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This is a screenshot of a bluesky post from “The Tennessee Holler” posted 12 hours ago. The post reads: “If you’re zip-tying grandmas protesting losing health care maybe you’re not the good guys in the story?” The post includes a repost from Joe G posted 2 hours ago that says “Arresting people in wheelchairs protesting Medicaid cuts.” Below the text is a video thumbnail showing what appears to be law enforcement officers restraining an elderly person in a wheelchair in what looks like a government building or office setting.
Everyone could have seen this coming years ago. I still remember the first images from the ICE facilities where small children were separated from their parents and held in steel cages. Google it, it was heartbreaking.
That was the moment I realized where the US was headed.
It didn't even cause much protest, people were just shrugging it off. These were not humans, but immigrants, after all. Being from Germany I had a good understanding of the depths of inhumanity ICE was already willing to entertain back then. US Americans not only let this happen, they wanted more of it. Now they're getting it.
Personally I think it started before that. It has its roots in the mass overturning of civil rights after 2001, the implementation of secret courts, disappearing people into black sites, extrajudicial killings, and breaking international human rights laws to hold people in indefinite detention without trial.
No subsequent administration has ever walked that back because that kind of power is so convenient to them. But this framework is what has facilitated the slide towards fascism.