The murders of unarmed civilians on the streets
of Minneapolis, including of Alex Pretti, would not come as a
shock to Iraqis in Fallujah or Afghans in Helmand province -
terrorized by US execution squads for decades.
It would not come as a shock to any of the students | teach
in prison. Militarized police in poor urban neighborhoods kick
down doors without warrants & kill with the same impunity.
What the rest of us are facing now is what Aimé Césaire
called "imperial boomerang.” Decaying empires employ the
same savage forms of control at home as they do abroad.
With the collapse of Athenian democracy, the tyranny Athens
imposed on others, it finally imposed on itself.
But before we became the victims of state terror, we were
accomplices. Before we expressed moral outrage at the
indiscriminate taking of innocent lives, we tolerated, & often
celebrated, the same Gestapo tactics directed at those who
lived in the nations we occupied or poor people of color.
We sowed the wind, now we will reap the whirlwind. The
machinery of terror, perfected on those we abandoned &
betrayed, including the Palestinians in Gaza, is ready for us.
Chris Hedges, 25 Jan 2026 (abridged)
