After the shooting of Renee Good, we see dissent can be fatal in Trump's America - all bets are off

[marmar]

After the shooting of Renee Good, we see dissent can be fatal in Trump’s America – all bets are off
Emma Brockes

A line has been crossed, and it’s vital to understand that. A system that sends paramilitaries on to the streets will observe no limits


(Guardian) Afew years ago, towards the end of the second Obama administration, a friend and her wife flew back to New York from a holiday in Mexico, landing for a connecting flight in South Carolina. At immigration, the officer looked from one to the other, asked their relation to one another and on receiving the reply, made a noise of disgust – “ugh”. On the pretext that American citizens can’t go through the same lane as a spouse on a green card (not true), he sent them to the back of the line, causing them to miss their connection. But that’s not the point of the story.

My friend is a white Australian who is generally conflict-averse; her wife is a Japanese-American who can stop traffic with a single, hard stare, and who teaches in the South Bronx, where many of her students have been harassed by law enforcement since the day they were born. As trouble got under way, my friend kicked off like a good’un, swearing and muttering sarcastically in the Australian style, while her wife shot her desperate, angry looks. Shut up. Shut Up. SHUT UP.

I have been thinking about this incident a lot since the death last week of Renee Good, the Minnesota woman fatally shot by an ICE agent. The use of deadly force was justified on grounds of self-defence, according to the US administration. That explanation doesn’t appear to be borne out by the videos, but the thing I also keep thinking about is the way in which, immediately prior to the shots being fired, Good and her wife, Becca, addressed the agent. “You wanna come at us?” says Becca, in the agent’s general direction. “I say go get yourself some lunch, big boy.” When the officer approaches Good’s open car window, she smiles, addresses him as “dude” and says mockingly: “I’m not mad at you.”

It goes without saying that in a healthy democracy, mouthing off at authority shouldn’t constitute putting oneself in mortal danger; sarcasm is my stress response, too. But this assumes that civic norms apply. This is the US, where even in normal times use of deadly force by cops isn’t an infrequent occurrence – a conservative estimate by the University of Illinois puts the average number of people killed annually by US law enforcement at 600. We may not yet have all the facts surrounding what motivated the ICE agent to use deadly force, but on the evidence of the videos alone, it seems to me apparent that both Good and her wife made a single, terrible, understandable miscalculation: they underestimated the danger they were in. .................(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/14/renee-good-shooting-dissent-fatal-trump-america

[creon]

1. It is dangerous

Those people are armed and dangerous. ICE is a criminal gang.

Proceed as indicated.

[Solly Mack]

2. Indeed. All bets are off.

[creon]

3. I agree

as surely as night follows day