By John & Nisha
Whitehead
October 14,
2026
“You see them on the street. You watch
them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think
they’re people just like you. You’re
wrong. Dead wrong.” — They
Live
The spectacle of public
executions. Deadly
military strikes on foreign countries. Innocent civilian
lives lost to war. Aggressive ICE
raids. Government officials accused of using
their powers to intimidate political opponents. Public
office increasingly
entangled with private financial interests. Government
leaders who glorify violence, spew hatred, stir up racial
prejudice, provoke civil unrest, and stoke
discontent.
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This is what it looks like when a
nation loses its way.
When cruelty is mistaken for
courage, vengeance for justice, and the taking of human life
for a demonstration of strength.
When government
officials tell
you not to believe your own eyes and ears about the
state of the world around you, when they insist that the
truth is a lie and the lie is truth, you’ve stumbled into
a dystopian reality in which, as John Lennon rightly
concluded, the government is “being
run by maniacs for maniacal ends.”
When
so-called Christians and self-professed defenders of
morality insist that we must accept the lesser of two evils
based on exaggerated fears of what might happen if their
political opponents gain power, rather than confront the
abuses unfolding before our eyes, remember this: the lesser
of two evils is still evil.
This is not simply about
Donald Trump.
The machinery of the American police
state has been assembled over decades, under Republican and
Democratic administrations alike. Presidents have expanded
executive authority, waged undeclared wars, authorized drone
killings, built surveillance networks, militarized domestic
policing, and invoked national security to justify
extraordinary powers.
What makes the present moment so
troubling is the extent to which the public is encouraged to
accept increasingly aggressive exercises of government power
as necessary demonstrations of strength and
resolve.
The Constitution was never intended to
protect only the innocent, the popular, the patriotic, or
the politically acceptable. Its restraints on government
power matter most when the government is dealing with people
whom society has already condemned.
Yet what happens
when the public becomes so accustomed to government
overreach, corruption and brutality that it no longer
recognizes them as warning signs? What becomes of a
constitutional republic when its leaders and citizens stop
asking whether government actions are lawful, justified or
necessary, and concern themselves only with whether those
actions punish their enemies, advance their political
interests or preserve their sense of security?
We are
witnessing a political culture in which demanding due
process for an accused criminal is treated as defending
criminality, questioning a military strike is equated with
sympathy for the enemy, and opposing government cruelty is
portrayed as weakness.
The government doesn’t have
to abolish the Constitution outright when it can persuade
the public that certain people should no longer be entitled
to its protections.
That is how constitutional rights
cease to be rights at all and become privileges granted or
withdrawn at the government’s discretion.
And that
is how a population becomes conditioned to accept the
unacceptable.
We’re living in two
worlds.
There’s the world we see—or are made to
see—and then there’s the one we sense and occasionally
catch a glimpse of, which bears little resemblance to the
propaganda-driven reality manufactured by those in power and
amplified through an increasingly fragmented media
landscape.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as
life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a
far cry from the reality of a nation where economic
inequality persists, government power continues to expand,
and freedom is increasingly subjected to the demands of
surveillance, security and control.
All is not as it
seems.
Monsters with human faces walk among
us.
Some of them wield extraordinary government
power.
This is the premise of John
Carpenter’s film They Live, released in
November 1988, which remains unnervingly, chillingly
appropriate for our modern age.
Best known for his
horror film Halloween, Carpenter’s larger body of
work is infused with a strong anti-authoritarian,
anti-establishment, laconic bent that speaks to the
filmmaker’s concerns about the unraveling of our society,
particularly our government.
Time and again, Carpenter
portrays the government working against its own citizens, a
populace out of touch with reality, technology run amok,
and a future more horrific than any horror film.
In
They Live, two migrant workers discover that the
world is being subliminally controlled and exploited by
aliens working in partnership with an oligarchic
elite.
All the while, the populace—blissfully
unaware of the real agenda at work in their lives—has been
lulled into complacency, indoctrinated into compliance,
bombarded with media distractions, and hypnotized by hidden
messages beamed out of television and various electronic
devices, billboards and the like.
Sound
familiar?
It is only when homeless drifter John Nada,
played by the late
Roddy Piper, discovers a pair of special sunglasses that
he sees what lies beneath the elite’s fabricated reality:
control and bondage.
When viewed through Nada’s
lenses, the wealthy and powerful who appear human are
revealed as monsters exploiting the
citizenry.
Likewise, seemingly mundane advertisements
conceal subliminal,
authoritarian messages. Magazine racks scream
“CONSUME” and “OBEY.” Money proclaims “THIS IS
YOUR GOD.” Other hidden messages reinforce the same
demands: CONFORM. SUBMIT. STAY ASLEEP. WATCH TV. DO NOT
QUESTION AUTHORITY. NO INDEPENDENT THOUGHT.
This
indoctrination campaign engineered by the elite in They
Live is painfully familiar to anyone who has studied the
workings of an authoritarian state.
A citizenry that
does not think for themselves, obeys without question, is
submissive, does not challenge authority, does not think
outside the box, and is content to sit back and be
entertained is a citizenry that can be easily
controlled.
In this way, the message of They
Live provides an apt analogy for the distorted vision of
life in the American police state—what philosopher Slavoj
Žižek has characterized
as the invisible structures of domination that sustain the
appearance of freedom.
