Anonymity and the Collapse of the Thou
A culture trained to dehumanize eventually turns lethal
1. The continuum of anonymity
For roughly two decades, many of us have lived on social media. For nearly as long, we have lamented the toxicity that emerges on platforms that allow for anonymity, spaces where people can behave in the most uncivil, even inhumane ways without consequence.
Anonymous keyboard warriors found a counterfeit courage in those spaces. Shielded from accountability, they learned to demean, dehumanize, and attack actual human beings on the other side of a screen. Over time, callouses formed. The victims became abstractions. Cruelty became normal.
What few of us imagined is that this same veil of anonymity would one day be adopted not just online, but by the state itself.
Federal agents now operate behind masks, unmarked vehicles, and no visible badges. The anonymity that once felt confined to comment sections and message boards has migrated into the physical world, onto city streets, backed by Glocks, body armor and federal authority.
Is it any wonder?
2. From virtual cruelty to state power
In online worlds, many found a shallow salve for grievances life had handed them. Meanwhile, those who still valued civic decorum largely resigned themselves to this ugliness as the new normal.
Until recently, it seemed those indecencies were limited, at least in this country, to cowards who hid behind keyboards and never had to confront the humanity of the people they targeted.
For a long time, most of us seemed to intuit something else, whether we had the language for it or not. Even without reading Martin Buber, many of us were culturally mentored by the moral insight he articulated in his 1923 work I and Thou: that to encounter another person rightly is to encounter a Thou, not an object, not a problem, not a means to an end.
In every sphere, through everything that becomes present to us, we gaze toward the train of the eternal Thou; in each we perceive a breath of it; in every Thou we address the eternal Thou, in every sphere according to its manner.
But seeing the eternality in one another can no longer be taken for granted. There are some among us, including those who hold the most powerful offices in the land, who train themselves to look upon others not as a Thou but as an It.
That same cowardice once relegated to the digital realm has now been normalized and even celebrated far beyond any single agency. It is cultivated by political leadership, reinforced by media, rewarded by millions, and ultimately operationalized by institutions like the Department of Homeland Security.
Anonymity has become policy. Federal agents are enticed with lavish signing bonuses, armed with more rifles than most teachers have pencils, yet provided a grossly negligent amount of training.
The indecent and inhumane behavior once tolerated online has become de rigueur for state actors operating with lethal force. The transition is not accidental. It is cultural. A society that learned to excuse anonymous cruelty online is now learning to excuse anonymous violence in person.
3. When abstraction collapses into flesh
This is not theoretical. It is not metaphorical.
When the rubber of Renee Good’s minivan met the snow-covered road, when the smiling face of a thirty-something year old mother of three said, “That’s fine, dude. I’m not mad at you,” abstraction ended.
There is no explanation. There is no justification.
On January 7, 2026, Renee Nicole Good was fatally shot by an ICE agent during a federal immigration operation. Multiple videos of the encounter exist, captured from different angles, and widely circulated.
Less than three weeks later, on January 24, 37-year-old ICU nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by Customs and Border Protection agents in Minneapolis while observing immigration enforcement activity. His death has since been ruled a homicide by the Hennepin County Medical Examiner, and footage of the encounter has circulated widely as well.
More people have seen those videos than watch the Super Bowl in any given year. Hell - we all saw it. And yet, the lies came instantaneously. And for many, they held.
Because for some, maintaining sufficient levels of animus toward perceived adversaries is held in higher regard than virtues like longsuffering, discernment and loving kindness.
In one morally inverted narrative, “Nay Nay” Good was labeled a domestic terrorist, and the lethal action of the ICE agent was framed as heroic self-defense. The self-imposed numbing of conscience required to sustain that claim goes well beyond ordinary dissonance.
Another set of justifications insists that the minivan driver, with the remnants of children’s snacks in the back seat and stuffed animals visible on the floorboards, somehow “deserved what she got” for failing to obey the commands of heavily armed, masked federal agents descending upon her vehicle.
