The Revolution Will Not Be Televised

This time, things will not get better if you lose ten pounds. If you remember, that didn’t help last time, either, not for long. This time, what ails us cannot be fixed with less gluten, weight-training, the click of a button, a dinner out, a glass of wine, or a dry January. It won’t be fixed with calls to your representatives, though you should make them, anyway. This time, binge-watching The Walking Dead won’t do it, because this time we are the Walking Dead. This time we have to remember what it is to live before they take that option away.

A woman was killed this morning in Minneapolis, shot in the head by our government, in the form of a pasty white ICE agent — a “tough guy” with dead blue eyes visible above the mask he pulled up after he murdered her. I saw the videos from every angle, I made myself watch because I did not want to be fooled. It’s easy to be fooled these days if you want to be. I guess people really can see what they want to see, based on comments already swirling under the videos I made myself watch. I watched them in slow-motion. I am not confused about what I saw.

Her name was Renee Nicole Good and she was thirty-seven years old. She was the mom of three children who will now have to grow up without her — a fifteen-year-old daughter, and two sons, twelve and six years old. She was a prize-winning poet and a hobby guitarist. She was married. Her wife watched her bleed out and die while these ICE agents refused to allow a resident on the block, a physician, to check on her.

Kristi Noem got on television and said ICE agents at the scene were snowed in and surrounded by angry rioters and Renee was one of these rioters, ramming them with her vehicle, and the ICE agents were afraid for their lives and so this brave agent shot her in an act of bravery and great braveness. Kristi Noem is a despicable liar and the videos from every angle will prove that, but lots of people will not care.

It was 42 degrees and sunny in Minneapolis today and there wasn’t anyone snowed in, but none of those details will matter either, just like the people who support this administration look at Kristi with her hair extensions and bullshit and don’t care she shot her puppy in the head instead of surrendering him to a person who might have patience or empathy or a heart.

She said what happened today was an act of domestic terrorism, which was the only honest and correct thing she said, even though she didn’t mean to be honest. People like that are only ever honest by accident. It was an act of domestic terrorism carried out by the ICE agent. You may not want to see the videos, or maybe you already did. Of the many I watched, this is the one that erased any doubt.

The people on the street where this happened were residents not rioters. It’s very easy to tell the difference between the two, and we’ll get to that in a moment. They were neighbors who heard a commotion and came running to see what was happening, like any of us would. They wondered what fresh hell was being visited upon them by their own government and a petty president who hates their governor and hates immigrants, particularly if they’re Somali, and all Democrats — people he calls radical left scum. We pay taxes, too, though.

We’re getting used to things we should never get used to. By the way, Renee’s youngest son lost his dad in 2023, so now he is left without either biological parent because some tough guy didn’t like that a woman wasn’t following his buddy’s orders. And let’s be clear — she is a United States citizen, she was not blocking traffic, she was not using her vehicle as a weapon, she was not ramming anyone, she had her window rolled down, she waved the ICE vehicle to go ahead of her.

If I had been Renee, I think I might have done the same thing. I think I would have been terrified to see those masked, armed goons coming at me, telling me to “Get the fuck out of the car!” even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, even though I’d been waving them by me, even though as a citizen I am allowed to watch an ICE raid happening in a public space, I can even film it — assuming we still have 1st Amendment rights here. We’ve all seen what these men do to women, it isn’t pretty. I might have thought, Surely he won’t shoot me if I just leave? Maybe that would have been my very last thought.

I don’t know if she just happened to be on the wrong block at the wrong time. What I do know is that she tried to back up, she turned her wheels away from the thug who drew his gun, and he shot her in the head. If you look at the pictures of the windshield, you’ll see he shot the first bullet as her car was already turning away from him. He shot her again through the drivers’ side window, which she had rolled down when she waved the ICE vehicle by — twice. There was an ICE vehicle in front of her. They could have gotten in the car behind her and blocked her in, it wouldn’t have been hard. He decided to kill her. The rage I feel is incandescent.

