If there’s one thing our corporate media can agree on — and there are way too many — it’s that when America watches the videos of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer killing Renee Good, we see two different things.
That was the conclusion of new CBS Evening News anchor Tony Dokoupil, who falsely suggested a division over Wednesday’s shooting (see my deep dive below). But the notion of an even split among Americans could be seen in headlines and think pieces, too.
Except there aren’t two starkly opposed Americas. There’s one America starkly opposed to provincial Dipshitburg in a remote corner of South Moronlina.
Look at the Wall Street Journal’s own subheadline: Even supporters of Pres. Donald Trump see overreach.
Never mind that the videos empirically, literally show one set of actions and movements, not two. Even metaphorically, if you go looking for evidence of an equal divide in belief about the videos, it’s not there.
The Washington Post tried to two-sides this with two members of Congress1 and all they could muster was one congressman opposed to shooting a Mom in the face and another who’d like more information please.
In reality, everywhere you look, one side — the anti-Mom-face-shooting crowd — wildly outnumbers the pro-Mom-face-shooting crowd.
Here’s Golden State Warriors Coach Steve Kerr saying “It’s shameful that the government can come out and lie about what happened.” Good call, coach!
Here’s the Minnesota Timberwolves holding a moment of silence for Renee Good, a moment of silence the fans honored.
Here’s Bill Kristol shaming ICE apologists.
We’re actually not divided. Most of us can see what happened in the videos.
That’s why thousands of people turned out this weekend at more than a thousand events to protest ICE while only a margin-of-error number — maybe dozens — turned out to support ICE.
According to math, thousands ≠ dozens. In fact, by Trump’s own math, dozens are a 400,000% drop from thousands.
And there’s more than just two sides. Some of us see it clearly, splitting only over the legal terms we’re willing to apply to an obviously unjust act of violence. Some are simply taking a while to figure out what they believe or find the courage to believe what they believe.
It’s actually a tiny fraction of people out there saying, boy, good thing that hero cut down that domestic terrorist before she could reassure him a second time that she wasn’t mad at him. And some of them are likely lying for political reasons, trying to slow down the flood of people gradually concluding what most people already have about the shooting.
You may have noticed even Trump got quiet about America’s heroic victory over a 37-year-old SUV-wielding terrorist’s face.
Before he and four New York Times reporters watched one of the videos on Wednesday, Trump said, “She behaved horribly … She ran him over.”
After the video: “Well … I — the way I look at it … It’s a terrible scene … I think it’s horrible to watch. No, I hate to see it.”
That’s a really bad victory dance! In fact, it seems as though Trump agrees with us about his horrible-to-watch victory.
Trump also said after the video, “The one woman in the car before she got shot I heard was unbelievably bad, badly behaved.”
I heard.
The implication is that the video was oversold to him before he saw it. He’s been pretty quiet about it since.
Even some in his own party are questioning whether America is better off having killed Renee Good.
White House border czar Tom Homan said it was too soon, “unprofessional,” to assess the shooting. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK) criticized the FBI for shutting local law enforcement out of the investigation.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another occasional Trump rebels, questioned Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s instant, bellicose defense of the killing2. Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA), also not running for re-election, called the shooting “unfortunate,” a weird way to describe a heroic defense against an evil terrorist.
“This is highly problematic and not a good look and not something our government should be remotely engaged in,” one unnamed administration official told Politico. “I don’t know how we recover from this.”
How you recover?
One former Homeland Security agent who oversaw use-of-force investigations even agreed to point out to a non-Dokoupil CBS journalist some of the numerous things Ross shouldn’t have done (in a report that didn’t make Dokoupil’s newscast).
I dunno, but it sounds like these folks are seeing exactly the same video everyone else saw. That’s a good thing.
And that’s why it’s so important to reject the canard that the divide is equal; because that lie makes it harder for undecided to figure out where they stand. It’s a lot easier if they understand that most of America sees this quite clearly.
So don’t let anyone convince you we’re equally divided. Most of us are united.
Published with permission of The Fucking News
