When Firefighters Are Setting Fires
There was a killing in Minnesota, instigated by Trump whose name appears in the Epstein pedophiles files right around the same time he kidnapped a head of state in an extrajudicial action. Got it?
“I stick my neck out for nobody.” — Humphrey Bogart, Casablanca
There was S. Brian Willson. Before him there was Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Lee Scheuer. All 19 or 20 years old. Heather Heyer too.
Just a few of America’s greatest hits, and not a single one of them a person of color. Unless you want to go back to Crispus Attucks, him being who’s widely held to be the first person killed in the Boston Massacre that kicked off the Revolutionary War that created America.
And now we have Renee Nicole Good, a name that’s created a massive public relations disaster for the administration that sent immigration officers into her neighborhood to murder her.
“It wasn’t murder.” A MAGA world habitué that was splitting hairs.
“Did she die from lead poisoning?”
“She was killed.”
The spin had begun and from JD Vance, and Kristi Noem, to the Presidential Maniac himself, it would continue. She was a domestic terrorist. She was a deranged leftist. She was part of a left wing network of paid agitators.
Nothing at all like Ashli Babbitt, a January 6th “veteran, patriot” and rioter. MAGA world’s Horst Wessel, Babbitt was shot while attacking the United States Capitol.
“[A]n extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence,” said Minister of Nazi Propaganda Joseph Goebbels
“Play stupid games, win stupid prizes,” intoned a cop friend of mine. But he was talking about Good. Not Babbitt.
Good’s killing/murder has generated protests across the country with battle lines predictably drawn even if Fox and the Wall Street Journal were initially critical, by today, Fox’s Jesse Watters was now focusing on Good’s sexuality and pronouns.
Could a Chappelle special be far behind?
“I blame you.” Another cop friend is laying the Good killing/murder down on my doorstep. “Your Facebook reels [and Substack] stoke the flames of self righteous, and incredibly dangerous behavior.”
If clutching-at-straws was a person he’d be it since as an ex-pat I seriously doubt anything I did caused ICE shooter Jonathan Ross to shoot Good three times through her open window. But if you add in Charlie Kirk, Trump’s own questionable shooting, as well as Minnesota state representative Melissa Hortman who was assassinated in a shooting at her home in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, along with her husband, Mark, and their dog, Gilbert, the streets on Planet Trump are, indeed, running red with blood.
Blood, and the continuing drum beat of sex crimes, the specters of which waft throughout the Trump administrations like a bad smell, are themselves distractions from the defining element of the Trump administrations: a haphazard bellicosity turned on anyone not Trump.
Surrounded by people he’s repeatedly shit on — JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Lindsey Graham, Melania, his kids — Trump has not only generated continued fealty with this haphazard bellicosity but managed to use it all to stay one step ahead of any kind of reckoning.
Indeed all of MAGA world has shown themselves unable to disagree agreeably. That is to say death, or violence, always gets factored in when MAGA finds themselves at loggerheads even with the most reasonable pushback.
But when Marjorie Taylor Greene and Tucker Carlson are starting to sound like voices of reason in the full blush of whatever might constitute a Trump “plan” a reexamination might be in order. A reexamination that will in real time be delayed as the administration doubles down on that which does not work, since anything that might resemble “working” inevitably leads to the same conclusion: no sane person does what Trump has done.
And finally, as with all things Trump-fueled there remains the question…as it applies to…the weaponized presence of paramilitaries in Democratic cities and the revenge parade pushed by an administration knuckle deep in a sex scandal where there is no confusion about who is guilty, what do we do NOW?
Unless you count Nixon and the Kent State Massacre where four unarmed students were killed/murdered in cold blood by National Guardsmen, none of whom have been criminally charged.
And then it’s only when you leave America that you have a sense of how strangely sick our American way of life is and has been. No one anywhere else in the world not already a war zone expects interactions with the state and state agents to result in their untimely, extrajudicial death.
In America that’s as common as awards shows. Citizens killed during bullshit traffic stops. Or on the train. Or at grocery stores while buying cigarettes. Or on the playground. A man in a knee brace and in his 50s who just recently called the police because his daughter had been kidnapped was, himself, beaten and arrested for resisting arrest after calling the police.
This is the American Normal.
But other places on Planet Earth, there’s a wholly reasonable assumption that when you call the police for help they will help you. More than that even if you don’t call them and you need help, you might get it. The state helps the people of the state.
