Self-Consumption in a State of Emergency - America Loses Its Last Sense of Shame

It was a sentence fit for a dystopian novel - only it didn’t fall in fiction but during a press tour through a real internment camp in the state of Florida. Kristi Noem, Homeland Security Secretary under Donald Trump, told the cameras: “We tried to deport a cannibal - but the man was so deranged he began eating himself. Right there on the plane.” No smile, no wink. Just a sentence so grotesque that even the truth behind it has long since collapsed.

The scene unfolded during a PR tour of the new deportation camp called “Alligator Alcatraz,” located deep in the Everglades, between mangroves, mosquitoes, and myths. Officially a “high-security migrant facility,” unofficially a symbol of the moral decay of a nation that has long since said goodbye to international human rights standards. President Trump appeared in person, flanked by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Noem, who delivered her cannibal story like a fireside tale. Finger food, she said. And laughed.

What was intended as an anecdote exposes the total dissolution of a policy that not only deports people but strips away every last trace of dignity. The alleged “cannibal,” if he even existed, is nothing but a projection - the symbol of a human no longer seen as human, but as a monster, a threat, something that has devoured itself out of the legal system. He is not defended, not examined, not understood. He is told. As anecdote. As spectacle. As justification.

Meanwhile, around “Alligator Alcatraz,” a prison complex is rising that will, according to official figures, house 5,000 people - including women, children, asylum seekers, the mentally ill. NGOs are already reporting lack of medical care, arbitrary transfers, loudspeaker announcements at night meant to intimidate. And while the heat builds inside, politicians outside celebrate the “success of American deterrence.” No word on detention conditions. No word on due process. Only terms like efficiency, capacity, sovereignty.

In Trump’s America, the human being is no longer a subject but a logistical problem. The camps carry martial names, the stories told about them are grotesque. But they distract from the real crimes - the dismantling of asylum rights, the disregard for international conventions, the deliberate construction of a deportation regime that no longer distinguishes between flight and offense, between need and threat. The cannibal is just a silhouette. The real story takes place in concrete, barbed wire, and silence.

And while democracies in Europe struggle to defend their values against external threats, the world’s oldest democracy is dismantling itself from within. With every camp, every tale, every punchline that should, in truth, be an indictment.

The man on the plane - if he existed - was ill. Or desperate. Or both. In a functioning constitutional state, he would have received care. In a functioning state, he would never have been forced onto the plane. But America no longer functions as a nation measured by human rights. It functions as a stage. For stories. For images. For whatever gets the most clicks.

The world is watching. And some are laughing. But in the swamps of Florida, a monument of horror is growing. And no one should later say they didn’t know.