Introduction: The following is based on the barrage of video evidence and news reporting of a recent (Renée Nicole Good occurred on January 7, 2026) event. I make no judgement of the officer involved in the shooting. He was ex-military (Indianna National Guard deployed to Iraq Nov 2004-Nov 2005) who had served in government/law enforcement almost twenty years. He was in a similar incident in June of 2025, where he was dragged by a car and injured. His actions, motivations, and training in de-escalation are unknown. I will wait until after the evidence can be weighed from all sides before judgement. The accompanying graphic includes statements being made by some on the right who have already reached their final conclusions. That this government has placed so many tactical military personnel in our civilian populations on the pretext of clearing our cities of violent immigrant criminals, is the underlying cause of this incident. It was bound to happen and will happen again.
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Doublethink; Don’t Believe Your Lyin’ Eyes
Winston Smith, the protagonist in George Orwell’s dystopian novel, 1984, worked in the Ministry of Truth rewriting history. The term doublethink was defined as the ability to hold two contradictory beliefs simultaneously and accept both as true. In Orwell’s novel, in his world of Oceana, doublethink involved knowing both the real truth and the Party lie and required subjugating the truth and promoting the lie. Party loyalty was its own reward.
Orwell wrote 1984 in 1948. It was published in 1949, and
Orwell died in January 1950. He wrote of a time he knew based on his
observations of the second world war brought on by totalitarian regimes. The
main difference between totalitarianism and authoritarianism is just a matter
of degree. As the name would suggest, totalitarianism wants total control of
all aspects of human life including culture, family, and personal beliefs.
Authoritarians will allow some latitude of autonomy in non-conflicting areas outside
politics.
Seventy-seven years after 1984 was written, we find
ourselves at the mercy of an authoritarian with some in his camp dreaming of
adding family and religion to the mandate. While there are many examples of our
new dystopia, the Trump Insurrection of 2021, stands as a prime example of the
doublethink mentality. We are asked to ignore the hours of video evidence and
testimony of the event as investigated and documented, and to believe the
contrarian opinion that it was a peaceful demonstration.
Fast forward five years and we have a second glaring
dystopian event with government explanations contradicting what we can clearly
see with our own eyes. We are told to ignore the video statement that recorded
the last words of Renee Good to the man who would shoot her to death,
"That's fine, dude, I'm not mad. I'm not mad at any of you". We are
told to ignore the video, actually shot by the ICE officer, who then put down
his personal cellphone to grab his sidearm to fire three shots into her car
killing her.
As is typical with any authoritarian regime, Donald Trump
then went on to push the new Big Lie. In a Truth Social post he stated, “The
woman screaming was, obviously, a professional agitator, and the woman driving
the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently,
willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her
in self-defense." He went on to say, “…it is hard to believe he (ICE
officer) is still alive, but is now recovering in a hospital.”
Trump said these things in reference to the Good shooting
after reportedly watching a video clip. His statement would have had some
credibility if only he had made it last June when this same officer was dragged
by a different car and severely injured. In that event he had shot a man in the
head, face and shoulder with his Taser through a broken rear window and then he
was dragged a distance before falling loose.
Kristi Noem said, “This was an act of domestic terrorism.”
She said this before she had conducted any investigation and without all the
facts. She certainly hadn’t seen all the video footage from the event as more
is surfacing now.
The ICE officer, Jonathan Ross, left the scene of this
active shooting event in an SUV with other officers before any investigation
was completed. He had just killed a civilian and left the scene. There were
“medics on the scene” according to a video statement made to a doctor who
offered his assistance and was turned down. If officer Ross was “seriously
injured,” was he seen by their medics? Was he treated at a hospital? What were
his injuries? From the video available at this writing, nothing shows him being
injured.
The wagons have circled. The spin doctors are spinning. The
doublethink begins.
Orwell was the unwitting harbinger to the era of the MAGA
Party and Donald Trump, its leader. His experience was with the era of the Nazi
Party and Adolph Hitler. He predicted a time when another leader would push the
Big Lie and promote doublethink.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and
ears. It was their final, most essential command. His heart sank as he thought
of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party
intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would
not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They
were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be
defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws
do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards
the earth’s centre. With the feeling that he was speaking to O’Brien, and also
that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to
say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.”—George
Orwell.
“Two plus two is whatever I say it is.”—Donald Trump
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