As someone who reported on quite a few tea party gatherings after the election of President Obama added jet fuel to anti-government sentiment, I became familiar with the yellow flag and coiled snake ready to strike what was explained as expected government overreach.

From Washington, D.C., to Charlotte, N.C., I waded into crowds of the aggrieved and the furious and listened to detailed predictions of a government run amok, ignoring every constitutional right that stood in its way.

At the first National Tea Party conference at Tennessee’s Gaylord Opryland resort and convention center in 2010, several attendees did not need much prompting to spin a tale of what they imagined would come with Obama as commander in chief: helicopters descending on American neighborhoods in the middle of the night; masked men, without explanation or warrants, rappelling onto rooftops, smashing in doors and rousing confused residents out of their beds and into vans that would carry them off to who knows where.

Democrats in charge — with a president named “Barack Hussein Obama,” repeated as though it was more demonic incantation than first, middle and last name — could be counted on to do their worst to ordinary Americans if left unchecked with increasing powers, I was told.

Resistance, they insisted, was the only solution.

In 2025 America, with Republicans holding power in Washington, in the Senate, the House, the Supreme Court and the White House, these scenes have come scarily to life, at least in cities where voters have elected Democrats, who are, in the words of White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, members of a “domestic extremist organization.”

Let that sink in.

In Chicago, according to witnesses and many caught in the chaos, before any members of the military or National Guard landed, ICE and border agents filled in just fine with scenes playing out as imagined.

The Department of Homeland Security has denied reports of bad behavior by federal agents in last week’s raid, which it said netted 37 arrests; videos and eyewitness statements tell a different story.

Trump troops from ICE and other agencies said they were looking for gang members in an operation that used an approach more sledgehammer than scalpel, and swept up U.S. citizens held for hours before being able to return to what remained of their apartments.

No matter their status, isn’t everyone in the United States of America guaranteed humane treatment and the presumption of innocence?

U.S. citizen Rodrick Johnson, who is 67 years old, told the Chicago Sun-Times that agents broke through his door and dragged him outside in zip ties, where he was left for nearly three hours. “I asked if they had a warrant, and I asked for a lawyer,” he said. “They never brought one.”

Curiously, this time, I have yet to see the same people who once cried “tyranny” hauling those flags out of storage; I’ve heard no references to the Constitution being trampled by “jack-booted thugs.”

The “states’ rights” that a then-tea party official told me were of paramount importance to anyone who wanted to join their movement? Conveniently tossed to the side, now that Washington, in compliant GOP hands with Donald Trump as president, is overruling local and state officials and denouncing judicial rulings that don’t go its way.

Now that the nightmares of self-described patriots have come true, leaving not only rubble but a shredded U.S. Constitution in their wake, where is the outrage and where are those darn flags?

“This is what I voted for,” is a refrain that’s hard to miss in social media posts, about a president that is threatening to invoke the Insurrection Act, empowering the military to deploy on American streets.

Can it be that it was always about the players and not the principles, even when those players include traumatized children rounded up and reportedly separated from parents?

The U.S. Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority unfortunately answered that question in a ruling that gave its blessing to unequal treatment and racial profiling. In a September emergency order, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion defending the government’s right to consider race, ethnicity, language and employment in immigration stops. It was only “common sense” to allow immigration agents to seize people based on such “relevant factors,” it said.

In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor described the decision as “unconscionably irreconcilable with our nation’s constitutional guarantees.”

As for those U.S. citizens caught up in such sweeps? “The questioning in those circumstances is typically brief,” Kavanaugh wrote, “and those individuals may promptly go free after making clear to the immigration officers that they are U.S. citizens or otherwise legally in the United States.”

Rodrick Johnson and a long list of other mostly Black and brown folks would like a word.

If Kavanaugh needed more evidence, vigilant citizens could provide a video reel of shame from Illinois alone, of chemical agents released near an elementary school, enforcers pepper-spraying demonstrators in the face, attacking First-Amendment protected journalists and assaulting ministers, an alderwoman violently handcuffed in a hospital, she said for the crime of … asking a question.

DHS Secretary Kristi Noem seems to be collecting her own videos of ICE shows of force, either to intimidate or to amuse those who get joy from the suffering of human beings they deem disposable.

Today, while embattled citizens are now just trying to survive the wrath of an empowered Trump and friends, things may look rosy for his supporters and all those who insisted democracy was in danger every time voters decided on a Democrat.

But I hope they haven’t forgotten where they put those flags.

One step out of line, and those helicopters might be coming for you.

Mary C. Curtis has worked at The New York Times, The Baltimore Sun, The Charlotte Observer, as national correspondent for Politics Daily, and is a senior facilitator with The OpEd Project. She is host of the CQ Roll Call “Equal Time with Mary C. Curtis” podcast. Follow her on X @mcurtisnc3.