Opinion: When science meets state-sanctioned stupidity

As a political scientist, I’ve always been fascinated by politics, particularly public policy. Not because it’s neat and tidy. Quite the opposite. It’s messy, deeply human, therefore flawed, and often a reflection of our worst instincts dressed up in patriotic language. But if you watch closely, patterns always emerge. Predictable, logical and tragically cyclical patterns that scream volumes of information, news and analysis.

In what little spare time I have, I spend countless hours absorbed in the world of science, astronomy and all things celestial. Maybe I’m a hopeless romantic. Or maybe it’s therapy for the mind and soul. Looking upward offers clarity in the chaos. Out there, among the stars, rules still matter. Physics doesn’t lie. And unlike our government, gravity applies its force equally to all.

Today, I thought I’d try something different. Let’s apply the logic of science: observation, hypothesis, experimentation and conclusion. Let’s bring that framework to what’s unfolding here on Earth because what’s happening across this country isn’t just outrageous, it’s irrational. Illogical! John Stuart Mill once warned: “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.” That quote doesn’t feel like deep wisdom anymore, it feels like a breaking news chyron on TV.

We are, without a doubt, living in unprecedented times. Not because authoritarianism is new, but because it’s staging a comeback wrapped in red, white and blue. Federal agents in plain clothes – riding in unmarked cars, refusing to identify themselves – are arresting people not based on criminal behavior, but on the color of their skin, their immigration status or the simple act of speaking with an accent.

Let’s try and break this down scientifically:

Observation:

Across the country, people, particularly immigrants and Latinos, are being detained without warrants. Arrested without probable cause. Denied access to lawyers. Sometimes they’re citizens. Sometimes they’re undocumented. Sometimes, they’re just standing at a bus stop. But the pattern is clear: these arrests overwhelmingly target communities of color and immigrants.

Hypothesis:

This isn’t about immigration enforcement or public safety. If it were, we’d see ICE raiding all communities where undocumented immigrants live including white European enclaves. But we don’t.

There are no ICE sweeps in Brighton Beach, despite well-documented populations of Russian immigrants. No early morning raids in the Irish neighborhoods of Boston. No tearful roundups outside Polish bakeries in Chicago. The message is clear: if you’re white and undocumented, you get a pass. If you’re Brown and breathing, you get profiled, stopped, detained, briefly questioned, arrested, placed in a cage and deported, sometimes to a country you’ve never even lived in.

That’s not enforcement. That’s targeted racial and political cleansing.

Experiment:

Map the raids. Compare demographics. Analyze federal language. Watch how enforcement follows political outrage, not legal necessity. What emerges isn’t a security operation but a campaign of intimidation. It’s designed to sow fear, fracture communities, silence dissent and assert cultural and political dominance. It’s political theater with real casualties. A real-time restructuring of the social contract where people of color are systematically subjugated.

Conclusion:

Call it what it is: state-sponsored fascism. Not metaphorical. Not theoretical. The real, boots-on-the-ground kind. The kind that tears families apart and disappears people without accountability. The kind that grows when good people shrug and taxpayers keep cutting the check.

Meanwhile, the administration argues in court that federal agents don’t need legal justification for arrests and don’t have to provide access to lawyers. A federal judge in Los Angeles recently had to remind them that the Constitution, yes that dusty ass old document they love to quote when it’s convenient, applies to everyone on U.S. soil. Even immigrants. Even poor people. Even protesters.

That this needs clarification is terrifying. The reality is, this is not immigration policy. This is a racist purge. A deliberate, systemic effort to remove, cage and erase immigrant and Latino communities from the American landscape. And the fact that so many are willing to look away because “it doesn’t affect me” is exactly what history warned us about.

So, let’s stop pretending this is business as usual. It’s not. This is the moment when science, history and conscience all agree: Speak up. Act now. Or watch the republic fall to pieces while we stargaze in silence.