The Meme Morality of ICE and FAFO

Good people cannot make the needed change.
Good people can make the needed change.

The contradiction is intentional. The first sentence is singular. The second is plural.

Individually, most people are not stupid. Collectively, people often are. As George Carlin put it, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

On our own, we recognize problems and imagine solutions. Together, we often convince ourselves that change is impossible—inevitable, unchangeable, just the way things are. Group membership can dull critical reflection. Institutional belonging routinely rewards conformity. Alone, we can hesitate, question, and refuse. In groups—especially bureaucratic ones—we deflect blame or scapegoat. We adopt the language, the practices, the script. We stop asking whether something should be done and focus instead on how efficiently it is being done. Fiscal, not moral, economy—“self-deport today and receive a $2,600 stipend,” DHS says, claiming it will save the taxpayer $13,000 per person.

That is how harm becomes ordinary. Forget the Statue of Liberty: “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

For decades, I have watched armed groups carry firearms into public demonstrations. I have received violent fan mail for challenging the hero narrative around Kyle Rittenhouse. Hypocrisy must have officially replaced baseball as America’s pastime. Videos and images circulate as MAGA memes celebrating violence, comment sections filled with vulgar varieties of “got what they deserved” and “(I wish we could) kill ‘em all.”

Make no mistake, the Trump administration actively pursues escalation. Their engagement with ragebait and AI created content further these pursuits. In October 2025 Trump shared an AI generated video of him piloting an aircraft and dumping feces on No Kings protestors. In February 2025 Trump shared “Gaza 2025” bizarrely advertising Trump Gaza. There is too much content to list: Trump as Pope or as King, or a deep fake on “Med Beds” that can cure any disease but are being hidden.

One assumes the trolling is intended to manufacture outrage and energize his base. He combines it with unapologetic and aggressive policy—malfeasant political doctrine—opponents will face consequences. But the impacts continue to be real, they are life-and-death serious.

This posture is F’ Around and Find Out: FAFO. Once offered as a joke, a warning, and a spotlight for the “find out” phase. It has been co-opted by law enforcement and the alt-right. The MAGA edition now expresses delight in summary judgment and, in this case, summary execution. A few years ago, its champions pushed legislation in multiple states to legalize running over protesters. FAFO is not merely descriptive; it is aspirational. It signals pleasure in consequences rather than concern for justice. “It’s like Call of Duty. So cool, huh?” one agent said to another, likening deadly violence to playing a video game.

It is illegal to yell “fire” in a crowded theater if there isn’t a fire. Yet it is apparently acceptable to shout “gun” in a crowd of armed ICE agents and call the resulting violence a reasonable perception of threat. Even if the law disagrees, MAGA will provide protection without any facts. What appeared to be a cover-up began before the body went cold.

Individuals often believe their eyes. They watch events like the January 6th insurrection or episodes of police brutality and describe them accurately—at least initially. “Enough is enough,” Lindsey Graham once said. “Count me out.” He and Donald Trump are close again now.

Put the labels on, call them “leftists” or “domestic terrorists,” and suddenly people’s eyes play tricks on them. Marjorie Taylor Greene says, “take off their political blinders,” addressing the MAGA base she previously stewarded.

What is it about collective belonging that helps people unsee what they already know?

Scholars have wrestled with obedience to authority and the seduction of authoritarianism for decades. Stanley Milgram’s experiments showed how ordinary people could harm others when responsibility was displaced upward. Participants were not sadists; they were compliant. Conscience is easily overridden when authority provides cover.

Hannah Arendt gave this phenomenon its enduring name: the banality of evil. Great harm does not require great hatred—only routine, normalization, and enough people willing to say, “I’m just doing my job.” People eventually convince themselves they never smelled the stench of concentration camps.

This distinction matters for institutions like ICE. Defenders cite “good people” inside the agency as proof it is redeemable. Critics respond that no amount of individual decency can redeem a system built to terrorize, detain, and expel. Both claims gesture toward truth—and both are incomplete.

Consider the removal of Greg Bovino. His ouster has been framed as accountability. It is not. Bovino was not the problem; he was a cog in the machinery of MAGA xenophobia. He will be replaced by someone equally willing—perhaps more so. Changing leadership does not alter policy directives, nor does it suddenly train the untrained. Treating personnel changes as reform is a familiar distraction.

I was reminded of this with a story about a police officer who left his department to join ICE. After some time, he tried to return. He was not welcomed back. He was told, plainly, that someone willing to join ICE no longer represented the values of that community. His behavior facilitated moral diagnosis. Institutions do not merely reflect our values; they select, shape, and demand them. To join is to signal a willingness to become the kind of person the institution requires.

The problems with immigration policy are not new. In 2019, I wrote about the traumas of child separation, focusing on politics and field expertise—truths that still hold. The American Psychological Association called separating children from families “needless and cruel,” threatening the mental and physical health of both children and caregivers. The American Academy of Pediatrics warned that such separations contradicted everything pediatricians stand for, disrupting brain development and long-term health.

It is worth mentioning, we bear witness to families torn apart. But child separation policy provides proof that people power makes a difference; it was altered after public pushback. Protest works against Trump when we collectively show up, and we have seen it repeatedly.

One good person will not end ICE. One good person might save a life, delay a deportation, or refuse orders. But many people together can end ICE and curtail Trump’s political revenge tour. History makes this plain. Whistleblowers do not stop wars alone. Strikes do not topple empires overnight. But enough people power—enough refusal—can melt even heavily armed systems. Whistles, eventually, beat guns.

This is why FAFO is revealing. Power assumes compliance until it encounters consequences. Institutions “find out” not when criticized, but when collective nonviolent action cannot be ignored. Many people are engaging because they cannot take any more.

This distinction helps clarify a scene involving Chad Knutson. Knutson was not traditionally a protester; he reportedly viewed demonstrations as pointless. Yet he witnessed a moment exposing a moral void. According to Robert Worth in The Atlantic, a protester placed a rose on a makeshift memorial. An ICE agent took it, pinned it to his lapel, and mockingly handed it to a female agent. They laughed.

It was too much to stomach.

“I grab my keys, I grab a coat, and drive over. I barely park my car and I’m running out screaming and crying, ‘You stole a f****ing flower from a dead woman. Like, are any of you human anymore?’”

This was not ideological outrage. It was moral nausea.

The incident echoes scenes we have seen repeatedly: “f**** bitch,” apparent applause after shootings, casual mockery of grief. Yet these moments contrast sharply with: “I’m not mad at you.” (Renee Good) “Are you okay?” (Alex Pretti).

Cognitive dissonance, the bystander effect, propaganda, and normalization mute reality and distance people from their own complicity. Rationalizations such as “I thought he was only going after criminals” allow people to abdicate their responsibility to demand constitutional protections—or resist executive overreach. One side of the mouth says, “find out”; the other says “whattabout.” Group loyalty replaces critical thought, and cruelty becomes ordinary.

Individually, we can think for ourselves.
Collectively, people can lose themselves.
But collectively, we can also remember what we already know, who we are accountable to, and that power depends on our participation.

ICE, like every institution built on cruelty, depends on compliance. FAFO fails when people stop playing the game. History shows this repeatedly: whistles do not win because they are louder than guns, but because enough people decide they will no longer be silent.

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