Trump thinks he can rewrite history

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears; it was their final, most essential command.” That quote from Orwell’s 1984 has been stuck in my head all day. After watching the footage from yesterday, and now hearing that two more people were shot in Portland today, it doesn’t feel like fiction anymore. It feels like a warning we ignored. Some people say Orwell predicted the future. I don’t think so. I think he was a student of history. He paid attention to how power works when it stops being accountable to the people. He understood what happens when governments lie, and no one stops them. He knew how regimes rise when people are taught not to trust what they see with their own eyes. What he wrote wasn’t prophecy. It was a record of the past. And a warning to the future. He knew it could happen again, and now we’re watching it happen.

What is happening today is much like what happened in Germany. The Nazis didn’t advertise their “Final Solution” as concentration camps with gas chambers. They used language to pervert reality itself. They used phrases like “resettlement to the East” and “evacuation” to make mass deportations sound like routine administrative relocations. Victims were told to bring one suitcase. Some even had to buy their own train tickets to give the illusion of choice. German authorities spread stories about newly built hospitals and job training programs waiting for them.

They even went as far as building a fake “model” camp at Theresienstadt to fool the world. It was a transit camp where they sent Jewish artists, intellectuals, and elderly people, and the Nazis used it to sell a lie. Before a Red Cross visit, they cleaned it up and staged the whole thing, planted gardens, painted buildings, opened fake shops and coffee houses. They even forced prisoners to pretend that all was well, taking it so far as to stage a children’s opera, just to make it look like the people there were being treated well. And it worked. The Red Cross left, thinking everything was fine. But almost immediately after the visit, the Nazis sent most of those same prisoners to Auschwitz. Nearly all of them were murdered.

The German public didn’t know everything, but they knew enough. People saw their Jewish neighbors vanish. They watched families being taken. They heard whispers and rumors. They saw what was happening around them, and most stayed quiet. By then, the groundwork had already been laid. Years of antisemitic propaganda had trained people to see those neighbors as less than human. So when the government started rounding people up, they didn’t have to explain or justify it. They didn’t need everyone to agree. They just needed the majority to look the other way.

That is what we are watching right now, the softening of atrocities and the rewriting of truth. The government is not asking for our approval. It’s asking for our silence. ICE agents and Border Patrol are killing civilians in broad daylight, and the narrative is being written before the bodies are even off the street. Yesterday, Renee Nicole Good, was shot and killed in Minneapolis. Today, U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents shot a man and a woman in downtown Portland at the same time as protests against ICE. That’s what we know right now. What we don’t know is how many more times this is going to happen.

As expected, within minutes of the shooting, the government was already spreading its preferred narrative, propaganda that the victims were Venezuelan gang members from Tren de Aragua. They offered no evidence. Just the same old playbook: criminalize the victims, justify the violence, confuse the public. In reality, the two people shot were a married couple. There’s an active FBI investigation, but let’s be honest, these days, a federal agency investigating another federal agency doesn’t inspire trust. Not when the same people giving the orders are the ones writing the press releases. We live in a moment where even official statements can’t be trusted. And the danger isn’t just the violence, it’s the way they’re demanding we accept it as normal. They want us to believe that people shot by federal agents must have deserved it. That this is law and order. That this is how things work now.

We cannot let that mindset take hold. We cannot forget what we saw, and we can’t let them rewrite it. One of the biggest differences between 1930s Germany and where we are today is that we already know how that story ended. We’re not living in ignorance. We are not in the dark. The warnings are not subtle. We have access to history, footage, firsthand accounts, and a global record of what happens when fear, lies, and silence take over. And unlike then, we have tools now that give every concerned citizen the power to document, to share, to speak out in real time. We have cameras in our pockets. We have platforms that can reach thousands. We have the ability to expose what’s happening as it’s happening. What we don’t have is the luxury of pretending we don’t see it.

