My fascination with this ICE killing in Minnesota is, again, that it’s a perfect example of the paradox of MAGA, if not of conservatives in general. They claim to be Christians, and to revere the Constitution and the US Founders, yet behave in ways that utterly contradict those philosophies. Rather, they act like xenophobic tribalists to whom everyone else on the planet is evil or subhuman. I conclude that the Bible and the Constitution are to them merely totems that mark tribal solidarity; they don’t actually understand, or follow, what they say.
Sampling today’s posts.
Slate, Molly Olmstead, 9 Jan 2026: They Didn’t Even Need a Deepfake, subtitled “A.I. was going to be what broke our shared reality. It turns out, it wasn’t needed.”
Cf. the Jessie Bering quote yesterday. Covered here: partisan loyalties. The rewrite of January 6th.
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There was another video of the event released today.
Slate, Christina Cauterucci, 9 Jan 2026: In the Horrifying New Video Filmed by Renee Good’s Killer, Her Real “Crime” Is Clear, subtitled “New footage of her killing at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement isn’t exculpatory—but it sure serves a purpose for MAGA.”
She was cheerful, before she drove away, despite the order to “get out of the fucking car.”
There is no rule of proportionality in the MAGA universe: Any left-leaning protest activity or civil disobedience is grounds for assassination.
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The Atlantic, Adam Serwer, 8 Jan 2026: First the Shooting. Then the Lies. subtitled “The Trump administration has perfected the smear campaign.”
There’s a lot we don’t know about the shooting of Renee Nicole Good, who was killed yesterday by federal immigration agents deployed to Minnesota. But in the chaotic aftermath of the shooting, one thing became immediately clear: The Trump administration was lying about what happened.
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Media Matters, 8 Jan 2026: A look at how Fox used its coverage of the Minneapolis ICE shooting to push the administration’s propaganda
With a timeline about how Fox News kept changing their story as evidence came in. They jumped to conclusions, obviously.
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Boing Boing, Jason Weisberger, 8 Jan 2026: “We executed one of you”: MAGA cheers ICE killing of a mother of three
The simplistic, savage, MAGA mindset.
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Slate, Molly Olmstead, 7 Jan 2026: Trump Isn’t Just Defending ICE for Killing a Woman. He’s Taking It a Chilling Step Further., subtitled “The president is blaming his political rivals—and possibly opening the door to more repression.”
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One somewhat longer piece.
Slate, Christina Cauterucci, 9 Jan 2026: ICE’s Killing of Renee Good Is Part of a Bigger Project, subtitled “The right is waging, and winning, a war on empathy. The country is poorer, and more dangerous, for it.”
Among their base, today’s GOP is trying to drum out any natural impulses toward compassion, such that there is no imperative to feel—let alone express—any dismay at the killing of an ideological adversary. If Good wasn’t on Trump’s side, the party line goes, she got what was coming to her. The rush to defend Ross is more than a political move to justify Trump’s personal militia run amok. It’s another round in the right wing’s mounting war on empathy.
For the past few years, influential Christian conservatives have been loudly proclaiming that empathy is toxic, a sin, and a tool of the devil. In their view, progressives use the human inclination sas already caused the deaths of 500,000 children worldwide. The innate desire among well-adjusted people to wish their neighbors happy, healthy lives is a political liability for the party of Medicaid cuts, SNAP freezes, ICE raids, refugee bans, and forced childbirth. Elon Musk has called empathy “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.”
Is that what Jesus said?
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Last item on this subject for now.
NY Times, guest essay by Jacob Frey, 8 Jan 2026: I’m the Mayor of Minneapolis. Trump Is Lying to You.
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My eternal question is, why don’t the MAGA folk realize that Trump is lying to them all the time? Because they’re paranoid and think the mainstream media is out to get them? Or simply because they’re dumb?
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Let’s try to get this bad MAGA taste away. And find a couple positive stories.
First, getting back to the ancient argument about whether people are basically good or basically bad — Christianity assumes the latter, unless they’re “saved” — and despite the presumption in Hollywood films and TV then when society fails, everyone will turn savage (because that’s more dramatic) — real-world evidence suggests the former. (Again, I’ve read that book by Rutger Bregman, HUMANKIND, that I haven’t written up here yet.) Obviously attitudes are situational. But, despite the conservatives who assume the worst in other people, civilization has in fact advanced through cooperation among larger and larger groups. That’s why we have a de fact world culture.
Vox, Bryan Walsh, 27 Dec 2025: The 2025 stories that prove people still run toward danger, subtitled “Five strangers who risked everything to save someone else.”
Sure these are anecdotes.
The daily news cycle, with its bias toward negativity, seems to have its own implicit question: How bad can people be? It’s an easy story to tell, because outrage quickly spreads across the social media landscape. But, if you pay attention — really pay attention — another story keeps surfacing, stubbornly, in the margins: the stories of people who run toward danger. They don’t workshop it. They don’t calculate odds. They don’t ask if they’re the “right person” to do something. They just move, on instinct, because someone else’s life is suddenly in front of them.
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And despite the conservative that everything worth knowing was known centuries ago and captured in the Bible, human culture does, in fact, keep discovering new things, and making society and life better every year.
The Atlantic, Science Desk, 27 Dec 2025: 55 Facts That Blew Our Minds in 2025
A list, with links. “In a year defined by slop, we hope these nuggets of reality inspire some genuine awe.”
Items about how women’s hands are more sensitive to warmth than men’s, sterile flies, a new color called “olo”, how potatoes are descended from an ancient tomato plant, how AI is 92% of American’s GDP growth, how insects make up more than half of all animals species yet most of them have never been documented, how tennis players live longer than swimmers, cyclists, and joggers.. and much more.
