How Did We Get Here?
What led us to a world in which pastors get pepper-sprayed in the face?
The iconic image of 2025 is this photograph of ICE officers pepper spraying Pastor David Black of First Presbyterian Chicago in the face.
The video is even more shocking: here, a few minutes before the photo was taken, ICE officers stand on the roof and shoot Pastor Black with a pepper ball gun which knocks him to his feet. You can also hear them laughing afterward. Not only is this in clear violation of any legitimate rules of engagement, it’s even against the instructions of the gun manufacturer.
For the record, ICE claims that Black and his group were obstructing a vehicle from leaving the facility, but there isn’t evidence of that in the video. Of course, even if that were true, there would clearly be more appropriate ways to arrest them than this. Clergy friends of mine have been at protests like this one; it’s a common tactic for clergy to use their unique role in society to call attention to something morally wrong, and it spans the ideological spectrum from Dr. King to Operation Rescue. These protesters were vocal and loud, but they were obviously not posing any physical threat to the ICE officers or facility.
Yet the officers responded with (non-lethal) force, and with contemptuous laughter as well.
How did we get here? How did we arrive at the point where untrained, masked government agents, accountable to no one but the president and his henchmen, pepper spray a priest with impunity? How, in less than a year, has America been so utterly transformed?
I actually want to answer this question, in reverse chronological order.
1.
How could ICE agents have shot at and pepper-sprayed a pastor who was not physically threatening them? There are at least three reasons.
First, it’s been widely reported that ICE officers receive a bare minimum of training, and require almost no qualifications to get a job. Moreover, ICE has been using overt white supremacist messaging in its recruitment materials, not to mention incendiary rhetoric that immediately became the subject of parody.
Now, I’m sure a lot of ICE agents are just doing it for the paycheck — ICE is the only employment program that Trump has put forward. But many others are drawn from the ranks of the Oath Keepers and other far-right organizations, and the culture of ICE is clearly one of violence, callousness, dehumanization, and brute force. They don’t give a shit about some liberal pastor.
Second, those ICE officers’ violence has been empowered by the Supreme Court, which has sunk to its lowest moral and reputational level since the Dred Scott decision. The Court has specifically allowed racial profiling to be used by ICE, has not reined in any of ICE’s clearly unlawful activities (such as lying about having warrants or boasting that they don’t need them), has allowed the regime to exploit loopholes to deport people without due process, has given Trump immunity from prosecution for anything he does as president, has indicated that they will endorse a once-radical theory called the ‘unitary executive’ that allows Trump to fire anyone in the government for any reason at all, and has even scolded lower court judges bewildered by this shocking cave to authoritarianism. (Chris Geidner at
has been an invaluable resource in tracking this shameful period; I reported on the Supreme Court for several years at the Daily Beast and am really grateful I’m not on that beat anymore.)Amazingly, Justice Amy Coney Barrett – who, together with Justice Kavanaugh and the Chief Justice, now represent the ‘moderate’ wing of this stacked Court – had the temerity to go on Fox News, of all places, to lash out at the court’s critics (which include over three dozen federal judges). Justice Barrett was right, of course, that a lot of the Court’s recent decisions are interim ones, produced under time pressure; the Court has not finally ruled on most of the issues I just listed. But she was quite wrong that this is all just the ordinary course of business. As Justice Sotomayor’s dissents have made perfectly clear, most of the cases above (and many others) clearly warrant a temporary injunction, not blanket permission, while the Court takes its time to decide the issues. It’s hard to un-fire people, un-starve the former recipients of food aid, and un-deport people unlawfully deported. Much of the damage cannot be undone.
Third, the ICE officers’ violence is a part of the right-wing rage ecosystem, which has lied about and dehumanized immigrants for at least a decade now. Migrants are not “criminals and predators”; immigrants commit crimes at a lower rate than native-born citizens. Tren de Aragua is not everywhere. Most migrants are here for economic opportunity or to flee violence, not some sinister Great Replacement or Migrant Caravan. And most “illegals” are only illegal because the immigration system is broken and a legal path to residency is almost impossible to get, in part because Trump himself ordered Republicans to kill the bipartisan immigration reform bill last year. Which they did.
I’m not sure how seriously people take this third account. We roll our eyes at the latest idiocy from Jesse Watters and we move on. But there are consequences to slandering a group of people, night after night, using them for rage-bait and ratings. And not just the immigrants of course, but liberals, Democrats (who Stephen Miller says are domestic extremists), ‘woke’ people, trans people. The unique, toxic brew of the Internet and its algorithms; the end of the Fairness Doctrine and rise of right-wing big media (which now includes CBS News); and audience capture have led to a massive incentivization of rage.
Not everyone who stews in right-wing media shoots a priest with a pepper gun. But I’ll wager that everyone who shoots a priest with a pepper gun has been stewing in right-wing media.
3.
And how did that happen? How did we get to a point in which an administration hires far-right goons to shoot priests and kidnap children without a warrant, a court allows them to do it, and at least a quarter of the nation cheers them on?
In a way, this is the most painful chapter of the story, because it’s largely a matter of luck.