And a similar pattern of excuses and obfuscations followed Pretti’s killing, with attention shifting to disputed video clips and claims about his intentions rather than grappling with the fact that federal officers shot and killed a health professional who was legally armed and bearing witness to their actions.
My question remains. Whatever Alex and Renee’s transgressions were, was any of it deserving of the death penalty?
4. War as explanation, not excuse
An attempt to understand the mindset helps clarify how we arrived here. In the imagination of Trump and his loyalists, the country is at war. Everything becomes war. Enemies must be named. Collateral damage becomes acceptable. Mercy is weakness. Accountability is betrayal.
That framing helps us understand many otherwise inexplicable actions. But understanding does not create an imperative to exonerate.
War language does not absolve moral responsibility. It reveals what is loved, what is feared, and who is considered expendable. It also requires something else: a dulling of moral awareness, a reduced attentiveness to what one is actually saying and defending.
George Orwell warned about this condition nearly eighty years ago. Writing about political language, he described how repeated phrases and stock slogans do not merely obscure truth. They reshape the inner life of the speaker.
The appropriate noises are coming out of his larynx, but his brain is not involved as it would be if he were choosing his words for himself. If the speech he is making is one that he is accustomed to make over and over again, he may be almost unconscious of what he is saying, as one is when one utters the responses in church. And this reduced state of consciousness, if not indispensable, is at any rate favourable to political conformity.
Church. Consciousness. Political conformity.
It begs the question: What are our greater loves?
5. Scripture as indictment
Many claim Christian faith and profess devotion to the virtues of Scripture. Yet when Scripture cuts against political identity, prejudice, or power, it is readily discarded.
Leviticus 19 stands at odds with the way Trumpism treats immigrants. The “fruit of the Spirit” is the very opposite of Trump’s words and behavior. “Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast” bears no resemblance to the posture and mannerisms assumed by his most ardent followers. Even the proverb listing the things the Lord hates (Prov. 6) reads as an eerily accurate description of Trumpist behavior.
Scripture proves most convicting when it is allowed to confront those who have weaponized its shards. The problem is not that Scripture is unclear. The problem is that it is inconvenient.
6. The Constitution as moral witness
A similar fissure exists between professed love for this country and actual devotion to its constitutional order.
The First Amendment alone makes the contradiction plain. Every one of its five freedoms is being strained, if not trampled, by this Administration. Attacks on the press. Retaliation against law firms perceived as enemies. Federal agents engaging in violence against those peaceably assembled and exercising free speech. A selective and self serving interpretation of the establishment clause.
The Fourth Amendment promises security against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Fifth promises that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. The Fourteenth extends that protection to all, guaranteeing equal protection under the law.
These are not metaphors. They are commitments. If they matter at all, they must matter when they are inconvenient.
7. What we excuse reveals what we love
When the law is no longer a shield but a weapon, the collapse is not only legal. It is moral. The weaponization of the Department of Justice is not some abstract talking point. It is now an overt governing strategy, deployed not to protect the vulnerable or preserve equal justice, but to reward loyalty, punish enemies, and consolidate power.
Which brings us squarely to the present moment.
Anonymous cruelty online trained a generation to dehumanize without consequence. That training migrated into the real world, into state power, into masked agents armed and incentivized to act without accountability. Scripture is invoked selectively. Constitutional protections are treated as obstacles. Lies are repeated even when millions have seen the truth.
As Matt Lewis observes, “Maybe it’s the same reason they see (Renee) Good as bad and Ashli Babbitt as a martyr. These are their ‘jack-booted thugs.’ Or maybe it’s that their animus toward immigrants simply outweighs their stated concerns about big government, states’ rights, and federal overreach.”
What we excuse reveals what we value. What we repeat reveals what we revere. And what we are willing to dehumanize reveals who we believe counts.
Truth and courage cannot survive anonymity. They require faces, accountability, and the willingness to look directly at the Thou standing in front of us.
This is both insightful and beautiful, Corey. Thank you for sharing.
Another insightful essay!