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Yesterday marked five years since this same president incited an insurrection. He is an insurrectionist which should have disqualified him from running for POTUS again. It should have disqualified anyone who enabled him at the time from continuing to hold public office, because if you enable an insurrection, you have violated your oath to uphold the Constitution, that’s how it fucking works. This is actually very easy.

Every person who went to the Capitol that day, every person who attacked Capitol police, breached their barriers, beat them with poles until they bled, assaulted them with bear spray, every person who chanted “hang Mike Pence”, showed up with a noose, broke windows, threw fireworks and other incendiary devices, pushed through doors and ran through the halls hunting for Nancy Pelosi, every person who went to the Senate floor, defecated there, rubbed their feces on the walls (because that’s a normal thing to do), every person who broke into Senate offices and sat in desk chairs that weren’t theirs and terrorized senators and congresspeople and all of us watching at home — that’s what violent rioters look like. They aren’t hard to spot, and unless you live on a very strange block, you won’t confuse them with your neighbors.

No one is confused.

These people in charge know what happened, all of them. They were there and they saw it, too. The president knew he lost the election in 2020, he just didn’t care. He wanted to stay in Office, anyway. He’s a sore loser and a cheat, and he thinks if he says a lie enough, people will believe it, or they’ll choose to believe it, and that’s good enough for him. That’s what malignant narcissists do — they demand that you accept their version of reality, even if you saw something completely different with your own eyes and heard something different with your own ears.

They could punch you directly in the face with their own fist so you taste your own blood in your own mouth and then stand there and tell you it’s rainbow skittles you’re tasting, not blood, and you didn’t get punched, that was a breeze going by, and if you object, if you refuse to say the blood pooling in your mouth is skittles, sir, of course it is, you’re out. You’re now a member of the radical left scum brigade, you’re not even human anymore and your tax dollars will be used any way they see fit.

I saw comments under posts about the military operation in Venezuela — Operation Your Oil is Ours, or We’re with Russia Now, or whatever they’re calling it — and when anyone (me, for example) said hey, this is a dreadful thing that’s happened, I got a lot of “Obviously, you don’t know any Venezuelans, they’re all happy!” These are the people who cut history class in high school and went and smoked in the park if you grew up in NYC like I did, or they smoked behind the bleachers if you grew up in the suburbs, but never have I wished more of them stayed in class and paid attention.

Stephen Miller was talking to screeching at Jake Tapper who is maybe thinking about other book ideas right now ffs, and he said we have a right to Greenland because it’s in our hemisphere and we’re a superpower, dammit, so we’re going after it, too, and no one is going to fight us militarily for Greenland. And people in those comments were like, why is this ghoul talking about our “hemisphere”?

Just in case you are also wondering, he’s referencing the Monroe Doctrine and the Roosevelt Corollary. Monroe as in President James Monroe. This was a foreign policy doctrine he presented in his State of the Union Address to Congress in 1823 (though it wasn’t named after him until 1850).

The idea at the time was that the Spanish colonies had achieved independence and should be free from further attempts at European colonialism, that they were now in our hemisphere, or sphere of influence. In exchange, America would stay out of wars, European interests and internal affairs in “the Old World hemisphere.” Then Teddy Roosevelt came along and added the Roosevelt Corollary, which took it further and said America has a right to police what happens in Latin American countries and the Caribbean because they are in our backyard. His old, “Speak softly and carry a big stick” idea which uh…hasn’t always gone particularly well for Latin America and the Caribbean.

And now apparently we are getting a Donroe Doctrine which is the stupidest name possible (fitting) and states, basically, we have the biggest military and we will take what we want — who cares about NATO or consent? Not these guys! So watch out, Greenland, Colombia, Mexico, Cuba and Canada. Which is why this isn’t just about Maduro and Venezuela and whether Venezuelans are happy, though I hope they are. Not sure they will continue to be, or that this plan has legs, because it seems a lot of oil executives are saying it will take years to rebuild Venezuela’s oil infrastructure, and a lot of money! Huh. Seems like it would have been good to have that conversation first, doesn’t it?