Remember that only a third of the country voted for this – “this” being the ICE raids, the anti-immigrant rage, and the rest of the MAGA nationalist package. But another quarter of the country voted for Trump for other reasons: economic insecurity, inflation, dislike of the Democrats, and so on, and that was enough to swing the election.
Of course, plenty of pundits with platforms far larger than mine tried desperately to warn them – both that Trump would not help them economically and that he would threaten America as we know it. But these voters didn’t listen. They didn’t believe or care about the threats Trump posed to democracy, and they thought he’d help the economy. And, remember, Kamala Harris was an incumbent, and incumbents lost in almost every national election held in 2024, everywhere in the world.
Shortly after the election, I wrote what is one of my most-read Substack posts, urging us to see Trump as his voters saw him — as someone who could help fix an economy that does not work for working people. That is still true. But it’s also true that, as I said in that piece, what we’re going to get is something very different. Trump won on the price of eggs, but he’s delivering – well, if you don’t like the word ‘fascism’, then let’s just say strongman authoritarian rule that rallies the masses against minorities and erodes liberal democracy, education, culture, and the rule of law.
I struggle with frustration, even rage, at these voters. Of course, it’s not entirely their fault; the failure lies with our education system, with right-wing media, and with politicians who take advantage of ignorance and fear. But it has to be partly their fault, getting conned by the most obvious con man in America, disbelieving all the clear signs that he was going to do exactly what he has done.
And now many of them — Latinos for Trump, government workers for Trump, Asians for Trump — are themselves the targets of Trump’s rage. The better angels of my nature want to welcome them to the opposition. The lesser angels want to say we told you so. The face-eating leopards did, in fact, eat your faces.
Meanwhile, the intellectual leaders on the Right know that they got lucky. Whether it’s theocratic post-liberals like Russell Vought, fossil fuel executives, or Christian Nationalists, they are well aware that Trump may be their best chance to foist their policies on a nation that doesn’t actually want them. They know full well that this is a unique opportunity, that Trump — a bit like Reagan and George W Bush before him, but even more so — is a unique leader who can wave the flag while our systems of government and society are undone.
They also know that time is running out; they may only have a year left, if the 2026 election is fair (which I still think it will not be).
And many of them believe it isn’t luck; they think it’s providence. Which, I have to admit, has a certain logic to it. Of all people, Donald Trump — the insurrectionist, the convicted felon, someone who was very nearly assassinated — is somehow back in charge, rechristianizing and re-whitening America. You couldn’t write this in a screenplay. So, sure, it seems plausible that God is pulling the strings. And more comforting, maybe, than this being a giant historical accident, that a demagogue takes power because of the price of eggs, only to do everything other than lower the price of eggs.
So maybe that’s how we got here.
4.
In one way, I agree with the theocrats. The agents who pepper sprayed Pastor Black are morally responsible for their actions, but causally, they are just ripples on an ocean of causes and conditions. In their minds are ideas planted there by our culture, watered and fertilized by media that gets rich off of them, exploited by politicians. Their bodies are kept safe by a militarized state and a complicit court system. They’ve been handed weapons and power by an administration that itself came to power for wholly unrelated reasons. And at the receiving end of their violence, someone with different ideas, drawn from Scripture and experience and his own cultural causes and conditions.
Paraphrasing J.D. Salinger’s Teddy, those agents are God spraying God onto God.
This theology offers no comfort; evil unfolds with no promise of its lessening. Yet it does evoke a certain equanimity, which oscillates with rage and concern and love, and intermingles with it, and offers at least an interruption in the misery. In a way, we got here because we had to get here, because everything has unfolded in just this way — not by design, I don’t think, and largely due to luck. But also much larger than the proximate factors above.
But of course I don’t agree with the theocrats. “God” didn’t will any of this into existence, and just because something happened doesn’t mean it should happen. Justice depends on human actions, not those of a cosmic puppetmaster. We may have gotten here by an unknowably complex set of causes and conditions, but if we’re ever going to get out of here, that will be up to us.
Thanks for reading and, to subscribers, thanks for your support.
Here are some things I’ve been up to, or am about to be up to:
In my “other career” as a psychedelics researcher, I wrote for Emory’s Canopy Forum about the problematic use of the term ‘mysticism’ in psychedelic science and law. I’ll also be part of an online seminar on the newly-recognized psychedelic religion called ‘Singularism’ on Wednesday, October 15.
Amid the relief that many in the Jewish community are deservedly feeling as the Gaza ceasefire takes hold, I wrote about the Trump regime’s crusade against left-wing organizations, including two Jewish ones.
I’ll be offering a dharma talk online and in person for the New York Insight Meditation Center on “working skillfully with queer rage,” Monday, October 27. Details are here.
And here are some great posts I’ve read this week on this platform:
- shares good news: JD Vance is a terrible liar.
- has more good news about how soybeans may prove to be the GOP’s undoing.
- on how some Democrats are able to effectively question Trump’s physical and mental health.
Finally, another parody ICE ad:
Yes, and what does "us" need to do? "Getting here" also reflects a system that has led to a moral failing that needs to be addressed. That's what I explore in my latest. Also, it looks like John Oliver read your Bari piece!!
Terrific analysis.