A World After Renee Good and Alex Pretti
Still not a Current Affairs Newsletter
I’m going to try and keep this brief, as I need a place to put my thoughts over Renee Good’s brutal killing in Minneapolis a couple of Wednesdays ago, and last Saturday’s killing of Alex Pretti. I want to chat tech and policy much more than I want to write on current affairs (even though there is considerable overlap, e.g. TikTok banning references to Epstein) simply because I like weighing in on where I feel that I can make a more tangible impact. But this sequence of events has hit me quite a bit.
I think many commentators will view Renee and Alex’s deaths as a moral “crossing the Rubicon” moment, simply owing to the fact that a woman was clearly, visibly shot and killed in cold blood and conservative commentators and officials are victim-blaming, with the President and his team defending the ICE agent and saying that a “professional agitator” was on the scene and that Renee “viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self-defense.” The President linked a (intentionally badly positioned) video of the incident on his “Truth Social” account, but I will not be posting a clearer one, as it’s quite graphic. Alex Pretti’s death is even more clear-cut, and as Paul Krugman pointed out in his Monday piece, the truth is not marred by peoples’ “misogyny and anti-LGBTQ bigotry” or tricky camera angles. The President’s response to that event notably did not include video. And yet, these citizens are called domestic terrorists by the administration. The whole thing is deliberately untruthful, and to quote Hank Green’s feelings on the matter, “they would use the truth if the truth was enough.”
With that, the federal government is attempting to block both federal and state investigations into their deaths, and attempting to bribe the State of Minnesota with removing ICE from the state at the cost of turning over the voter rolls to the Department of Justice. Looking back to last year’s whitewashing of slavery or the administration’s usage of government websites as a cudgel against the opposition party, it can be hard to keep in perspective that nearly none of what this administration is doing is remotely “normal.” But for a country like the United States, which has failed historically, for example, to appropriately punish the South for its past racism (causing it to linger in many forms), it’s important that we don’t just “talk the talk.” Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in Davos last Tuesday explained clearly the price of American complacency and the world’s reliance on it.
America, while loving to hold its individual citizens responsible, has very, very often refused to hold state actors responsible. J. Edgar Hoover, My Lai, Nixon, the WMD hoax leading to the War in Afghanistan—all of these lived-memory people and events had state actors being nearly completely shielded from real consequences despite being clearly known and identifiable ethical problems.
Many of us believed in a better America. One that kicked Donald Trump to the curb the second that he mocked a disabled reporter back in 2015. Actress Meryl Streep was completely right in her response, “…this instinct to humiliate, when it's modeled by someone in the public platform, by someone powerful, it filters down into everybody's life, because it kinda gives permission for other people to do the same thing.” I’m not convinced that that better America can exist as long as this sort of judgmental hatred continues in this country. It hides behind idealisms like “Southern culture” and “both parties are bad.” If racism is a component of people in your culture, that culture is not one to take pride in. If a given party is bad, and the other one is a different kind of bad, then demand better. America cannot continue to claim the moral high ground while exercising “do as I say and not as I do”-style hegemony.
President Joe Biden’s biggest sin was in becoming classically complacent, as is the American way, and letting the rot continue to spread in the wake of January 6th, 2021. That Donald Trump escaped federal prosecution long enough to become president again, in spite of everything known and discovered, is a democratic travesty. Former Special Counsel Jack Smith did his job. The courts (particularly district judge Aileen Cannon, who blocked or slowed public release many times) failed theirs.
This is a plea to all those who “don’t follow politics because it’s too depressing.” This evil is now banal1. Arendt’s broader point stands: the normalization and acclimatization of evil things can happen in a surprisingly boring, mundane, and bureaucratic fashion. But from the top-down, this isn’t even bureaucratic attempts at fascism. From the bottom it is, but from the top this is heavy-handed, the-water-is-already-boiling-in-the-pot, baby’s first attempt at fascism. And the country is still sleepwalking into it.
For Democratic lawmakers, not-fully-journalistically-compromised mainstream media, and commentators that have simply been decrying every new thing this administration comes up with every two seconds, you’re now part of the problem. We’ve tried this same tactic over the past decade and it’s gotten infinitely worse. You’re still trying to pick the board game pieces out of the landfill that the Republicans chucked out years and years ago, while they’re doing victory laps and speeches at the tournament. You can’t keep playing by game rules for a game that doesn’t exist anymore. Your endgame is to win voters or report the truth, their endgame is for your institutions to not exist, or failing that, be toothless. At least try to meet their tactics. They’re trying to flood the zone every single day. Pick two or three of the big issues and stick to them. Don’t budge. Demand accountability from these single ICE officers. Don’t let Renee or Alex’s name leave the headlines in a week’s time. They’ll tell you it’s politicizing their deaths, anti-American for attacking “our nation’s heroes,” anything to get you to stop pushing and move on to their latest nonsense, like renewed trade wars with Canada and the E.U. The administration thinks they can’t budge on this or they think they’ll look weak, like they’re not backing their people. Force them to budge.
For the people, I reiterate, general strikes and peaceful protests. Yes, that’s dangerous right now, so personal safety comes first. Threaten to primary the seven House Democrats who voted with Republicans to fund ICE after Renee Good’s killing. Demand that Senate Democrats don’t fund ICE. Support community members. There’s a severe blood shortage right now in the U.S.; consider giving blood even if living an an area not directly impacted by ICE’s nonsense.
This is the only way forward that I can reasonably see. But this all has to end, or we collectively lose our sanity. We lose our morality. We lose our democracy. We lose our country. Renee wasn’t even the first person killed in the past year by ICE in a moving vehicle when the officer’s life was not in danger. Let me repeat that. Renee is not the first person who was killed in this fashion in the last year. If you don’t want to see more people die in the same way, then let her death have meaning. This administration didn’t learn from her death, and probably won’t learn from Alex’s. No more American federal qualified immunity or any of Stephen Miller’s “plenary authority.” No more keeping loopholes open in case you need to use them later. The United States is supposed to be the forerunner of the “rule of law.” Make those in government scared of breaking their own laws again.
Even though I had written most of this post in a fever immediately following Renee’s death, I was debating whether or not to post for reasons mostly mentioned in the first paragraph. I ended up talking with a friend of mine living in Minneapolis, reminding her that she has support beyond that city, and I felt that that statement rings hollow unless I use what small platform I have to speak out against clear injustice.
I don’t perfectly agree with Arendt’s reasoning (simply because it’s too quick of a jump between “personal ambition made one not question whether they were committing evil acts” and “just following orders”), but it makes for a compelling point in this sort of circumstance.