Lifestyle

Why do people have such strong and divided opinions about the ICE shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis?

Because people just don’t want to see the truth sometimes.

The truth is painful. It has no mercy, it does not protect your feelings — it’s merely there. And it is brutal. Another protester was shot and killed by ICE yesterday. His name was Alex Pretti, an ICU nurse at a veterans hospital.

Mr. Pretti was filming ICE pepperspraying other protesters. They didn’t like this, so they murdered him. Just like the Gestapo or NKVD would have done back in the day. Pretti was a legal gun owner, but he did not point his weapon at any of the ICE officers. In fact he was disarmed by the officers, and was fully immobilized by them on the ground. They shot him ten times and killed him on the spot. An already disarmed, already immobilized man. And he wasn’t holding a gun in his hand, either — Petti was holding a phone…

The problem with this incident and the Renee Good incident, is that people seem to have no compassion for those who they have political differences with. Renee Good and Alex Petti were “obstructing justice” and ICE are the brave heroes deporting violent criminals in the eyes of their fierce supporters, so anyone who tries to prevent ICE from doing its job is, in their eyes, a traitor who deserves to get shot. The facts of how they get shot no longer matter.


It seems to me that there are several reasons that Good’s death has grabbed public interest.

The first is that the videos quite plainly show that the official version is incorrect, she was trying to leave and the ICE agent was clearly angry and reacted with unnecessary force. The death penalty is not usually given to someone who ignores a command.

More fundamental is that it shows how deep the divide is between supporters of Trump’s policies and opponents. Trump supporters have difficulty understanding how anyone can oppose Trump’s policy on immigrants, and opponents implore everybody to see ICE as a tool of the emerging dictatorship.

This is deepened by Trump’s sending ICE to blue states and to cities headed by Democrats. It sure looks like revenge and Trump has repeatedly called Democrats scum and anti-American. It sure looks like he’s trying to provoke violence, likely so a state of emergency can be declared.

Trumpers see demonstrations against ICE as domestic terrorism. Opponents see ICE as domestic terrorism.

His supporters buy the fantasy that illegal immigrants are thieves, crooks and murderers. They see sending ICE to blue states and Democrat cities as evidence that Democrats are soft on crime and buy immigrant votes by letting them run riot. We Democrats see those views as malevolent fantasy that is leading to a 4th Reich in the US.

We’ll see more anger over this. For one thing, Good left behind a six-year old, and there could be a fight over the child: Good was in a lesbian relationship, and it’s possible there will be a custody fight. For another, Minnesota may charge the ICE agent who shot her with murder.

State and federal authorities are deeply angry at each other. Trump is virtually certain to do what he can to penalize the state, such as withdrawing funds and having DoJ search for ways to indict the governor and the mayor.

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