This one’s important, so the audio is free:
You already know that an ICE agent killed Renee Nicole Good, a 37-year-old American citizen, in Minneapolis on Wednesday. If you watched any of the multiple videos of the incident with an interest in finding out what happened, you walked away with the same conclusion reached by the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, NBC, Sky News, a former ICE agent on CBS, and damn near every other outlet: this shooting was murder and not self defense. Good was driving slowly while actively turning away from ICE agent Jonathan Ross when he pulled his gun and shot her point-blank through the windshield, then fired two more shots through the driver’s-side window, just to be sure.
We are hearing a very different story from the Trump administration. This story does not twist the truth or offer an alternate interpretation of the evidence, but presents a completely fabricated narrative with nothing to support it. Good “rammed” her car into an ICE officer, we are told, though none of the videos show any such thing. The officer was hospitalized for his non-injuries and, according to Trump, is lucky to have survived this horrific non-ramming. Noem claimed that the ICE agents were trying to get a car unstuck from the snow when Good began to menace them: a story that contradicts both observable reality and JD Vance’s assertion, hours later, that these agents were conducting door-to-door operations. None of these things matter. All that matters is that Ross is a hero who heroically killed a Radical Left Lunatic terrorist who deserved to die. And if you don't believe the shooting went down like that? You’re a Radical Left Lunatic too.
We have no footage of Border Patrol shooting two people in Portland, Oregon yesterday afternoon. We know that a man and a woman were shot—one in the leg, the other in the chest. An eyewitness told the Oregonian that agents followed a truck into a parking lot and attempted to box it in. The driver attempted to escape and struck a car (unclear whether federal or civilian). As the truck zoomed towards the parking lot entrance, officers opened fire on the vehicle. The victims drove away, because nothing says “professional” like agents finding someone both dangerous enough to shoot and not worth pursuing after shooting. They were found by police over two miles away from the initial scene after the man called 911.
DHS tells a very different story, of course—that these were members of a Tren de Aragua prostitution ring (“Quick! What are the two worst things you can think of?”), that they “weaponized their vehicle,” and that agents fired “a defensive shot” at the car. How did a single shot hit one person in the leg and another in the chest? Don't worry about it! The lies don't need to make sense—in fact, for reasons we’ll get into, it’s better if they don’t. We can safely assume this story is a lie, because these organizations have lied every other time a shooting or act of ICE violence has occurred, it's basic pattern recognition. If they present evidence to the contrary I’d be happy to reconsider…but they won’t.
We are in the final stages of a complete decoupling of truth and rhetoric. The administration’s lies are not meant to be believed in any traditional sense. The Trump administration is not trying to fool you. They are asserting dominance over reality itself.
“Before mass leaders seize the power to fit reality to their lies, their propaganda is marked by its extreme contempt for facts as such, for in their opinion fact depends entirely on the power of man who can fabricate it.”
-Hannah Arendt, Origins of Totalitarianism
On paper, America remains a democracy. Democracies have several mechanisms, official and otherwise, throigh which citizens can effect change. Every single one of these mechanisms depend on truth to function, which means that none of them are working anymore:
Public opinion does not matter because polls aren’t real
Media pressure doesn’t matter because it’s all fake news and also the papers will, by convention, quote administration lies in any article they write.
Protests don’t matter because they didn’t happen, and if they did happen, they were small, and if they weren’t small, everyone at the protest was paid and/or an enemy of the state, not a real American
The law doesn’t matter because the law says whatever they want it to say, and the facts of the case are whatever they want them to be
Voting does not matter because the winner is whoever they say it is
All that remains when these things have been stripped away is the law of the gun: brute force and the fear of it. The truth is whatever the strongest person says it is, and the stronger that person, the more egregious the lies can be.
In the words of Stephen Miller, who I quoted in the last article and will quote again today:
“You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else, but we live in a world—in the real world, Jake—that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world.”
That last article analyzed the Trump administration’s new approach to foreign policy, which involves threatening heads of state with personal destruction if they don’t do as they’re told. He doesn’t need the leaders of Columbia or Cuba or any other country to believe that Maduro was a drug kingpin or the leader of the nonexistent Cartel de los Soles. He needs them to believe that if they upset El Jefe, he will fucking kill them.
Similarly, the Trump administration does not need you to believe that Renee Nicole Good rammed an ICE agent with her car and sent him to the hospital, just as they don’t need you to actually believe the economy is doing well or that Trump stopped eight wars. What they want you to believe—what they need you to believe—is that if you don’t behave the way they want you to behave, they will fucking kill you.
