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)