We all know what it's like to break the rules. That slight rush of glee, followed by the angst and guilt of what consequences may follow. Even when you're taking a biscuit from the cupboard that mum's saved for Christmas, that unease persists.
Picture a different biscuit story though. One year, your older brother takes a biscuit. You denounce it, and scold him for his deceit. The next year, your younger sister takes five whole biscuits. You, along with your band of similarly-righteous cousins, have had enough and decide that your sister is banned from Christmas for the foreseeable future.
Only now, you're bored. You miss the power you had manipulating your cousins. So you take and scoff the whole biscuit tin. Everyone is outraged, but you tell them you helped establish the rules in previous Christmases. You deserve an extra present, right? Right?
***
Over the past fortnight, President Trump has well and truly taken the biscuit. By staging a shocking coup to remove the Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro and proclaiming that America now controls the South American country and the vast reserves of oil off its north coast, Trump has made a mockery of international law and a rules-based global system that already overwhelmingly favoured the North American power.
Not that he cares, of course. In an explosive New York Times interview at the Oval Office last Wednesday, he brazenly declared that he "doesn't need international law" and that the only thing limiting his interventions in sovereign countries is "his own morality". It's a surprise that incredibly high level of morality didn't stop him (at best) socialising with renowned sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, then.
Perhaps Trump's disregard for international norms is an attempt to emulate a Russian authoritarian he seemingly has lots of sympathy for. Perhaps it's why he has been so reluctant to criticise that same Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. It was an invasion that has left Russia an international pariah - billionaires cut off financially, athletes barred from international and sporting competitions, bans on foreign travel. Similar contempt was shown to China when they went close to invading Taiwan, which you'd expect will now crop up again in the near future.
One suspects America won't face such sanctions imposed on Russia. The rules-based international order they established after World War II, created the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Foundation and NATO as a vehicle of defending democracy and the rule of law. In the following decades, the Western world has denounced a plethora of human rights violations committed by countries around the world. They have been the de-facto "international police" of the earth.
Of these, America were the biggest repeat offender of rule-breaking. The list is endless: the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan post-9/11, illegal torture methods at Abu Gharib and Guantanamo Bay, intervention in Syria and Libya in the early 2010s, arming Israel to commit genocide in Palestine. It's like they have eaten the sacred pack of Christmas biscuits every year without rebuke.
Trump's acts are the first time America has explicitly rejected the need for peace and security though, and it leaves European leaders facing a threat to their ideals of co-existence. Along with the Venezuelan invasion, Trump has stepped up threats to annex Greenland, which remains an autonomous territory of Denmark. Pursuing more oil - three letters which together have had such an alarmingly disproportionate impact on US foreign policy - it is the first time he is at loggerheads with a member of NATO. The Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said that a US invasion on the territory would be the end of NATO as we know it.
America's actions signal a form of modern day imperialism, not fit for an international police state. Maybe it is because Trump et al. are too busy focused on creating a police state in America.
***
We know that America is happy to butcher foreign civilians. The above breaches of international law show that. We also know that they are happy to murder Black and brown citizens in the US. George Floyd stands among a mortifying number of victims to various US state police forces, and that is not even scratching the surface of the country's troubled history with civil rights.
What we didn't know is that they would extend that to white people, in broad daylight, on camera, and then deny that it has happened. The cold-blooded murder of Renee Nicole Good by an agent from the Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) in Minnesota last week is the latest in a string of lawful lawlessness, and one that confirms America is no longer a democracy.
ICE have been given sweeping powers and freedoms to enforce anti-immigration measures since Trump returned to the Oval Office almost a year to this day. In theory, their remit is simple - find and deport illegal US citizens. That modus operandi itself revolves around dehumanising Americans, but it seems to extend wherever they see fit. Just this week a disabled woman was dragged from a car by ICE agents only two blocks away from Good's murder.
While some trip over themselves justifying the actions of this so-called "law enforcement", we must remember that their actions are exactly what Trump and the Republican government want. ICE are developing a $100 million recruitment campaign targeted at guns rights advocates and military enthusiasts, according to the Washington Post.
JD Vance’s tigerish tirade after Good’s murder was evidence of this. Hitting out at the “radical left” media for lying about the Minnesota ICE agents’ behaviour, he - not for the first time - twisted the tragedy to sow the division that the Republican government rely on. The same playbook was used in the aftermath of Charlie Kirk’s murder.
So let’s call a spade a spade. 2026 is confirming what many of us have known for some time: America is a police state, run by an increasingly fascist dictatorship. Many in Europe have been too reluctant to call that fact for a while now, perhaps because of the Russian spectre to our east.
The fact that Western authoritarian governments will murder white people too is not much of a surprise. Once you degrade the basic rights and freedoms of one group of the population - while supporters crow with adoration - it is easy enough to extend that.
Both in the US and more widely around the globe, we are seeing that degradation. Think Narendra Modi's anti-Muslim rhetoric in India, Javier Milei's sexist policies in Argentina, language in the UK reverting to "small boats" to remove associations with the human beings who exist on them.
It is in this context that momentum amongst the European far-right should be seen. We cannot be complacent that this type of populism won’t be so damaging, nor cast off America as a basket-case country (true though it may be), and ignore that similar divisive, populist rhetoric has been creeping into our own countries for some time.
So another plea, for those who are angered by what they see, to bottle it into action. I read an inspiring book over the holiday break, Moral Ambition, by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. Among many, he argues that lots of us don’t think we can make changes, but the snowball effect of people who have different skills and a shared “moral ambition” (the capacity and hope to do good in the world) can be so effective.
You don’t have to be a charismatic, leading orator to catalyse change. Nor do you have to be an eloquent writer. History shows us of plenty behind the scenes who saved so many lives using their own skillsets. Everyday Nazi resistance characters are one; the person who fixed a broken microphone before Martin Luther King’s ‘I had a dream’ speech another.So another plea, for those who are angered by it, to bottle it into action. I read an inspiring book over the holiday break, Moral Ambition, by Dutch historian Rutger Bregman. Among many, he argues that lots of us don't think we can make changes, but the snowball effect of people with different skills and a shared "moral ambition" (the capacity and hope to do good in the world) can be so great.
Because if we who want to change the world for the better don't do it, ICE agents and the like will change it for the worse.
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