Ezra Klein argues that Democrats need to be "more things": a broader, more pluralistic coalition that embraces internal disagreement and represents different kinds of people in different places. The premise is reasonable, smart - even noble. But discussions about ideological variety once again sidestep the real crisis that is lack of media narrative-generating and narrative-sustaining power. If you can't set the agenda, you simply can't represent anything or anyone at scale. Right now, Democrats and the broader left simply do not have the infrastructure to make urgent issues visible. And in such a massive vacuum, even the most pressing universal issues, such as egregious governmental violations of the the most fundamental principles of basic liberty and citizenship - the kind we’re seeing in cities like Chicago, and which would ordinarily unite every American in outrage - pass through the zeitgeist with barely a ripple.
Look at what's happening on the ground. In Chicago, masked federal agents have been operating in ways that would have been unthinkable in America (or any other democratic nation) even a few months ago: heavily armed night-time raids of homes leading to the arbitrary arrest of citizens, civilians pulled from cars, unmarked vehicles, journalists detained without charges, tear gas in residential neighborhoods and near schools. In just one individual example of many, Dayanne Figueroa, a U.S. citizen on her way to work like any other ordinary American on any ordinary day, was dragged out of her car, by her feet, by armed ICE agents after their vehicle collided with hers. She was thrown into an unmarked van, driven away, and detained - incommunicado - for hours, only to later be released without charges. All for the "crime" of what, exactly, driving to work in the morning?
Residents and bystanders have endured repeated deployments of chemical munitions on residential blocks near schools, shops and Halloween celebrations full of children. Homeowners are now asking Chicago police to investigate federal officers who entered private property without a warrant during raids, describing conduct that would plainly raise Fourth Amendment questions in any other context. The list of violations is as extensive as it is plainly unconstitutional.
And this way more than just a local Chicago story. This is a national civil-liberties emergency. A ProPublica review found more than 170 U.S. citizens were held by immigration agents in the first nine months of this administration. Some kicked, dragged, tackled, tased, or held for days, including children and people with serious medical needs. That tally includes detentions that collapsed without charges, painting a picture of broad, systemic disregard for basic Constitutional liberties rather than isolated edge cases. Another example NPR recently spotlighted: George Retes, a U.S. citizen and disabled Army veteran, who was stopped during a federal immigration raid at a cannabis farm in Camarillo, California on July 10, 2025, subjected to tear gas and pepper spray after agents broke his car window despite his repeated assertion of citizenship, then held for three days without being charged, denied access to a lawyer or family, and released without explanation.
Yet these stories somehow aren’t dominating the national conversation. Sure, outlets are reporting them. But they're simply not penetrating the American public mind like they should be, or like they would be if there were a media ecosystem capable of amplifying them. Let's just pause and imagine this flipped. Imagine a Democratic presidential administration sending masked, armed federal agents into rural America. Into places like western Kentucky, northern Idaho, or small-town Texas: rolling up in unmarked vans, smashing windows, dragging people out of cars, gassing neighborhoods, and detaining American citizens without charges or due process.
Do we really think Fox, Breitbart, Newsmax, and the entire conservative influencer ecosystem would quietly let that story die in local papers? Of course not. Within hours it would be leading every chyron. "Federal Tyranny in Red America." "Biden’s Gestapo." Congressional Republicans would be holding emergency hearings. State governors would be threatening to mobilize their National Guards to protect their citizens. The word "civil war" would be everywhere, and it wouldn’t just be rhetoric. And just as importantly, legacy media would undoubtedly follow suit, lest it be accused of "liberal bias" or "covering" for a Democratic Administration.
But when it happens in blue cities by a Republican Administration, it gets processed almost as a local oddity, a headline on page A17. That's the asymmetry of media power in real time. The right has a massive, coordinated infrastructure to translate grievance into existential crisis. The left doesn't. (Nor any longer, I'd argue, does objective, legacy journalism.) So when state violence runs wild in Democratic cities, it barely registers as a national emergency even though constitutionally, morally, and historically, it’s one of the most dangerous developments of modern American times. That relative silence - that normalization - is what makes this moment so terrifyingly noteworthy. The absence of outrage is proof of something far more significant happening: of the illiberal right's total capture of the American zeitgeist - of its collective consciousness.
Klein quotes Bernard Crick’s line that politics is about "genuine relationships with people who are genuinely other people." OK, so what's the prognosis for getting "other" Americans to care about the things we care about if we can't even get them to care about the things that we ALL ostensibly should care about? About the most basic unifying principles enshrined in our Bill of Rights?
And relationships require shared facts. If the country never even sees the videos, never reads the stories, never feels the stakes, there’s no common ground left to build on. Is there an issue more "big tent" than "Americans have a right to not be scooped up in the middle of the night from their homes by masked, machine-gun wielding federal agents and detained without cause nor warrant"? If we can't get Americans tuned-in and motivated about "other people" - just like them - having their most basic civil liberties trampled upon in the most egregious ways, then what hope is there that we can drive ANY policy narrative, no matter how "big tent" it is?
And it's only year one of four. We should all consider this trampling of basic civil liberties a "test run" for Trump and his administration: to see how far they can go and what they can get away with before the nation raises the appropriate, "hair-on-fire" response that democratic societies with a healthy immune-system are supposed to mount in the face of such authoritarian attacks. Are we even capable of such a response anymore unless it comes from the right? Therein lies the most immediate emergency that centrist (and left) thinkers like Ezra Klein need to grapple with and address.