And now our president is saying taxpayers can foot the bill. I think most of us would rather have healthcare. I think most of us would rather make sure children in our country are not going hungry at school. I think most of us would not like a protracted military operation. I think some of us are old enough to remember that we’ve seen this film before and we didn’t like the ending.

It’s all exhausting. It’s violent and crazy and not okay. Greenland should not be worrying about whether we’re going to invade, they are an ally and part of NATO. Canada should not be worrying about whether we’re going to turn on them, because they have always been wonderful neighbors to us. Always.

Where is the president who wasn’t going to get us into foreign wars? Mr. America First? He’s Mr. Me First but his followers are eating the skittles and no matter the evidence to the contrary they think he’s their Daddy. They think he cares. They think he’s tough. I guess they like these ideas of violating international law and taking what we want from wherever we want it. That doesn’t make us tough, that makes us despicable and violent. But this is a man who’s always taken what he wants, he doesn’t care about consent. I guess if that’s who you vote for, it’s no surprise this is what you like.

I don’t know what we do because it’s escalating. I’ve seen all kinds of ideas floated. Jim Acosta wondered if it’s all distraction from a man getting desperate because he’s sunk us on the economy with his stupid tariffs and he’s screwed Americans out of healthcare and we still haven’t had the Epstein files released, but now no one is talking about that because how can they? Who can keep up?

I’ve heard it floated that this is all Russia and Fiona Hill said as much in 2019:

Russian officials indicated in 2019 that the Kremlin would be willing to back off from its support for Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela in exchange for a free hand in Ukraine, according to Fiona Hill, an adviser to President Donald Trump at the time.

The Russians repeatedly floated the idea of a “very strange swap arrangement between Venezuela and Ukraine,” Hill said during a congressional hearing in 2019. Her comments surfaced again this week and were shared on social media after the U.S. stealth operation to capture Maduro.

The thing is, I don’t care anymore. What I know is that deals are being made that have nothing to do with what is good for Americans or people in any of these other countries. Deals are being made that are good for this president and his family and his billionaire friends, and that’s it. And for whatever reason, this awful man, this soulless, skinbag full of hate and hot air, casual cruelty and insecure bravado, ugly racism, blatant bigotry, unbridled misogyny — for some reason half the country just loves the guy. They love him even though he pals around with pedophiles and would step on any one of them if it benefitted him in any way. They defend him like you’d defend a family member. It’s wild and deeply sad and I don’t know what we’re going to do about it, but what we’re currently doing is not working.

I’m so angry we gave Merrick Garland so much time and faith. I can still hear people saying, when he puts a case together it’s airtight, we just have to be patient. Well, we were patient. We waited and waited and had our investigations even though it was all televised, we waited as they subpoenaed people who just didn’t show up, we waited and they waited and we waited some more, and the guy ran again and here we are.

I’m sick of this clown show. I’m tired of these dirty, dirty liars and cheats. I’m exhausted by the hypocrisy and gaslighting, I’m heartbroken over the suffering and trauma. Meanwhile our Constitution is in tatters and half of America is lalalalala. We need to stop this. In a normal world, Republicans would stop it, but this isn’t a normal world anymore.

Today the government murdered a woman. A little boy’s mother. Someone’s daughter. Her wife was there screaming and she will never be able to get those images out of her head. A man pulled the trigger and we all saw it happen, those of us who have watched the videos. He got angry because she was not complying. She was not doing as she was told. But how have we allowed this to happen in our country? How have we accepted that unidentified masked and armed men can approach us in our vehicles and tell us to get the fuck out of our cars? They are not police officers, they did not identify themselves, anyone can buy an ICE uniform off the internet, their cars are unmarked. How is this America?

Her name was Renee Nicole Good. Here is one of her poems, at the bottom is a link where you can donate to her wife and youngest son if you are in a position to do so. May her memory be a blessing.

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”

George Orwell, 1984

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