We’ve all heard the “first they came for” poem, but it hits different when you’re living in it. Trump’s authoritarian takeover has normalized horrific violence and human rights violations, but only at the periphery. The news grows darker and darker, our democracy comes undone, Trump is less and less restrained by the rule of law. And yet, for the vast majority of Americans, our daily lives remain virtually unchanged. We can make almost all of it go away by turning off our phones and going outside—or at least, we've been able to so far.
This is a picture of Renee Good’s glove compartment after she was shot in the face and killed. If you click this link, you can see the wider shot that includes an airbag soaked with Good’s blood, and I encourage you to click it if you feel able to do so. Some images of violence short-circuit thought, fill us with cold fear or red rage that overwrite our rational objections and silences the conscience and compassion. This picture is not like that. It reveals a truth we’ve known but most have not yet felt, a truth that could save your life and your soul if you let it in and face it head-on. You are not safe. This could easily be you.
Perhaps this feels untrue. After all, Good stopped and filmed ICE. Her actions were perfectly legal and morally justified, but she could have kept driving, it was an option that she had. “I made her come down here, this was my fault,” Good’s wife sobbed as she lay in the snow with their dog. If they’d just kept going—if they’d minded their own business—they’d have been fine. Picked their 6-year-old kid up from school and eaten casserole for dinner. We wouldn’t know either of their names. They would be safe.
And while this is true right now, today, it will not be true for much longer. This is what happens to people the administration decides are enemies, and their definition of the enemy is rapidly expanding:
When somebody throws a brick at an ICE agent or somebody tries to run over an ICE agent, who paid for the brick? And who told protesters to show up and engage in violent activity against our law enforcement officers?…How did [Good] get there? How did she learn about this? There’s an entire network—and frankly some of the media are participating in it—that is trying to incite violence against our law enforcement officers. It’s ridiculous. It’s preposterous and part of our investigatory work is getting to the bottom of it. who’s funding it, who’s supporting it, who’s cheerleading it, and of course, if there’s illegal activity related to that, we’re going to get to the bottom of that and prosecute it where we can.
That was JD Vance at a press conference yesterday—the same press conference where he repeatedly claimed that ICE agents have “absolute immunity.” This is, legally speaking, not true, but it doesn’t matter; if the federal government refuses to prosecute or conduct oversight over our secret police, what’s the difference?
Absolute immunity for ICE does not just allow them to commit unchecked violence against immigrants, or brown people who look like they might be immigrants, or scruffy Antifa types conducting ICE watch and keeping people safe, which would be bad enough. Absolute immunity allows ICE to commit violence against absolutely anyone. Those who vocally oppose them, or support the people who do. Who “cheerlead” opposition to the administration. The way I’m doing now. The way you are, maybe, on social media or in everyday conversation.
ICE/HSI/ERO/CBP/DHS do not solely target people they claim are illegal immigrants. Increasingly, they target anyone who opposes them. We have countless reports of ICE agents across the country reacting to people filming them—a constitutionally protected activity—by brutalizing them, pointing guns at them, and sometimes detaining them. A pastor who, after chanting “We Are Not Afraid” with a group of fellow Minnesotans in the wake of Good’s murder, was detained at gunpoint by an ICE agent who reportedly asked him: “Are you afraid now?” Last night, with no provocation, an ICE agent pointed a handgun at a protester’s head. Watch the video. Tell me what imminent danger that agent feared when he drew his service weapon, and take inspiration from the absolute fearlessness with which that protester stared him down.
Last September, the White House quietly released NSPM-7, which instructs the federal government to target groups that espouse things like “anti-Americanism,” “anti-capitalism,” “extremism on gender,” and other broad, vague categories that can encompass any and every idea the administration does not like. Last month, Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered federal law enforcement agencies to act on NSPM-7 and “review their files and holdings for Antifa and Antifa-related intelligence and information.” The agencies are to report any groups that could be engaging in “domestic terrorism,” as defined by NSPM-7, to the DOJ for further investigation.
“There is no compromise here on illegals; they're all going to go. And if you don't like it, we'll ship you out too.” Steve Bannon said this morning on War Room. “Why is Walz not under arrest? Why is Frey not under arrest? Why is Mamdani not under arrest? Roll them up! Anne Applebaum wants to talk about autocracy? Let’s give it to her! We have to defend our country.”
This is war. We did not declare it, we did not want it, but it is here regardless. These shootings will not stop. The administration has given their blessing for open-season violence on anyone, for any reason, and large-scale state oppression is around the corner.
