How Hard Is It To Oppose Murder?

By now you've almost certainly seen the video for yourself, or read about it: an ICE agent shooting a Minneapolis woman, Renee Nicole Good, in the head from point-blank range, killing her as she attempted to drive away from the scene of an immigration sting where protesters had gathered on Wednesday. The agent's actions, caught from several angles on video now widely available across all forms of visual media, are indefensible. By any human standard the shooting is a murder, made all the more appalling by the Trump administration's rush to exonerate the murderer with obvious lies, and paint the victim, an unarmed U.S. citizen guilty of nothing more than perhaps having panicked when masked agents surrounded her car and tried to yank her out of it, as a terrorist and would-be killer.

The murder and the response seem to have shocked the nation; they've even largely driven Trump's unlawful invasion of Venezuela and kidnapping of its president down the figurative and physical page. Here is what Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar has to say about it:

This makes me feel insane. Does it make you feel insane? A masked government agent, a member of Donald Trump's unaccountable racist paramilitary force, shot one of Sen. Klobuchar's constituents in the head and killed her, in response to her, at absolute most, having moved her vehicle a few feet instead of allowing herself to be violently accosted by men in masks. The outrage is not that the agent did so without having coordinated that action with local cops. The outrage is that he did it at all.

Why does the mainstream Democratic response to authoritarian violence always have to be abstracted like this? What would it take for these freaks to voice objection to the actual fact of state terror happening right in front of their faces, rather than raising limp procedural qualms over Trump not having filed the proper paperwork to inflict it with sufficient bipartisanship? What conceivable abuse by the Trump administration would give Klobuchar an easier opportunity to simply believe in right and wrong—or even to mount a cynical performance of believing in right and wrong—than a masked goon whipping out a pistol and murdering one of her own constituents, on video, over nothing? Would Renee Good's summary slaughter at the hands of the American gestapo have been tolerable with buy-in from the Minneapolis Police Department? How fucking hard is it to simply and absolutely oppose the murder of innocent people by federal agents? How hard is it to respond—as Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar did, and reliably does, despite being a constant target of racist malice from the president himself—like an actual human being?

You may ask, Why does anybody particularly need Amy Klobuchar to respond a certain way, when everybody already knows how they feel about the incident?

The answer is: because for millions of people, Klobuchar is their representation in the U.S. Senate and, however toothless that body might be these days, she possesses infinitely more agency in this moment than any of the people who voted for her.

The answer is: because we are supposed to have two political parties in this insane, stupid, unworkable government, and if one of them is the Dispatching Masked Agents Of The Racist Terror Department To Kidnap And Shoot People Party, then the other one has to be the Fully Opposed To Doing That Party, or else the very incredibly many Americans fully opposed to masked agents of the Racist Terror Department kidnapping and shooting people have no representation whatsoever.

The answer is: because it is wrong for ICE agents to shoot people in the head for moving their vehicles, or for lawful acts of protest, or even for unlawful acts of protest, period, full stop, and anybody who can't see that or lacks the bare-minimal courage required to say it aloud is manifestly a moral degenerate and unsuitable to hold public office.

The answer is: because the absolutely necessary work of dismantling ICE, fully razing the rhetorical ground from whence it sprung, and prosecuting and imprisoning all the architects and perpetrators of Trump's campaign of terror cannot meaningfully begin so long as the supposed opposition party is represented at its top by people who think the problem with ICE is its disregard for inter-agency cooperation, rather than the essential fact that it is a racist paramilitary death squad rooted in disgusting nativist ideology incompatible with this country's nominal ideals.

A chronic, devastating cancer in American society is prominent Democrats outright refusing to share their constituents' urgency and horror in the face of what is being done to society by Republicans, and insisting instead upon an empty, delusional performance of sobriety and professionalism even to the extent of cooperating with people who very loudly regard them as traitors and want them killed. It's why Trump wasn't punished after he dispatched rioters to literally overthrow the government on Jan. 6, 2021. It's why Joe Biden's Justice Department failed to hold him and the people around him accountable for that day's crimes and innumerable others, setting the stage for his return to office and the open campaign of vengeance and looting we're now all subject to. It's why Trump's cabinet is filled with warmongering psychos and murderous eugenicists who rode into office with the imprimatur of Democratic confirmation. It's why Democratic leadership cooperated with Trump on reopening the government in the autumn even though roughly none of their own constituents wanted it, even though it meant abandoning tens of millions of Americans to ruinous healthcare cost hikes and funded both the unlawful invasion of Venezuela and the very agency responsible for Renee Good's murder.

It's one social media post, sure. Undoubtedly Klobuchar, who reportedly wants to campaign for the Minnesota governorship Tim Walz will vacate at the end of his term, will say and post many more things about Renee Good's murder; she may have already done so, in the time I spent typing this blog. In that respect, the one early post arguably is no big deal. That's all the more reason why it should have been a fucking layup. Simply be opposed, out loud, to the murder of innocent people. A political leader who can't clear that bar until public opinion polling builds them a trampoline is no leader at all.