The Lying Is The Point

 Yesterday, video clearly showed an ICE officer in Minneapolis shoot and kill a woman who was "in the way" of an ICE raid. He violated many basic rules of law enforcement - don't stand in front of a vehicle; don't discharge your weapon into a moving vehicle - and he basically murdered her for "not complying."

Immediately the Trump administration made false claims about the woman, the incident and the nature of the threat to ICE. There are so many disturbing aspects of this incident that it does remind me of January 6th, in terms of which aspect I should be angriest about.

This happened for one reason only: Trump and Stephen Miller are looking for performative acts of oppression and intimidation in "blue" cities. They aren't finding the hundreds of thousands of "illegals" in these cities, and maybe they are stupid enough to think that this is just a matter of more raids. In fact, these wholesale assaults on civil liberties very much feels like the point of all of this. They've started to focus on Minnesota because of a fraud case surrounding day cares, which is currently being adjudicated. Yes, it was a crime, but it's being dealt with appropriately. The pretext is all that matters.

It is, of course, depressing to go online and see the inevitable toeing of the party line for what amounts to the lynching or extrajudicial killing of Renee Nicole Good. All the Trump sycophants and fascists immediately assumed the GroupThink about radical antifa leftists and the utter bullshit that - apparently in their minds - justifies shooting a mother in the head from point blank range.

It is also incredibly depressing to see the "she should have just complied" crowd place the cause of her death on her as opposed to the ICE agent who was very much NOT in danger of imminent death. That these are the same people who think Ashlii Babbit is a martyr and January 6th was no big deal is not surprising.

It is the ability of Trump and Trumpism to get their followers to believe the lies - even with obvious video evidence showing the opposite - that is truly terrifying. The actual act of violence is appalling, but life can be cruel and capricious. Terrible things do happen. 

It is watching the entire Republican Party bow down before an altar of lies that is so unsettling. How can you recreate civic democracy under those circumstances?