Over the past month, two governments faced widespread protests. One responded with mass killings. The other, under popular pressure, appears to be backing down.

On Dec. 28, a collapse in the value of Iranian currency sparked demonstrations among shopkeepers in Tehran which then spread across the country. While it began as a protest against economic conditions, the goal soon turned to overthrowing the authoritarian regime that has ruled Iran for almost half a century.

The government responded with murderous suppression. Estimates go as high as 36,000 people killed, about equal to the number of Americans who died in the Korean War. The regime, supported by a minority of the population, perhaps as little as 11%, fought a war against its own people and appears to have won for now.

In "the largest immigration enforcement operation ever carried out," the U.S. Department of Homeland Security sent at least 2,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and 1,000 Customs and Border Protection officers to Minnesota. The armed and masked officers participating in Operation Metro Surge swept through Target stores, school grounds and hospitals. Homes were entered without judicial warrants in violation of the Fourth Amendment. On Jan. 7, writer and poet Renee Good was shot and killed as she drove from the scene despite the Department of Justice policy that states: "Deadly force may not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing suspect."

In the protests that followed Good's death, demonstrator Alex Pretti was killed by United States Border Patrol agents on Jan. 24. Bystander videos showed he was shot 10 times while restrained. His last words, spoken to a woman who had been pepper-sprayed, were "Are you OK?" Despite claims by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, there was no evidence that Pretti attacked officers or was brandishing a gun. White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called Pretti "a domestic terrorist (who) tried to assassinate federal law enforcement." In fact, Pretti was an intensive care unit nurse at the Minneapolis Veterans Affair Hospital.

The Trump administration backed down. The head of Operation Metro Surge was replaced. Two federal agents who fired on Pretti have been placed on administrative leave. Only days after calling Democratic Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz a "sanctimonious political fool," Trump reported he'd had "a very good call" with him. Walz said Trump agreed to consider a reduction in the number of federal agents in Minnesota and allowing a state investigation into Pretti's death.

In contrast, when the ante was raised by protesters in Iran, armed government forces went on a murderous spree. Why the difference?

Iran lacks the tradition of a longstanding democracy. It moved from monarchy to theocracy in 1979. In contrast, protesters in Minnesota and around the country could draw on a democratic tradition that went back to the Boston Tea Party and before. One reason cited by the Declaration of Independence for breaking links with Great Britain included George III's maintaining "among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures." The spirit of 1776 burns still in America 250 years after the Declaration of Independence.

Also, in Iran, the government cut access to the internet, so the massacres were not broadcast by bystanders taking videos with their cellphones. Millions of Americans could and did view videos of the Pretti shooting that showed Noem and Miller both misrepresented the truth. In 1776, pamphlets such as "Common Sense" swept through the 13 colonies. Today, it's 4K videos uploaded to X, TikTok or YouTube that are sweeping the country.

The oft-cited 1946 poem by the clergyman Martin Niemoller recounts how Germans allowed the Nazis to maintain their power. It begins, "First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist." Nor, the author says, did he speak out when the regime came after socialists, trade unionists or Jews. He concludes, "Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me." Many Americans are not waiting until the end of the poem. They are taking action to speak out for others now.

Pretti was white, not Black or Hispanic. He was a gun-owning American citizen with no criminal record beyond traffic tickets. According to family and co-workers, he lived a "life devoted to healing." Autocracy stumbles when it tries to make a monster out of a healer.

A character in Hemingway's novel "The Sun Also Rises" explains how he went bankrupt: "gradually and then suddenly." It looks like that's what is happening to Trump, whose support in the polls has been dwindling for almost a year. Trump has backed off. A Republican candidate for governor in Minnesota withdrew, saying, "I cannot support the National Republican's stated retribution on the citizens of our state, nor can I count myself a member of a party that would do so." Courts are stepping in to stop masked armed federal agents from occupying American cities.

Napoleon's execution of a royal duke in 1804 was said to be "Worse than a crime, it was a blunder." When historians look back at Trump's second term, they might see the crime and blunder of Alex Pretti's death as the beginning of the end.

A renaissance man, Keith Raffel has served as the senior counsel to the Senate Intelligence Committee, started a successful internet software company, and had six books published including five novels and a collection of his columns. He currently spends the academic year as a resident scholar at Harvard. You can learn more about him at keithraffel.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at creators.com

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