“Who was that masked man?”
If you’re of a certain age, you’ll remember that line from “The Lone Ranger” — a weekly morality play, first broadcast on the radio in the 1930s, in which the hero wore a mask to hide not from accountability, but from accolades (and from the outlaw gang that ambushed him and left him for dead).
In that depiction, justice rode in on a white horse and rode off into the sunset. It was dispensed honorably — if anonymously — and always in defense of the vulnerable.
Fast-forward to 2025, and we’re contending with a different kind of masked man. These cowboys don’t ride stallions or fire warning shots into the air. They roll up in unmarked SUVs, dressed in tactical vests and with their faces covered. In one viral video, such men appear to pummel a landscaper outside an IHOP in Santa Ana, Calif., where he worked. The man’s three sons, as it happens, are all U.S. Marines.
This isn’t just excessive force or profiling. It’s the perversion of the very idea of public safety — one that creates deeper, more insidious problems.
The first is psychological and moral. The old proverb warns: The mask becomes the face. Anyone who’s spent time online knows that anonymity often brings out the worst in us. But this isn’t just about a loss of civility.
The hyper-militarized look of these Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents isn’t merely a “mask” in the Lone Ranger sense. His was a modest black domino mask — the kind that concealed just enough to hide his identity, but not enough to make him look menacing. The masks being worn by ICE agents are, by contrast, a posture. A weapon.
Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” Nietzsche put it more bluntly: “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster.”
The moral? When men begin to dress like soldiers and vigilantes, we shouldn’t be surprised when they start acting like both.
The second problem is more straightforward and potentially more dangerous: When real law enforcement abandons clearly identifiable uniforms and professional procedures, it becomes easier for imposters to step in.
This isn’t hypothetical. In South Carolina, a man named Sean-Michael Johnson was “charged with kidnapping and impersonating a police officer after allegedly detaining a group of Latino men,” according to a CNN report in February. He flashed a fake badge. That was enough.
In Raleigh, North Carolina, a man allegedly threatened to deport a woman he met at a Motel 6 unless she slept with him. He showed her a business card with a badge on it. In this political environment, that threat — like the depicted badge — seemed credible.
Police power isn’t contingent on the integrity of the individual with the badge; it relies on the appearance of authority. We obey the symbols, not the man. But what happens when the uniform becomes easy to fake or deliberately obscured — or tarnished — by the officers themselves?
That’s not just a glitch in the system. It’s the erosion of public trust.
And in a culture increasingly obsessed with “cosplay” — from Capitol rioters in combat gear to politicians posing in body armor — is it any wonder that law enforcement has been reduced to just another costume?
The lines have blurred, not just between enforcement and abuse, but between officer and imposter.
Put yourself in the shoes of a detainee: If you’re dragged into a van by masked men on the street, how are bystanders supposed to know whether or not you are being kidnapped?
In the Santa Ana case, a woman tried to intervene. She was thrown to the ground. Most people didn’t even try. The default assumption is that you deserved it. Or that you weren’t supposed to be here in the first place.
We know from social psychology that bystanders are already reluctant to intervene, even when a violent crime is underway. Now imagine the hesitation when the masked aggressors might actually be law enforcement agents.
And while immigrants are the most vulnerable targets of this deception, it isn’t limited to immigration enforcement. Even those who are unlikely to be profiled should be concerned about the broader trend — a “warrior cop” culture that has metastasized into something darker, unmoored from accountability.
Here’s the bleak irony: Americans are told we have the right to defend ourselves. Indeed, this is a largely conservative insight. But if the people kicking in your door at 3 a.m. are law enforcement — perhaps on a faulty warrant — you’d better not try. The same is true if you are accosted in public.
Of course, the people being tackled by masked ICE agents — or impersonators — aren’t the only ones who are harmed. Images of masked men tackling and disappearing people in broad daylight chip away at public trust. The damage ripples outward, undermining the very legitimacy of the system.
We used to teach kids to respect authority. If someone knocked on the door wearing a badge, you at least opened it because the badge meant something. There were rules. There was a story we told ourselves — about order, fairness and due process. That story is unraveling.
So what do you do now when a bunch of masked, anonymous men — possibly claiming to be the law — try to grab you?
You probably still comply. Not out of civic responsibility or reverence, but because not complying might get you killed.
Matt K. Lewis is a columnist, podcaster and author of the books “Too Dumb to Fail” and “Filthy Rich Politicians.”
