"Common Sense" Kills

How Hollywood helped the right create the ultimate justice-stopping cliché

“He got off on a technicality.”

That phrase has launched hundreds of vigilante thrillers, each delivering the same message: when the law is applied with precision, justice fails. Under this rubric, due process is the villain. Audiences are rarely asked to consider the rights of the accused, constitutional limits, or the meaning of reasonable doubt. Wherever the vigilante rides, legal defense becomes a threat to public order.

Dirty Harry (1971) forged Clint Eastwood—and his .44 Magnum—into icons of lawless righteousness. Death Wish (1974) cast Charles Bronson as a one-man execution squad, gunning down muggers after the murder of his wife and rape of his daughter. Star Chamber (1983) pushed the logic into the judiciary, with Michael Douglas leading a secret cabal that imposes an extrajudicial death penalty. The Punisher (2004) turned grief into a pretext for murder. A Time to Kill (1996) reframed vigilantism as courtroom triumph. Law Abiding Citizen (2009) celebrated sadistic revenge against prosecutors. Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy framed mass surveillance and preemptive violence as necessary burdens of heroic leadership.

Heroes who break laws beat villains who walk free—every time.

As scholars Robert Jewett and John Shelton Lawrence observed in The American Monomyth, American popular culture replaces civic heroism—cooperation, procedure, institutional repair—with the lone redeemer who restores order through righteous violence. The sheriff, the soldier, the superhero—all elevated above the systems they claim to protect. These are ritual reinforcements of a culturally-constructed truth: the strong must act alone.

Riding that cultural wave, Trump declared, “I alone can fix it,” during his 2016 nomination acceptance speech. Coincidence?

That line crystallized decades of mythmaking. Hollywood spent generations teaching Americans to admire men who shoot first and ask questions never. A culture raised on heroic lawbreakers doesn’t defend the rule of law—it demands domination, and calls it common sense. When the system follows the rules and upholds the rights of the accused, the audience sees only weakness: the villain walked, the hero was restrained.

In a 2024 Pew Research survey, 65% of voters said protecting the rights of people suspected of crimes was a “very important” function of law enforcement, while over 90% prioritized community safety and racial equality (Pew Research Center, June 2024). Civil liberties still have strong support, yet they consistently rank below safety in public urgency. When rights fall behind order, due process becomes vulnerable.

In just the first 100 days of the Trump 2.0 regime, the United States will have reversed at least 100 years of constitutional development—erasing both due process and civil rights law established in response to Jim Crow and restoring the political logic of 1921. That was the year of the Tulsa Race Massacre, when white mobs enforced “public order” and “common sense” with arson and lynchings.

Today, the mobs are DHS and ICE.

Hollywood’s Long Complicity

Way back in the studio era, Hollywood helped prepare the ground—by siding with authority. Executives enforced blacklists and turned over artists to the House Un-American Activities Committee, acting as informants for the state. In the decades that followed, the industry reversed course. Perhaps as atonement for its compliance, Hollywood began churning out stories that cast institutions as corrupt and laws as obstacles. Serpico and The Verdict may have begun as earnest critiques, but they hardened into formula. “The system always lies.” “Justice belongs to the outsider who breaks the rules.” Millions of Americans learned to see civic virtue as betrayal.

Futurist David Brin coined the term Suspicion of Authority (SOA) to describe this pervasive narrative reflex—one that treats oversight as corruption and elevates the rebel-savior. In mass entertainment, that suspicion targets institutions: courts, laws, procedures. But the savior escapes scrutiny, even from the slightest self-critical evaluation. (It took the writers of Dexter 83 episodes to finally come up with one where he kills the wrong man). The savior is judge, jury, and executioner. And yes—it’s almost always a man, because the redeemer-warrior sits atop the conservative moral hierarchy. 24 made torture a patriotic necessity. The Equalizer turned vengeance into therapy. The Dark Knight framed surveillance as noble sacrifice. While pretending to oppose authority, SOA distills it into its least accountable form: Autocracy.

After Vietnam and Watergate, such disillusionment became a Hollywood staple. For decades, the industry profited from stories that portrayed institutions as irredeemable and justice as the domain of rule-breaking lone wolves.

One of those stories broke into real life.

In the late 1990s, the LAPD’s Rampart Division exploded into scandal. Officers in the CRASH anti-gang unit were exposed as criminals—planting drugs, shooting civilians, stealing narcotics, and beating suspects. After the scandal broke, more than 100 convictions were overturned, and the city of Los Angeles paid $125 million in settlements.

