Welcome to Dystopia (formerly the USA).
There is a trope in movies, TV, and literature that if you say "Wow, everything's going to be okay now," or "Well, at least things can't get any worse," it's a signal that things will not be okay, and they will, in fact, get worse.
I'm nobody's Pollyanna. I knew this second term for the Moldy Orange was going to be a nightmare. But every time I was sure we had hit absolute bottom, he found another manhole and somehow managed to squish both himself and us down into the sewage channel beneath.
2025 sucked. I can't even enumerate all the ways: There was DOGE, the innumerable Executive Orders, the smothering of the Epstein Files (which Peach Pennywise had promised to release, but somehow decided not to), the pressure put on news and entertainment networks to suppress certain voices (including that of Stephen Colbert - he's on until next May). They tried to do that to Jimmy Kimmel, and he was indeed cancelled...but thanks to a massive multi-national boycott against the Disney conglomerate, his show was restored in less than a week. Never underestimate the power of the pocketbook, folks - those fatcats do love money, and when ordinary people withhold theirs, it matters!
Then there was the Big Bullshit Bill, which cut funding for school lunches, Medicaid, WIC, SNAP, the ACA--if it helped ordinary people, it got cut. But the same bill turned around and gave that funding to corporations, wealthy individuals...and ICE. This agency is now so super-sized that the only reason it isn't called GLACIER is because nobody in this benighted administration is clever enough to think up a coherent matching acronym!
Which brings me to...
...the reason I am horrified, grieving, and enraged right now.
Minneapolis, MN is not the kind of place you would consider dangerous, But you can't say that to Orange Chucky, because he's convinced that the Somali immigrants who live there are all bad, violent people. (BTW, he really, really hates Ilhan Omar.) With Supreme Court backing (they ruled that ICE are allowed to profile based on race and language), Noem and Miller rolled into Minneapolis and began tossing their goons at everyone who looked or sounded "wrong."
Of course, the citizens are pushing back - some brilliant person invented a tactic called the "whistle brigade," where people blow whistles to signal the presence of ICE in the area, or of an active raid.
Which was what was happening on Wednesday of this week, when a recent transplant to Minneapolis - one Renee Good - had just dropped her 6-year-old son off at school, and apparently encountered an ICE raid. She backed up to allow their vehicles to pass; only one did. The others stayed where they were, and a couple of agents approached the car, a smaller version of an SUV. Renee's partner got out of the car and began filming and talking to the agent who was examining the car, checking the license plate, whatever. But when Renee's partner was getting back into the car, the agents began to demand that Renee herself get out - at one point, they shouted "Get out of the fucking car!" She didn't do it, because you don't have to do that unless you are being arrested or there is probable cause (also, ICE has no authority over citizens). They even tried to grab hold of the driver's-side door handle. So Renee executed a 3-point turn so she could leave. At which point, another agent came up, pulled a handgun, and shot Renee Good through the corner of the windshield. He claimed she was ramming the car at him and his partner, but the video evidence (there are several vids from different angles) shows he is lying - even later-released footage from his own phone doesn't corroborate his story!
The agent - Jonathan Ross - shot at Renee's car several more times, causing it to crash. A doctor who was at the protest tried to help her, but was blocked by ICE agents; they also refused to allow EMS to approach and help. By the time any help was allowed, Renee Good was dead.
This is the part that's really sickening...
Kristy and Co. got right to work flinging sewage propaganda by the bucketful. Good, they said, was a "paid agitator" who "weaponized her car," and therefore Ross had no choice but to shoot her in the face and kill her. When Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey demanded that they be allowed to investigate the crime, Noem said that they had no jurisdiction since it involved federal agents.
Noem's smear campaign was repeated ad nauseam by Fox, Newsmax, and other ass-kissers of the current President. Karoline Leavitt basically spewed the same sewage at a press conference about the tragedy. Orange Chucky himself embroidered on Noem's "weaponized car" story and said that Ross had been run over and taken to the hospital...a lie on par with the "eating the dogs, eating the cats" whopper from the Presidential debate! (And also debunked by Ross's own phone footage!)
How this is all going to end, I have no idea. All I know is that I am carrying a weight of horror and grief and rage, and I don't know how to use it in a constructive manner. A mother is dead, the federal government is smearing her reputation without cause, and the guy leading this shit show is cackling gleefully at the chaos.
But one thing I cannot do is drop the weight.
Because someday, when all this mess is cleared up, we are going to have our own Nuremberg trials. ICE and Noem and Miller and Orange Chucky (if he survives - he hasn't been looking so good lately) and Vance and Hegseth...all of them will be there, and all this footage which will never go away (thank you, Internet!) will be brought out. The witnesses will come forward and point at the accused: "They shot my mom." - "They dragged my husband out of our house." - "They fired me because I told the truth." It's all going to come out. And when the villains start protesting that they were "only following orders," that's going to have just as little impact as it did when the Nazis said it at the original Nuremberg.
Then - and only then - will I drop my weight.
Right on their heads.
A final note...
I wrote this in a hurry. As a result, there were a few minor errors and things I later realized needed clarification. Worst of all, I had consistently misspelled Renee Good's name throughout this post. These things have now been corrected. Thanks for your patience.
