US announces plans to invade itself

You’re reading Here’s Something, the satirical newsletter critics call “Uneven,” “Better than nothing, probably,” and “Pointed, even if I don’t see the point.”

Here’s a more honest (and, if anyone asks, entirely-for-parody) report on Trump’s activation of the National Guard against civilians—and Sec. Hegseth’s threat to deploy Marines for the same purpose.

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This weekend, after multiple days of Americans not graciously accepting state-sanctioned abductions, the United States announced plans to invade itself.

In the lead-up to this invasion, Todd Lyons, the leader of the organized crime syndicate known as ICE that continues to wreak havoc in the United States, made a plea to the civilians it has been terrorizing. His statement was made in response to the doxing and harassment of his cartel members.

“These are real people with real families that you’re hurting,” Lyons insisted†, referring to the real people who have joined his paramilitary terror cell. “When we raid children’s playgrounds to violently separate parents from their children without warrant or due process, please remember that many of us are also parents with children. When we kidnap students off the street and take men and women from their jobs without cause, deploying money that could be spent on healthcare on stabbing America in the back instead, remember that many of us also have backs. And when we eventually end up firing on crowds please remember that many of us have also been in crowds before.”

“Also, please stop calling us Nazis,” Secretary of Defense Hegseth said in a similar statement. “Enough is enough. We’ve got to put an end to inaccurate historical comparisons. Stop referring to ICE agents and military members who blindly follow orders from a fascist as Nazis, even when all they do is think, speak, and act like Nazis. Just because we wear masks over our faces, that doesn’t mean that in some small way we understand the shameful nature of our fascist activities. Seriously, the name-calling is not OK. It could seriously injure someone’s feelings—or worse, it might cause us to not repeat our past mistakes.”

“Think about it,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem argued during an appearance on her own government’s privately sponsored propaganda channel., “What if someone started calling you a Nazi, just because you ignored due process, arrested judges you disagreed with, started keeping lists of people you blame for everyone else’s problems, sent them to permanent detention centers in nearby countries, and then violently attacked your own citizens when they made use of their First Amendment right to assembly? You’d be pretty upset, wouldn’t you?”

As of this writing, none of the above could be reached for comment, as they were busy coordinating attacks on the United States, by the United States.

†He seriously said this part.

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Hi! If you’ve read this far, great. This is the portion that’s not satire. It’s the portion where I remind you that authoritarianism is not on the horizon—it is here. ICE is a fascist paramilitary organization operating beyond the law, without due process, with their faces covered, violently kidnapping people off the street. Any agents of the state or military personnel who acquiesce to Trump administration orders to act against their own countrymen are traitors, and will be viewed as such in history books—assuming we still have those in the future.

If for some reason Todd Lyons’ real-life blithering speech asking you to stop making fun of him and his goons made you in any way consider stopping, then please, please know that when we give these people an inch, they will not just take a mile—they will take the entire country with them. They’re doing it right now.

I don’t know what will happen tonight, as the National Guard descends illegally on Los Angeles. I don’t know what will happen in the coming days, weeks, and months. I hope beyond hope that the moral arc of the universe really does bend toward justice, and that it bends soon. But if it doesn’t, it will be because we all stopped and did exactly as they told us to do.

And remember, the best way to prove you’re not a fascist is to order my essay collection This Won’t Help.

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What I’ve been reading

Your Best and Brightest by Tali Beckwith-Cohen

Every institution is made of people. People who can make autonomous decisions to follow fascist orders and status quo, or act with moral clarity. Here, Tali does the latter. If only those with power would do the same.

“Right now, our friend Mahmoud is sitting in an ICE detention center and has missed the birth of his son. Our friends’ visas are being revoked. The people of Gaza have just run out of flour and are facing imminent mass starvation after over a year of bombing and indiscriminate killing. Just today fifty Palestinians have been killed! Your students are terrified. And meanwhile, I am being called into disciplinary meetings because students peacefully chained themselves to a gate that has been closed for months to bring attention to the abduction of their friend! My graduation is in jeopardy because Jewish students staged a peaceful sit-in on a public area of Low steps to protest the targeting of our peers by ICE in our name! This is the choice Barnard is making, and I cannot for the life of me understand it.”