong and then it's going to have a police force that can violate all of your

First Amendment rights with impunity, disappear you for political reasons or any other reason.

They had to kind of like go deep into a kind of conspiratorial mush in order to conjure this fear,

right? And when it arrives nakedly in the form of masked federal agents who are accountable to no one within the community

they're operating in, who do not have to answer questions, who can take U.S. citizens off the

street and disappear them, abduct them, put them into a bureaucratic system that families have to

struggle to get them out of. When it arrives in the most unadorned fashion,

it's the conservatives who are cheering it and who are responsible. I know. I mean, pointing out

the hypocrisies of the right doesn't amount to much, doesn't get much traction, but it is nevertheless

appalling if you have any concern at all for integrity, consistency, principles.

Well, you know, like you often say, that hypocrisy is the nod that vice pays to virtue.

At least virtue is in the equation.

They feel some need to reckon with it.

And most importantly, it betrays that their consciences are dictating that they should.

Some still small voice is saying, we can't just totally, you know, undertake this and explain it be a pure raw power and self-interest, national interest, perhaps.

And I don't want to import my theological categories into American

politics too readily, but I do worship a savior who also was killed by, if the state is

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