So what can we do? If you see someone being taken, film it. Stay safe. Stay nonviolent. But document everything. Ask who is taking them. Record badge numbers, agency names, car plates, anything you can safely capture. Don’t assume someone else will do it. Don’t assume the truth will be preserved without you. Because there is no guarantee that the truth will survive inside this country unless we create our own record of what’s happening. We are not in a normal time. And we have to start acting like it. The very systems that were built to protect rights are now being used to erase them. We may not be able to stop every abuse, but we can make damn sure as many people as possible know what happened. And that matters more than ever.

And make no mistake: what’s happening with ICE isn’t just about brutality, it’s about legitimacy. The government is asking us to treat these agents with the same level of trust and respect we give to our military and law enforcement, but they haven’t earned it. They haven’t gone through the years of training. They aren’t following any clear rules of engagement. They aren’t accountable to the public the way real officers are supposed to be. They’re showing up to protests dressed like soldiers, operating like a rogue force, and then demanding the same moral credibility as those who actually serve and protect. But they are not protectors or peacekeepers. They are an extension of unchecked executive power. And what we saw yesterday proved it. It’s not just dangerous, it’s deeply disrespectful and insulting to every person who wears a uniform with integrity. To military service members and peace officers who spent years training, who follow the law, who serve to protect, not harm, this is a slap in the face. It devalues their work. It drags their profession down. Because this isn’t about public safety. It’s about recruiting people with no real qualifications, offering them a $50,000 sign-on bonus, and giving them permission to act out their violent fantasies on vulnerable communities.

And the people who should be standing up to this? They’re smiling in photo ops. Chuck Schumer. Hakeem Jeffries. These men are the face of Democratic leadership, and they are not meeting the moment. I watched Schumer laugh with Marco Rubio this week, while civilians are being shot in the street. I don’t care how many bills they’ve passed or how long they’ve held their seats. If they won’t walk out of meetings, stop votes, and shut the entire process down until the violence ends, they are not leaders. They’re placeholders. They’re people more interested in protecting their own careers than protecting the public. And we don’t have time for that. We need new leadership in the Democratic Party, urgently. The kind that understands what time it is. The kind that has fire in their gut and is ready to shut it all down. Call your members of Congress and demand they bring in new leadership. Tell them to step aside if they won’t treat this like the national emergency it is. Tell them business as usual is not acceptable. We’re not living in a normal time, and we don’t need more carefully worded statements and backroom strategies. We need resistance. We need people who are willing to blow the whistle, walk out of the room, and bring the machine to a halt if that’s what it takes.

And I hear you. I see the comments. We need change, but it all feels overwhelming, and it feels like nothing we do makes a difference. But I want to remind you, again, we are not powerless. And we are not the minority. That’s something we have to start saying out loud, even when it feels like we’re shouting into the wind. The people doing this, the ones cheering it on, excusing it, twisting themselves into knots to justify it, they make up maybe 30% of this country. The rest of us, at least 70%, either actively oppose it or want no part of it at all. We are not outnumbered. We are just surrounded by people who are waiting for someone else to speak first. So speak first. Be the one who says, out loud, that this is not okay. Because every time we do, we give others permission to do the same. And that’s how this turns.

And this isn’t about “getting through” something. We’re either going to stop this, or we’re not. But sitting around wondering if we will doesn’t change anything. What matters now is how much damage happens before it ends. How many people are hurt, and lives are destroyed.

If you’ve ever wondered what you would’ve done back then, while the trains were leaving, while neighbors were disappearing, while the government was spinning lies and daring you to question them, this is your answer. You’re in it. Right now. This is what it looks like. There will not be a louder alarm. The question is no longer “what if?” The question is “what now?” And the answer is: we do not look away. We do not stay quiet. We do not give up.

And seeing all the protests over the past 24 hours renews my hope for America, because it still remembers how to fight back. I’m holding onto that because it means we are not done yet. I still have hope for America, and you should too.

I’ll see you tomorrow,
Heather

P.S. If you’ve made it this far, chances are we see things the same way. You can make a difference right now by subscribing to my Substack. There is a free option and the option to help me reach a wider audience with a $5/month paid subscription. Your support allows me to cover more ground and keep telling the truth about the lies and destruction unfolding in our country.