Magical Thinking, Flashbangs, Lost Fingers, and the New Fundamentalists

If you’re trying to make sense of the increasingly unhinged behavior surrounding ICE protests; blocking vehicles, wrestling armed agents, biting fingers, smashing taillights, charging officers with cars; and you’re doing it through a political lens alone, you’re going to miss the point entirely. What you’re watching isn’t political activism gone a little too far. It’s fundamentalism. And once you understand how fundamentalists actually think, the behavior stops being surprising and starts being tragically predictable.

Fundamentalists don’t live in reality the way normal adults do. They live in a story. A script. A moral drama where the outcome is already decided because they are convinced they are on the “right side of history,” or more dangerously, the “right side of God.” Reality, consequences, physics, and law enforcement procedures are just inconvenient details that are supposed to bend at the climax of the movie.

That’s why you see protesters reacting to flashbangs - such as the protestor in the viral video has her finger blown off - like they’re props in an action film. Somewhere in their brains, this isn’t a controlled explosive used by law enforcement for crowd control; it’s a grenade from a movie scene where the hero scoops it up, throws it back at just the right moment, and watches the bad guy get his comeuppance while the crowd cheers. They are genuinely surprised when the real world doesn’t follow the screenplay and they're missing half their finger in the freezing cold.

But that delusion isn’t new. I’ve seen it before. I lived around it for years in religious fundamentalism.

Religious fundamentalists routinely make life-altering decisions based on the belief that reality will be overridden by divine intervention. They’re told explicitly that if they tithe ten percent, God will protect their finances. Your refrigerator won’t break. Your roof won’t leak. Your kid won’t wreck their car. You're robbing God and inviting his curses. And if those bad things do happen? Well, you must not have tithed correctly, faithfully, or joyfully enough, or whatever.

It’s magical thinking dressed up as faith.

And while many church members quietly roll their eyes and tolerate that nonsense from their man of God, the mental framework is still there: make irrational decisions now, because a higher power will sort out the consequences later. Don’t plan. Don’t assess risk. Don’t question the premise. Don't use common sense and history as your guide to measure their words. Just act and trust the system to reward your obedience. I’ve seen this up close: people I care about, steeped in religious fundamentalism, making disastrous life decisions because they were convinced they had no choice, that obedience to God required it, armed with Bible verses and reinforced by other believers who eagerly sanctified the damage.

Now swap out God for ideology, preachers for activists and left-wing politicians, and tithing sermons for viral talking points, and you have the modern ICE protester.

They honestly believe that law enforcement will somehow stop behaving like law enforcement because their cause is righteous enough. They block vehicles as if federal agents will politely reverse course. They grab officers as if guns are just decorative accessories. They kick patrol cars, bite agents, charge with weapons on them, spit on them, and seem genuinely shocked when the situation escalates exactly the way it always does and always has for decades.

In their minds, they aren’t obstructing federal law enforcement; they’re playing the hero. They imagine the scene ending with the bad guys exposed, the crowd applauding, and history vindicating them. What they don’t imagine, because fundamentalists never do, is the part where reality asserts itself and people get seriously injured or killed.

This is the same mindset that convinces a church member to give away money they can’t afford to lose because “God will work it out.” and they must do it to show obedience. It’s the same mindset that convinces a protester that running a car toward armed agents is a symbolic act or a heroic act, instead of a potentially fatal one. The belief system differs, but the brain wiring is identical.

Fundamentalism always disconnects people from consequences. It trains them to believe outcomes are certain because their cause is pure. And when that belief collides with the real world: with laws, weapons, physics, and human reactions and predictable human behavior, the result is chaos.

That’s why none of this can be explained by “passion” or “anger” alone. Plenty of people are passionate without being delusional. What you’re watching is what happens when adults are taught over and over that thinking is optional and obedience to the narrative is everything.

And here’s the cruel irony: the same people who mock religious believers for trusting invisible forces are now trusting an invisible moral force to suspend reality on their behalf.

It never does.

Fundamentalism always promises a miracle. Reality always collects the bill.