Tune out the government’s
attempts to distract, divert and befuddle us and tune into
what’s really going on in this country, and you’ll run
headlong into an uncomfortable truth: government corruption
and power have expanded far beyond the restraints the
Constitution was intended to impose.
And the
corruption is not always hidden.
What happens when
public office, private wealth and political influence become
so intertwined that ordinary citizens can no longer
distinguish whose interests their government is serving?
What happens when those conflicts are repeatedly exposed,
yet the public becomes too distracted, too divided or too
politically invested to demand answers?
This is where
the warning of They Live becomes especially
relevant.
The danger is not simply that powerful
interests might conceal what they’re doing. It’s that
they can operate in plain sight, confident that enough
people will refuse to see—or refuse to care.
We have
allowed the government’s corruption, brutality,
self-dealing and abuses go on for too long. While this has
been true of both parties, it has become painfully evident
under the Trump administration.
Desperate to hold onto
power, the powers-that-be continue to advance a series of
carefully contrived narratives, threats and emergencies to
justify expanding their authority, encouraging the public to
fear one another, distrust our own judgment, and accept
increasingly invasive government powers as the price of
safety.
Fear is the great enabler of
authoritarianism.
Fear of terrorists. Fear of
criminals. Fear of immigrants. Fear of foreign enemies. Fear
of domestic extremists. Fear of one another.
Every new
threat becomes another justification for expanding
government authority, weakening constitutional safeguards,
and demanding greater obedience from a frightened
public.
This is how government power expands in plain
sight. The targets are portrayed as threats. The
government’s actions are defended as necessary. Those who
question its methods are accused of defending criminals,
undermining public safety or siding with the
enemy.
And with every exception made to constitutional
restraints, the public becomes a little more accustomed to
powers it once would have considered intolerable.
Surveillance becomes security. Censorship becomes
protection. Militarized policing becomes public safety.
Indefinite detention becomes national defense.
And
killing becomes justice.
For too long, Americans have
been persuaded to barter their freedoms for promises of
security, rationalizing government wrongdoing because they
are told the alternatives would be worse.
But no
matter how you rationalize it, the lesser of two evils is
still evil.
The greatest danger is not merely that
government officials may abuse their power.
It is that
ordinary people may become so accustomed to those abuses
that they lose the ability—or the willingness—to
recognize them for what they are.
This brings us back
to They Live, in which the danger posed is not simply
the alien conspiracy but the population’s willingness to
remain asleep and controlled.
Again, not so different
from our own.
As one of the characters points out,
“The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice
and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a
repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices.
Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of
consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have
made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused
only on our own gain.”
We, too, are encouraged to
focus on our own pleasures, prejudices and political
victories, while remaining indifferent to the suffering of
others. Our poor and underclasses are also growing.
Injustice is growing. Inequality is growing. A concern for
human rights is nearly nonexistent. We too have been lulled
into a trance, indifferent to others.
The government
doesn’t have to convince everyone that its actions are
lawful, just or humane. It merely has to persuade enough
people that those being targeted deserve whatever happens to
them.
Nor does corruption have to be concealed when it
can be rationalized, dismissed, or excused as the
unavoidable cost of keeping one’s preferred political
leaders in power.
This is perhaps the most disturbing
parallel to They Live: a population that has been
shown what is happening, yet remains unwilling to confront
the implications.
The warning signs are no longer
buried beneath elaborate disguises. They are unfolding in
courtrooms, detention facilities, government offices,
financial disclosures and daily news reports.
And
still, too many people choose to look away.
We can
convince ourselves that we are different from the victims of
government abuse. That we are too law-abiding, too
patriotic, too respectable, too insignificant to become
targets ourselves.
We can tell ourselves that the
government means well, that extraordinary measures are
necessary, and that those caught in the machinery of state
power must have done something to deserve their fate. But
every exception made to someone else’s rights weakens the
protections intended to safeguard our own.
That was
the warning behind the Bill of Rights.
The founders
understood that government officials could not be trusted to
restrain themselves simply because they professed good
intentions. The Constitution was intended to bind government
power, not magnify it.
So where does that leave
us?
The characters who populate Carpenter’s films
provide some insight.
Underneath their machismo, they
still believe in the ideals of liberty and equal
opportunity. Their beliefs place them in constant opposition
with the law and the establishment, but they are nonetheless
freedom fighters.
When John Nada destroys the alien
hypno-transmitter in They Live, he delivers a wake-up
call for freedom. As Nada memorably declares, “I have come
here to chew bubblegum and kick ass. And I’m all out of
bubblegum.”
In other words, it’s time to get
active and take a stand for what’s really
important.
Stop allowing yourselves to be easily
distracted by political spectacles and manufactured fears.
Stop treating constitutional rights as privileges reserved
for people you agree with. Stop excusing government abuses
merely because the victims are unpopular or the perpetrators
share your political loyalties.
As we make clear in Battlefield
America: The War on the American People and its
fictional counterpart The
Erik Blair Diaries, all the trappings of the
American police state are now in plain sight.
The
greatest danger is not that the monsters have become so
adept at hiding among us. It is that we have become so
conditioned to their presence, so accustomed to their
abuses, and so willing to excuse their corruption that we no
longer recognize them for what they are.
Wake up,
America.
If they live—the tyrants, the oppressors,
the invaders, the overlords—it is only because “we the
people” sleep.
Constitutional attorney and author
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford
Institute. His latest books The
Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield
America: The War on the American People are
available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive
Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The
Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
