In 2015, when Barack Obama was in the White House, the US Army ran a lengthy exercise in Texas and across other southern states to train special forces troops on how to fight in towns and civilian areas.
Operation Jade Helm quickly became a magnet for conspiracy theorists, who claimed the manoeuvres were a dry run for the US imposing martial law, locking people up in federal detention centres, suspending their constitutional rights and taking away their guns.
Far-right pundits and blowhards such as Alex Jones incessantly amplified those theories. At one point, a poll found a third of Republicans believed the federal government would try to take over Texas. In the same survey, half the members of the Tea Party, a precursor to the Make America Great Again movement, believed it.
“I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty because the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, and the consequence is that many of its citizens don't trust what it says,” Texas senator Ted Cruz said at the time.
Fast forward a decade, and one might wonder where those same worrywarts are now.
Instead of the Obama administration taking over Republican states and stripping people of their rights, President Donald Trump has ordered troops and federal immigration officials into some of America's largest cities as part of a clampdown on illegal immigration and crime.
With an exquisite lack of self-awareness, many conspiracists have switched from warning of federal overreach in 2015 to backing the government today as masked and camouflaged feds patrol progressive cities, yanking people off the streets and banishing them into vast detention centres across the country with no or little due process.
In two instances in Minneapolis, agents shot and killed American citizens who were protesting against these actions. Parts of the frozen Midwestern city now resemble a dystopian movie as residents turn out en masse to document and, in some cases, impede the arrests of people suspected of being in the US without authorisation.
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A federal law enforcement officer sprays irritants at Alex Pretti before he was fatally shot by federal agents during an immigration enforcement operation in Minneapolis, Minnesota on Saturday. Reuters -
A law enforcement officer pins down Mr Pretti, before he was fatally shot. Reuters -
Mr Pretti was fatally shot by US immigration agents as they tried to detain him in Minneapolis. Reuters -
People gather for an evening vigil in Whittier Park, a few blocks from the site where Mr Pretti was fatally shot. EPA -
A photograph of the pistol recovered by immigration agents after the shooting in Minneapolis, shown on a screen behind US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, at the Federal Emergency Management Agency headquarters. AFP -
A woman cries at a makeshift memorial in the area where Mr Pretti, 37, was shot dead. AFP -
A federal agent fires a munition toward demonstrators near the site where Mr Pretti was shot. Reuters -
Federal agents walk through a massive cloud of teargas near the site where Mr Pretti was shot. Reuters
The Trump administration is blaming the chaos in Minneapolis on Minnesota Governor Tim Walz and local law-enforcement officials, claiming they are failing to co-operate with their federal peers.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Sunday said Mr Walz “does not believe in law and order” and even accused him of encouraging “left-wing agitators to stalk and record federal officers in the middle of lawful operations".
The Trump administration dismisses any claims that federal agents are being too heavy-handed, or concerns that they are acting outside the bounds of the US Constitution by snatching suspects and kicking down doors.
At the same time, officials from the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies are telling us not to believe our own eyes when we see video of the killings of the two US citizens, mother of three Renee Good on January 7 and intensive care nurse Alex Pretti on Saturday. Footage appears to show that in neither case were agents' lives in imminent danger, yet that is the justification given for their killings.
Instead of appearing troubled by the government killing Americans, many are now blaming Democrats, saying they shouldn't have allowed migrants to enter the US illegally in the first place, or that anyone who is hurt should not have put themselves in those situations.
In Iran, government-aligned social media accounts are even using the chaos in Minneapolis to highlight the apparent contradiction between Mr Trump's concern for Iranian protesters compared to his seeming indifference to the plight of demonstrators at home.
And Jones, the shock-jock who defamed the families of the children murdered in a notorious school shooting, said the killing of Mr Pretti, an “armed agitator”, was 100 “per cent justified”. Mr Pretti was carrying a pistol but he was licensed to do so and it was in its holster when agents tackled him to the ground. The case remains under investigation.
America has a long history of inflicting violence on its citizens during times of major social upheaval, such as the civil rights movement and the Vietnam War, when Ohio National Guardsmen killed four protesters at Kent State University.
What is happening now bodes badly for the remaining three years of the Trump administration and America writ large. A recent NPR report found that increasing numbers of liberals are taking firearms training and buying guns, convinced that their lives are now at greater risk – either from fellow citizens or the government.
Even the National Rifle Association, which is usually fervently pro-Trump, is growing concerned. After a federal prosecutor in California said on X that police are probably “legally justified” in killing anyone approaching officers while armed, the NRA urged “political voices to lower the temperature to ensure their constituents and law-enforcement officers stay safe".
Operation Jade Helm may have been a bust in terms of a “deep state” takeover of America, but unless the Trump administration de-escalates the situation in Minnesota and other cities, some of the conspiracy theories' greatest forebodings could yet come to pass.
