But Someone's Mad
Jan. 12th, 2026 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
setsuledLike most Americans, I assume, I'm still thinking about the shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Since I wrote about it last week, new footage of the incident has emerged, most significantly footage taken by the ICE agent himself, whose name is Jonathon Ross. One frustrating thing, trying to find a clip to embed here, is that most of the clips of it include narration of someone "explaining" what you're seeing, and that narration chooses to omit or include things depending on the speaker's political perspective. Here's a right wing version and here's a left wing version.
NBC News Chicago has an unedited version:
But, of course, it's immediately followed by a reporter explaining what you saw.
From my own perspective, I think it's deeply bizarre that anyone on the right thinks this exonerates the ICE officer. Good's last words being "I'm not mad at you," hardly sound like harassment, however you look at it. What it does sound like to me is Good and her wife speaking to the ICE agents as if they were naughty children which, to be fair, is a perspective I certainly agree with. They do act like children, just children with deadly weapons. I suspect Ross may even truly believe they were harassing him by not speaking to him as though he were their superior. In other words, they were being "uppity".
And the right is using this as though it's exoneration. A glance at the headlines on Breitbart shows this to be so, one yesterday saying the footage "destroys" the left's position.
But turning to more moderate, less tacky right wing sites, I was fascinated by the articles ruminating on the ultimate unknowability of truth, like this editorial at The Free Press; "The videos leave room for reasonable debate about the nature of the incident and who was at fault." I really don't think it does. And I'm not partisan. I've called bullshit on left wing claims before, like when that white kid was vilified for just standing and smiling at a Native American talking to him in Washington D.C. a few years ago. I said it was disgusting then when the Washington Post published a photo of the kid's face labelling it "The New Face of Evil" and I say it's even more disgusting how the right now is trying to distort what is very clearly happening in this footage from Minneapolis.
There's an article on UnHerd I thought was really interesting, "ICE Theatrics are Getting Real". The author, Malcom Kyeyune, likens the public discourse between right and left as something like professional wrestling in the U.S. In other words, a kind of improvised theatre. I think there's a lot of truth in that. He makes a good point about how ICE has changed tactics from wearing plainclothes and operating quietly to effecting a highly visible, military mode. As I said last week, ICE is clearly employing, or attempting to employ, psychological tactics to inspire terror and/or respect. Perhaps the rhetoric on the left is consciously designed to undermine that. I would advise the left not to try so hard. Once you start lying, even in support of the truth, you start to gut your own position in the eyes of people you haven't swayed yet.
X Sonnet 1974
The image shows assured what dreams are for.
The picture plainly scuttles ships of bliss.
The overriding cloud has ploughed the core.
The purple haze produced a lover's kiss.
No questions could invade the empty room.
Acoustics could forbid the telling clock.
We dance about the hall of silver doom.
We bicker long about the puppet's sock.
Assembled players weave a coat of points.
The joust begins with reeds of brittle straw.
It ends with ruined knights with broken joints.
When all are gone, the ghost declares a draw.
But after us, will yet the fires burn?
Our stupid might compels the Earth to learn.
NBC News Chicago has an unedited version:
But, of course, it's immediately followed by a reporter explaining what you saw.
From my own perspective, I think it's deeply bizarre that anyone on the right thinks this exonerates the ICE officer. Good's last words being "I'm not mad at you," hardly sound like harassment, however you look at it. What it does sound like to me is Good and her wife speaking to the ICE agents as if they were naughty children which, to be fair, is a perspective I certainly agree with. They do act like children, just children with deadly weapons. I suspect Ross may even truly believe they were harassing him by not speaking to him as though he were their superior. In other words, they were being "uppity".
And the right is using this as though it's exoneration. A glance at the headlines on Breitbart shows this to be so, one yesterday saying the footage "destroys" the left's position.
But turning to more moderate, less tacky right wing sites, I was fascinated by the articles ruminating on the ultimate unknowability of truth, like this editorial at The Free Press; "The videos leave room for reasonable debate about the nature of the incident and who was at fault." I really don't think it does. And I'm not partisan. I've called bullshit on left wing claims before, like when that white kid was vilified for just standing and smiling at a Native American talking to him in Washington D.C. a few years ago. I said it was disgusting then when the Washington Post published a photo of the kid's face labelling it "The New Face of Evil" and I say it's even more disgusting how the right now is trying to distort what is very clearly happening in this footage from Minneapolis.
There's an article on UnHerd I thought was really interesting, "ICE Theatrics are Getting Real". The author, Malcom Kyeyune, likens the public discourse between right and left as something like professional wrestling in the U.S. In other words, a kind of improvised theatre. I think there's a lot of truth in that. He makes a good point about how ICE has changed tactics from wearing plainclothes and operating quietly to effecting a highly visible, military mode. As I said last week, ICE is clearly employing, or attempting to employ, psychological tactics to inspire terror and/or respect. Perhaps the rhetoric on the left is consciously designed to undermine that. I would advise the left not to try so hard. Once you start lying, even in support of the truth, you start to gut your own position in the eyes of people you haven't swayed yet.
X Sonnet 1974
The image shows assured what dreams are for.
The picture plainly scuttles ships of bliss.
The overriding cloud has ploughed the core.
The purple haze produced a lover's kiss.
No questions could invade the empty room.
Acoustics could forbid the telling clock.
We dance about the hall of silver doom.
We bicker long about the puppet's sock.
Assembled players weave a coat of points.
The joust begins with reeds of brittle straw.
It ends with ruined knights with broken joints.
When all are gone, the ghost declares a draw.
But after us, will yet the fires burn?
Our stupid might compels the Earth to learn.