If that’s your mindset you’re absolutely confused that state actors are killing/murdering those they’ve sworn to protect. It makes about as much sense as firefighters starting fires, instead of putting them out.
Moreover, if you are actually convicted for threatening an officer of the state, attempting to murder them even, blocking traffic, impeding an investigation, there’s not a single court in America that would pass a death sentence for these crimes. Yet, bypassing judges and juries, expediency demands that when it happens on the street we understand it.
As either an unfortunate accident, or a crime, but one for which the Justice Department under Trump will express no interest. Even if leftwing agitators are also entitled to constitutional protections.
How long before someone In Texas backing out of a parking spot at the same speed that Good was is then shot in a stand-your-ground deal by someone toddling to their car who felt threatened?
Outside of that how long will Trump keep us at each other’s throats trying to figure out whose “fault” it all is when it’s fairly clear that it’s his hands and our throats?
“Maybe her [Renee Nicole Good] death will save someone else’s life when they see what can happen when they try to move pedestrian law enforcement with their vehicles,” said a two-time Trump voter. Which is, if you haven’t noticed, a deeply cynical take.
Who’s that dancing on the jailhouse roof/Stamping on the ramping with a cloven hoof/Who’s that dancing on the jailhouse roof?/Up jumped the Devil and said “Here is your man and I got the proof!” — Nick Cave, “Up Jumped the Devil”
But it fits MAGA world since without very many exceptions most of the MAGA world that I’ve dealt with have been composed of people who had and endured very serious early life trauma, mostly and usually inflicted on them by family members. Their later life response has always been seen to hew to a much more rigid line since it was this lack of rigidity that led to that early life chaos.
Indeed that’s where the real differences emerge. A sizable portion of the so-called January 6th “patriots” who stormed the Capitol have gone on to reoffend. There are also websites dedicated to showing the number of sex crimes that MAGA associates and fellow travelers have been convicted of.
Contrasting that with activist S. Brian Willson, who lost his legs after he draped himself across train tracks in an act of civil disobedience against a war in El Salvador. Or Allison Krause, Jeffrey Miller, and Sandra Lee Scheuer, teenage students and protesters opposing the Vietnam War. Or Heather Heyer too who was killed just for being at a protest in Charlottesville.
All all-American activities. All killed/murdered for suchlike all-American activities. But never, and this is massively significant, at the behest of a president who sows the wind while blaming the whirlwind on those consumed by it.
And finally, as with all things Trump-fueled there remains the question…as it applies to Venezuela, the weaponized presence of paramilitaries in Democratic cities and the revenge parade pushed by an administration knuckle deep in a sex scandal where there is no confusion about who is guilty, what do we do NOW?
While I followed Fritz Lang’s escape from Nazi Germany as a model of “I’m just going out for cigarettes” only to never return and embrace it as the survivalist that I am, my heart goes out to those who have the heart to stay in the fight. Those like mother of three Renee Nicole Good, a white woman with apparently no criminal record, who MAGA is positioning themselves against in a move that will inevitably fail to convince any portion of America that everything is OK.
“[A]n extremely dedicated group of people are perfectly capable of overthrowing any state with violence,” said Minister of Nazi Propaganda Joseph Goebbels when he was banning a film by the aforementioned Fritz Lang. A film about a charismatic criminal leader, The Testament of Dr. Mabuse hit a little to close to home in its depiction of what happens when criminals run things.
It bears being seen again. From a 6000 mile remove.
At least for how it ends (spoiler alert). Mabuse is scuttled, Fritz Lang had a long and healthy Hollywood career, and Trump? Well, he’ll be a historical footnote in not too long, of a time when we had to find out the hard way the difference between killing and murder.
And if this were to have a closing theme song it for sure would be “Up Jumped the Devil”, by christian entertainer Nick Cave.
Who’s that dancing on the jailhouse roof?/Stamping on the ramping with a cloven hoof?/Who’s that dancing on the jailhouse roof?/Up jumped the Devil and said “Here is your man and I got the proof!”
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Thank you, dear sir, for spelling out for your readers just how sickeningly disgusting America has become under the Trump Regime. The murder of Renee Good is just a small part of the nausea-inducing daily firehose of shit that we're dealing with. I wish I could visit your new digs for a sanity-break, but I'm sure I wouldn't get past the gate, lol.
;)