The weight of political fealty now burdens every public action, or, in this case, tragedy, in the United States. The center absolutely does not hold and might never again. Casualties include truth, reason, facts and common sense, the trusted accompaniment to reason.
We are struggling and spinning in wildly different and unwanted directions.
According to the Trump administration, Renee Nicole Good, 37, shot to death during a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation in Minneapolis, was a domestic terrorist who weaponized her vehicle with the intention to mow down an ICE agent.
According to Mayor Jacob Frey and Gov. Tim Walz, Good was the victim of Gestapo enforcement tactics used to cleanse the country of cleaners, chefs, parking lot attendants and gardeners.
Where that leaves Good is very dead, shot multiple times, either legitimately or not, depending not on facts, but on fealty.
Whether by design or happenstance, Good found herself in the middle of an ICE swoop. She was asked to get out of her car. She refused. She was told to leave. She then turned her wheels to the right, the path of leaving. She was leaving. An ICE agent, standing off her front left headlight, appeared to get out of her way and then leaned forward into the car to take his shots. The ICE agent then walked away — he did not appear at all injured — and was taken from the scene, reportedly to a hospital.
Good was dead.
The cellphone videos were plentiful. There was no suspicion of AI or trickery of any kind. The shooting could be seen from multiple angles. It wasn’t a matter of suspecting the motives of a so-called citizen journalist. It was video. It was real.
Frey and Walz minced no words expressing their disgust. Cooler heads, when the center held, might not have encouraged their constituents to hold ICE in contempt. In fact, and precisely because of their particular allegiance, they vowed to not allow local law enforcement to help ICE, save with traffic behavior. Upon Good’s death, Frey — virally, it turns out — told ICE to get the f— out of our town.
The Trump administration sent U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to town. She said, “it is very clear this individual was harassing and impeding law enforcement operations.”
Noem was asking me to disbelieve my own eyes.
Moments later at the same press conference, Noem said, “we’re following the standard protocol procedures we do in situations like this. When there is an officer-involved shooting, we make sure that we get all the facts and that we’re getting the statements of everyone involved and make sure investigators are handling the decisions.”
But wait a minute. You said previously that Good was harassing and impeding law enforcement. Maybe those were the facts Noem was confident she would learn based on her fealty to the Trump administration.
If the country had sustained a center and not fallen into warring camps, here is what would have happened in the last year.
ICE would not be a theatrical gumshoe operation. Select ICE teams would target serious criminals here illegally — we’re not going to get rid of every house cleaner and gardener — and quietly get dispatched to whatever city to make their arrests.
Frey and Walz, acting in concert, would have made local law enforcement available to ICE.
Noem would not be putting carts in front of horses.
Residents would not be in the streets protesting because they wouldn’t know anything was going on.
Renee Nicole Good would be alive.
But we don’t have a center, a moral and ethical high ground. We are adrift, with a foul, indescribably difficult president at the helm and, locally, a government that we would be foolish to trust.
Joe Soucheray can be reached at jsoucheray@pioneerpress.com. Soucheray’s “Garage Logic” podcast can be heard at garagelogic.com.
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