a thought experiment regarding current events

or, on the grotesque carnival surrounding the murder of civilians by government employees

The last twelve months has seen a grotesque change in the US. While we’ve always been a violent country full of violence, where kids routinely get murdered at their schools, where police daily kill citizens somewhere in the country, but what we used to see is justification.

George Zimmerman was justified in murdering Trayvon Martin because…

Derek Chavin was justified in murdering George Floyd because…

Or even Derek Chauvin didn’t kill George Floyd¹. He was a man dying from overdose and Chauvin had the misfortune of being there when it happened.

This is the classic construction of what happens when a civil servant kills a citizen. Even when I personally find it grotesque and absurd, it is an attempt to say that it’s too bad someone died but the government employee was in the right, or, at the very least, just trying to do their best.

What we’ve seen change is that justification is no longer so important to people. Now, there’s this sort of gloating over the corpse, this celebration of someone dying.

When Charlie Kirk was murdered, social media filled with people who celebrated or gloated over the fact that he was dead. Often, the argument was that he deserved it and they’d quote him saying that some amount of deaths are acceptable in order to defend the Second Amendment.

When a Melissa Hortman and her husband were murdered at their home, there were many who felt that they deserved it, who celebrated over the fact that a Democrat had been murdered. In this case, it wasn’t random people on the internet, but sitting congressman like Mike Lee of Utah.

After a mass murderer killed a bunch of children at Annunciation Church² in Minneapolis, there were people who celebrated this and justified it because there would be fewer Christian fascists in the world.

Now that Renee Good has been murdered by ICE here in Minneapolis, there are many people justifying the murder in the old traditional way, but there are also many who are celebrating the murder, who consider ICE heroes trying to tame a lawless liberal state.

This is all so grotesque to me, but this is also just our new reality as a country. We now, as a populace, have this gut-reaction to violence that has shifted from horror to a very different place: whose side did this?

I don’t think words can adequately describe this mindset and how revolting and insane it is. But when our side (whatever side that might be) is the victim, we reflexively blame the otherside and when the otherside is the victim, we reflexively justify the murder and, now, gloat about it.

If you, as a Democrat, don’t believe this is true, I think Ashli Babbitt is a stark example. While I think many, many people had a normal reaction to her death, there were many that blamed her for being there, for putting herself in that position, and justified the government employee’s use of lethal force as completely justifiable because of the danger they felt.

You may notice a mirroring of what someone like JD Vance has to say about the murder of Renee Good³.

I’m not going to lecture you about any of this, but I do want you to consider the following thought experiment.

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It’s May of 2021 and a white man has tickets to a concert. He is required to show proof of vaccination or proof of a recent negative Covid test. He has neither. Security refuses to let him in.

He argues that he’s already bought the tickets, that he bought them before there even was a Covid shot, that they can’t mandate he get an untested medical procedure to see Beyonce, that the concert is outside so the likelihood of transmission is basically zero, that no other country requires people to get the shot. He’s still refused but at this point he just pushes past the guards and security and makes his way inside, running through the stadium.

The cops are already on the scene.

Three cops tackle the man, pressing his face down into the concrete of the stadium floor with their knees. People are filming it now and the cops make a human shield around the cops currently kneeling on the antivax man as they handcuff him. Some of the onlookers try to help and they are pushed back by the cops, with some of them thrown violently to the concrete floor.

The antivaxxer is dragged away, his face bleeding, his body limp. Some of the onlookers believe he is dead.

Due to the actions of the officers, this man’s neck was broken and he becomes paralyzed from the neck down.

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I know it can be hard to remember the feverish days of lockdowns and masks and people being disallowed from restaurants and parks and so on without proof of vaccination or negative Covid test, but try to memory palace your way back there.

Then consider how you might respond to that. Be honest with yourself. Not for me or for whoever might see you comment on this post, but for yourself.

How would you feel about the man who refused vaccines or the severity of Covid?

How would you feel about the state employees who attacked this man?

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Obviously, I’m leading both liberals and conservatives by the nose here a bit. But I think this it is worth looking in the mirror and asking yourself why you feel this way and why your feelings are so dependent on the political beliefs of the people involved.

Anyway, I do encourage you to read this piece:

Dispatch from the Twin Cities

1. I live in the Twin Cities. I used to live in Minneapolis, in the neighborhood where the George Floyd protests all happened, which is not too far from the murder of Renee Good. I wandered the burnt down husk of my neighborhood, watched the nation celebrate the fact that Minneapolis was in fire because we either deserved it or because this was some kind of justice for George Floyd. I had a gun pulled on me, I chased away vandals and looters from my street. My neighbors and I had to erect barriers to keep the many cars full of people from outside Minneapolis who came to our little corner of the city to cause a bit of chaos.

Even at the time, there was this line that anyone who talked about outsiders coming into Minneapolis to protest was just repeating a right wing talking point. But I lived near the bridge where people had to cross the Mississippi to get into Minneapolis, or at least the part of Minneapolis where the protests were happening, and I can tell you that once the sun started to fall, cars came pouring in. Some with out of state license plates, but most just from the surrounding suburbs. I was yelled at by a woman livestreaming the destruction of my neighborhood who was shouting how we don’t give a fuck about buildings, we’ll burn this all down for George Floyd, which is quite a statement and certainly not something you would say if you lived there.

I did not appreciate then and I do not appreciate now how my home has become an ideological battleground online.

And though I don’t think it has to be said, I think that ICE’s main mission in places like Minneapolis is to cause terror. To terrorize citizens and illegal immigrants alike. The sheer number of ICE agents here boggles the mind and goes well beyond any sense of reason if what you’re trying to do is crackdown on violent criminals who came into the country illegally. Despite what people might think, we just don’t have a lot of immigrants here! Illegal or otherwise. We’re a fairly white state—not the whitest, but few people look at Minnesota and think to themselves, Now there’s a shining example of racial diversity.

2. When I was a young boy, this was the church my family went to. My sister and my aunt, at different times, worked with the murderer’s mother. My mom knows people who still work at the church or who are still congregants. The niece and nephew of one of my dear friends was in the church when the killing started. His nephew lost his best friend that morning.

3. There’s now been another shooting by ICE in Minneapolis, though this one was not lethal. If your reaction to federal employees shooting and murdering people is Good or they’re just doing their job, I think you’re being at least mildly absurd.

I have seen people say that Renee Good should not have put herself in that position (which I agree with, especially considering she had a young child), but I’ve also seen people say that she should have had more restraint. They don’t buy that she was potentially scared shitless by militarized masked men surrounding her car. And maybe she wasn’t! But I wish people who said this felt that maybe, just maybe, responsibility should fall on the federal employee with the fucking gun. Because it was his lack of restraint and composure that resulted in him shooting her in the head three fucking times while he attempted to record the entire thing on his iPhone.