America is a trust society. We trust our elected representatives will work in our interests.  We trust the police will honestly and apolitically enforce the law. We trust criminals will be prosecuted and if convicted, sentences commensurate with their offenses will be imposed. We trust our currency will retain its value, and contracts and property rights will be enforced. We trust we’ll be able to go about our daily business without risking injury or death. We trust our borders will be protected, and our national security secured.

We used to, anyway.

Graphic: Libs of TikTok screenshot.

The gang takeover of an apartment complex in a Denver suburb, Aurora, provides a glimpse of a dystopian future where the rule of law has failed, and trust breaks down.  Denver is a sanctuary city, and money is being siphoned from the police to provide room and board for tens of thousands of illegal aliens. It’s not working. There isn’t enough money in Denver, Colorado, even America, to support tens of millions of unvetted people who don’t speak the language and have no marketable job skills, yet Kamala Harris wants to shower them with Social Security, Medicare, free college, and other perks unavailable to Normal Americans.

Graphic: X Screenshot.

Denver City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky has taken the lead in exposing gang violence, but Colorado’s Democrat Governor, Jared Polis claimed she was imagining things. That is until an apartment resident filmed an armed gang breaking into a man’s apartment and the video went viral.

Graphic: X Screenshot.

Suddenly, the Democrat narrative of noble “newcomers” who commit far fewer crimes than Normal Americans and who want only to better their lives, went out the window, and police began to make arrests.

And suddenly, there actually were members of a murderous Venezuelan gang—Tren de Aragua--in Aurora.  Jurinsky wasn’t imaging things after all.  

Graphic: Aurora Police Department Screenshot, Public Domain.

Four Venezuelan national members of the Tren de Aragua gang arrested in Colorado have been confirmed as illegal aliens, per a statement from an ICE spokesperson to Fox News.

The Venezuelan nationals, ranging in ages from 19 through 24, all crossed the southern border through Texas illegally in 2022 and 2023, under the Biden administration. All four were arrested by Aurora police and ICA has placed detainer requests on two of them.

The four were arrested after a shooting which occurred near Nome Street Apartments, one of the apartment buildings in Aurora which had been overtaken by armed members of Tren de Aragua.

To no one’s surprise, Americans can surely trust the Harris/Biden Administration to release unvetted criminals and terrorists into America, and if Harris is elected, to greatly accelerate illegal immigration.

Colorado residents clearly cannot trust their politicians to protect them. Democrat narratives, not public safety, are their priority. They are, for the moment, embarrassed into action, but the moment public attention moves on to other outrages narrative maintenance will once again be their priority.

Imagine the plight of residents of such an apartment complex. Constantly threatened by armed gangsters, they’re unsafe in their apartments, and in coming and going. Calling the police exposes them to danger, and Jurinsky explained unless the police can send four or more officers to calls there, they won’t come at all. Worse, the police must develop probable cause to make arrests for individual crimes, and witnesses are hard to come by. Making arrests may or may not result in bail, and prosecutors may or may not sustain appropriate charges. Judges may or may not impose serious sentences upon conviction.

Trust is lost when the rule of law is uncertain.

Do citizens enforce the law themselves? After all, the power police have is on loan from the populace. Professional police officers know they exist, as do prisons, as much to protect criminals from us as to protect us from criminals. Forced to take back their power and dispense justice themselves, citizens would tend to impose a swifter and more final sort of justice. 

For the moment, in blue cities and states, that power relationship is uncertain. Understaffed and defunded police agencies can’t provide traditional services, greatly increasing crime, while their political masters refuse to report actual crime rates which badly damage the narrative. Citizens engaging even in clear self-defense too often find themselves arrested and prosecuted with a fervor criminals seldom, if ever, see. As a result, crime worsens, honest citizens are increasing victimized, and societal trust further deteriorates, as does our representative republic—we’re not “our democracy.”

Should things get worse, should the police be marginalized, unable to enforce even a semblance of the rule of law, we’ll devolve to a “3S” society: shoot, shovel, and shut up.

No sane Americans wants that total lack of public trust.

Aurora, and the rule of law vs. the narrative are on the ballot in November.

Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.