In the grand, shivering theatre of American governance, where the costumes are made of Kevlar and the scripts are written by illiterate algorithms, Minneapolis recently played host to a particularly pungent slice of reality. It is a city known for two things: temperatures that turn human lungs into ice sculptures and a law enforcement culture that treats the Bill of Rights like a suggestion written in disappearing ink. Enter Immigration and Customs Enforcement, our nation's premier collection of tactical enthusiasts who apparently consider 'reading the correct house number' to be an optional skill set reserved for overachievers. The narrative, if one can call this bureaucratic seizure a narrative, involves a United States citizen being introduced to the joys of the Minnesota winter while wearing nothing but his underwear. This wasn't a planned polar plunge or a bizarre performance art piece; it was the result of the state’s 'surgical precision.' Agents were purportedly hunting for two criminals, but in their zeal to justify their budget, they managed to snag a man whose only transgression was being home when the state decided to stop being a government and start being a home invasion squad.

One has to appreciate the aesthetic of the modern surveillance state. It is a machine that can track your heartbeat from a satellite and monitor your bowel movements through your smart fridge, yet it still manages to kick in the door of a man who has every legal right to be there. The agents, bundled in gear that costs more than a mid-sized sedan, dragged this individual out into the sub-zero night. There is something profoundly, darkly poetic about a man in his boxers standing in the snow while armed representatives of the state look at a clipboard in confusion. It is the ultimate distillation of the citizen’s role in the twenty-first century: you are perpetually exposed, while the machinery of 'safety' is heavily armored, well-funded, and completely lost. The victim isn't a martyr; he is just another poor sap caught in the gears of a machine that lacks both a soul and a GPS. To describe the event is to describe the entropy of a superpower. We are told the borders are being secured, but when the agents tasked with that security can't distinguish between a fugitive and a sleeping homeowner in the Midwest, one begins to suspect the entire operation is being run by people who failed basic geography and ethics.

Naturally, the political response has been as predictable as a sunrise in a landfill. The Left has already begun its choreographed wailing. We will see the usual parade of activists and performative legislators clutching their pearls, decrying the 'dehumanization' of the process while simultaneously voting for the very budgets that keep these agencies operational. For the professional progressives, this man is not a human being; he is a data point in a PowerPoint presentation about why you should donate to their re-election campaign. They love a victim in his underwear because it’s easier to fit him into a social media graphic than a complex human being with actual needs. Their outrage is a commodity, bought and sold in the marketplace of 'awareness' that never actually results in a single badge being handed back. They will tweet, they will hashtag, and they will ultimately do nothing, because the system they inhabit requires these occasional atrocities to maintain their brand of righteous indignation.

On the flip side, the Right will perform their customary mental gymnastics to defend the indefensible. To the 'Law and Order' crowd, the fact that a citizen was nearly frozen to death in his own yard is merely a 'logistical hiccup' in the noble pursuit of national security. They will suggest, with a straight face, that if you don't want to be dragged into the snow in your boxers, you should perhaps have your birth certificate taped to your chest while you sleep. They have managed to convince themselves that the only way to be free is to live in a state of constant, shivering submission to the nearest man in a uniform. To them, the Constitution is a document that applies only when they are the ones holding the gun. They fetishize the authority of the badge while ignoring the glaring, pathetic incompetence of the person wearing it. For the Right, the citizen's rights are a luxury we can no longer afford in a world populated by the shadows they’ve spent decades teaching us to fear.

In the end, the man in the snow is a mirror. He shows us exactly where we stand. We are governed by a system that is both omnipotent and stupid, a combination that would be hilarious if it weren't so consistently dangerous. The ICE agents didn't find their suspects, but they did manage to remind everyone that the concept of 'home' is an illusion that lasts only until a government agency forgets how to read a map. The sub-freezing air of Minneapolis didn't care about his citizenship status, and neither did the agents. They were there to perform a task, and when that task failed, they simply moved on to the next house, leaving a trail of frostbitten dignity in their wake. We will move on, of course. We always do. The man will get back into his house, the heat will eventually return to his toes, and the agency will issue a statement that uses the word 'regret' in the same way a murderer uses the word 'accident.' We live in a world where the state is a giant, clumsy toddler with the power of life and death, and we are all just hoping it doesn't decide to play with us tonight. The cold isn't the problem; the indifference is. And in America, the indifference is at an all-time high, even when the thermometer is at an all-time low.