Hollywood took notice. On March 12, 2002—just months after 9/11 and the Patriot Act—FX premiered The Shield, a violent police drama originally titled Rampart, that was renamed for legal reasons. But the inspiration was unmistakable:

Protagonist Detective Vic Mackey leads a strike team of four white men who function as a criminal syndicate. His brutality is framed as effective policing. His superiors are cast as obstacles. His foil is Claudette Wyms, a meticulous Black detective who follows procedure and is sidelined. “Dutch” Wagenbach, a gifted forensic detective, is played for comic relief. In the pilot, Mackey murders an Internal Affairs officer at point-blank range. That sets the tone for seven seasons of theft, blackmail, and torture—all portrayed as ugly but necessary. The system protects Mackey until the finale, when he’s forced to confess—but never punished. The Shield turned corruption into effective strategy—and a devastating reverse morality play.

From Breaking Bad to Dexter, 24 to Homeland, prestige TV spent two decades turning antiheroes into moral lodestars. While that SOA-driven narrative dominated entertainment, the right was building its own mythology through talk radio, YouTube, reality television, and Facebook. Its canon featured deep state conspiracies, liberal traitors, criminal immigrants, and stolen elections. Its heroes were avenging patriarchs, warriors against globalists and bureaucrats. But the emotional logic was identical: trust no one, act alone, strike first, never apologize. Trumpism represents the melding of Hollywood SOA mythology with hard-right reaction—fueling state violence under the guise of “common sense.”

In February 2025, the Department of Homeland Security issued a directive rescinding Biden-era guidelines that restricted immigration enforcement in sensitive locations such as schools and churches. DHS spokesperson Benjamine Huffman stated: “The Trump Administration will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense.” On March 23, during an appearance on ABC's This Week, when asked about due process for accused gang members facing deportation, White House Border Czar Tom Homan responded: “Due process? What was Laken Riley’s due process? What were all these young women that were killed and raped by members of TdA, what was their due process?” Homan’s deflection is inexcusable: Crime victims—by definition—are denied due process. But that DOES NOT remove the Constitutional rights of the accused. Such whataboutism exemplified the Trump regime’s default tactic of using emotional appeals to skirt the law.

The Role of Moral Psychology

Steve Bannon, a chief architect of American fascism, put it clearly: politics is downstream of culture. And culture flows from moral psychology—precisely where authoritarian logic begins.

In the 1950s and ’60s, psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg mapped six stages of moral development across three levels:

At the pre-conventional level, morality is self-centered. Stage 1: Obedience and Punishment follows rules to avoid punishment. Stage 2: Instrumental Exchange sees morality as tit-for-tat.

At the conventional level, morality reflects conformity and authority. Stage 3: Interpersonal Accord values approval and relationships. Stage 4: Law and Order Morality treats laws and institutions as morally binding. Right and wrong are defined by duty, loyalty, and obedience to the system.

At the post-conventional level, morality involves abstract reasoning. Stage 5: Social Contract Morality recognizes that laws are human-made and must serve justice. Stage 6: Universal Ethical Principles follows core moral ideals—liberty, dignity, equality—even when they contradict law or custom.

Kohlberg’s studies, reinforced by a 1987 meta-analysis with Anne Colby, found that 62% of adults reason primarily at Stage 4. Only 17% reach Stage 5. Fewer than 5% reach Stage 6. The US Constitution is grounded in Stage 5 thinking—due process, civil liberties, checks on state power—but the population that grasps this framework is a statistical minority.

The “common sense” trope resonates with the 62% for whom authority equals morality and punishment equals justice. The Trump regime’s communications strategy is laser-focused on this Stage 4 majority. It frames dissent as destabilizing, law enforcement as virtuous, and procedural safeguards as indulgence. In that framing, guilt is determined by state action. If someone is shot by police, they “should have complied.” If someone is detained, they must have committed a crime. If someone is deported, they must have been here “illegally.” If someone is silenced, they “should have kept their mouth shut.” This is why it’s called “common sense”—because it flatters the dominant moral stage of the electorate—forging a tyranny of the majority, precisely the danger the Constitution was intended to restrain.