The Trump administration and their allies are pulling a neat trick, where they have rid themselves of all laws save the law of the gun—the “iron laws of the world,” as Miller puts it—but demand their enemies continue to abide by the rules of democracy and use only the levers that do not work anymore. American norms and laws no longer protect us, they bind us and they leave us at the mercy of the people who have entirely thrown them away. We must break these chains. We must come to terms with where we are and act accordingly.
Once we cast off the shackles of these already-broken laws, we have many options for fighting back. State governments are best positioned to stand against the Trump administration, and the time for them to act is now. Months ago, I wrote that blue cities and states should divert all tax dollars from the federal government into their own coffers, to take care of their own citizens. Our cities account for 90% of US GDP, and depriving the federal government of that tax revenue would hurt very badly, very fast.
But economic consequences are not enough to keep the people safe. Governors have the power to call up the National Guard and expel ICE from their cities, or at least have them patrol the streets and keep the people safe from ICE violence. We need to call for this step loudly and repeatedly, we need to normalize the idea so that governors feel supported in taking this necessary step. Governor Tim Walz may be in the process of doing exactly that right now—the Minnesota guard is now staged and ready to deploy, and his rhetoric has made it clear that he’s willing to use them to protect protesters against ICE if necessary. Whether he actually does this remains to be seen, but I have hope.
We have options as individuals as well, but we need to be strategic about those options. A lot of people were upset at Walz for urging Minnesotans to remain peaceful at the administration grows ever more violent. “Do not take the bait. Do not allow them to deploy federal troops into here. Do not allow them to invoke the insurrection act. Do not allow them to declare martial law,” he said. But people are beginning to understand that the Trump administration does not need an inciting incident. They can simply claim Minnesotans burned Minneapolis to the ground while a video of the intact skyline plays in the background. Their toadies will insist they see a mushroom cloud regardless.
Here’s the thing: while the truth does not matter to this administration, it does matter to people watching at home. It is better for us, strategically speaking, for Trump to invent a pretext rather than using a real video of someone doing something stupid. When Trump invokes the insurrection act—which he will do at his convenience—we want as many people on our side as possible. This is why I’m personally a fan of proportional self-defense. I think it would be good and just if, when ICE violates someone’s rights, they faced immediate consequences for their actions. I think that would be more just and more effective than a riot.
At time of writing, we still have sidelines to stand on. As the administration continues down the path they are already halfway down, however, those sidelines will shrink. And as they shrink, we will have to choose one of the three options available to us:
The first option: leave this country and make a new life somewhere else. Give up your home, your friends, and possibly your standard of living. Hope you can get far enough away to avoid what’s coming internationally. If this is your choice, now would be a good time to start. There’s no shame in it, especially if you have a family. It’s a decision only you can make.
The second option is to slowly become the kind of person able to live in a world without truth. Say what needs to be said. Keep your opinions to yourself, or better yet do away with them entirely. Stop seeing, hearing, and eventually feeling. Every compromise will make sense in the moment: tiny acts of self-preservation that hurt no one, not really. At the end of it, you will have lost the person you were. You will be a stranger to yourself, as dead as you would be if they had shot you.
The third option is to do the opposite of that. Film ICE. Denounce them publicly. Join your local ICE watch, carry a whistle with you and blow it when you see them—three short burst when they’re in the area, three long bursts when they’re actively detaining people. Take pictures of their license plates. Keep your community safe. Our inalienable human right to life grants us the right to self-defense. We must defend ourselves, our neighbors, and our country.
If I had a dollar for every time I’ve said what follows I’d have a million dollars, and I’ll keep saying it until it stops being relevant: I personally watched the full force of the United States military lose to a bunch of mountain people with AK-47s, RPGs, and homemade explosives. They lost every battle, the casualties were enormous, but they won. Pete Hegseth and his cronies believe we lost in Afghanistan because we weren’t brutal enough, because we followed the laws of war and didn’t torture and kill enough civilians. I promise you that’s not the case; the Russians were plenty brutal and the Afghans beat them too. When it comes to conventional war, or targeted operations like we saw in Venezuela, our armed forces can’t be beat. But America has never won a counterinsurgency.
We have to fight back. We have to say these things out loud, and damn the torpedoes. In the words of Radical Left Lunatics Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin: rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.
Very heavy and hard to take, but please keep shouting it.
Thank you so much for these words. You always help me see and feel much more deeply and clearly. I appreciate you!