“Common Sense” Leads To Moral Exclusion

A 2024 article in The Wire documents how authoritarian leaders—including Trump, Modi, and Meloni—routinely use “common sense” to undermine justice. The actions align with the rhetoric. In early 2025, ICE arrested over 32,000 people in 50 days—more than 8,700 had no criminal record. Detention centers reported over 46,000 in custody by mid-March. Among them was Kseniia Petrova, a Russian scientist with Harvard ties, detained in Boston over undeclared frog embryos in her luggage. She remains in ICE custody pending an asylum hearing. German tourists Jessica Brösche and Lucas Sielaff were detained and deported for suspected unauthorized work. British cartoonist Rebecca Burke was deported after a three-week detention over vague “travel concerns.” All had valid documentation, but were still subjected to prolonged detention and forced removal.

The logic extends beyond travelers and immigrants. In March 2025, Mahmoud Khalil—a lawful US permanent resident and Columbia University graduate student—was labeled a “national security threat” by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Khalil had organized peaceful pro-Palestinian protests on campus and was arrested as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown. Although never charged with any crime, an immigration judge ruled him deportable under a statute citing potential harm to U.S. foreign policy. Khalil is currently appealing the decision from ICE detention.

That same month, U.S. authorities mistakenly deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia—a Maryland construction worker and lawful resident—to El Salvador, despite a standing 2019 court order shielding him from removal due to credible threats from gangs. ICE labeled the deportation an “administrative error” but refused to reverse it, even after Abrego Garcia was imprisoned in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT megaprison. A recent Supreme Court ruling states the U.S. must “facilitate” return in such cases but stopped short of requiring that the government “effectuate” it. That omission now functions as a license for ICE to render U.S. residents into foreign custody with no clear remedy—an authoritarian loophole masquerading as legal ambiguity.

These so-called “errors” were baked into a system designed to prioritize suspicion over evidence, detention over process.​ And there’s a key incentive:

Immigration detention now underwrites a multibillion-dollar industry. Companies like CoreCivic and GEO Group operate most ICE facilities under guaranteed-occupancy contracts. Local officials lobby for new detention centers to plug budget gaps. In 2023, more than 70% of ICE detainees were held in privately run facilities. State bans face federal exemptions and court delays, locking in a system where every body held is a revenue stream—and every release, a financial loss. In this model, due process is a liability. That’s a deliberate policy of moral exclusion, where suspicion replaces evidence and political disalignment becomes grounds for losing your rights.

This is nothing new in America. Between 1882 and 1968, over 4,700 lynchings were documented in the US. 72% of the victims were Black. These were “festive” public events—advertised in newspapers, attended by crowds, and often sanctioned by local authorities. No federal anti-lynching law was passed during that era. These killings were framed as expressions of community will—sanctioned by the “common sense” of its time.

In 1921, white mobs destroyed Tulsa’s Greenwood District after a Black teenager, Dick Rowland, was accused of brushing against a white woman in an elevator. As many as 300 people were killed, thousands were displaced, and Black residents were detained in internment camps by the Oklahoma National Guard. Police deputized white civilians and stood aside as businesses and homes were looted and burned. No one was prosecuted.

In the final days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of Justice released its first formal review of the massacre—a century late. The report described the attack as a “coordinated, military-style assault” aided by local authorities. It confirmed credible evidence of police involvement in arson, theft, and murder, and noted that legal remedies are foreclosed due to expired statutes of limitation and the deaths of known perpetrators (justice.gov).

The same “common sense” viciousness fueled two of the most notorious hate crimes in recent American history. In 1998, Matthew Shepard was beaten to death in Laramie, Wyoming, by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson. The following year, in Jasper, Texas, James Byrd Jr. was chained to a truck and dragged to death by John King, Lawrence Brewer, and Shawn Berry. Both crimes were initially treated as isolated incidents. Public narratives downplayed their repugnant context.

In April 2025, the Trump administration began placing thousands of immigrants—many admitted legally under Biden-era parole—onto what internal SSA communications refer to as the “ineligible master file,” a modified version of the Social Security Death Master File. According to documents obtained by The New York Times and CBS News, over 6,300 individuals had their Social Security records marked with fabricated dates of death, instantly cutting them off from bank accounts, credit cards, employment systems, and federal benefits. Leland Dudek, the SSA’s acting commissioner, described this in an internal email as “terminating their financial lives.” While officials claim the policy targets “criminals” and “foreign extremists,” internal memos show that no formal indictments are required. Former SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley called the practice “financial murder.”

“Common sense” in an authoritarian system can therefore be seen to describe an end to due process. It’s not just a thought-stopper. It’s the ultimate justice-stopping cliché.

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