A lawyer friend who defends cops in use-of-force cases cautioned me not to draw conclusions about the Renee Good shooting from video evidence, no matter how decisive it looks. Officers and bystanders have to be interviewed, and all available evidence has to be sifted. Investigators assess the “totality of circumstances,” and so long as the agent had an “objectively reasonable” perception of serious injury or death, he will be judged innocent. Even the officer who shot Alex Pretti on Saturday may be legally justified, if he perceived Pretti as a threat to his life. The law protects policemen in dangerous situations, and rightly so. The law has the backs of cops, not criminals.
Minneapolis’s anti-ICE protesters, moreover, are stoking up the heat. Gov. Tim Walz and state officials urge them on. They deliberately impede ICE agents who are, in most cases, carrying out lawful operations. A week ago, protesters disrupted worship in a church marginally connected to ICE. On Saturday, the stoking seems to have been accidental. From what we can see in the videos, Pretti tried to shield a woman pushed to the ground by an ICE agent when he was grabbed, knocked over, pummeled, and shot. His instinct to protect was very human, noble even, but also foolish, especially since he was carrying a gun.
A judicious administration would have expressed sorrow for Good and Pretti’s deaths without budging on the question of law. A judicious administration would have tried to explain the deportation program in terms that the majority of Americans could accept. They would have tried to calm the waters, douse the flames, urge patience as the investigation unfolds.
This is not a judicious administration. Responding to Sen. Amy Klobuchar on X within hours of Saturday’s incident, Stephen Miller called Pretti a “domestic terrorist” who “tried to assassinate federal law enforcement.” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said Pretti showed up “to perpetuate violence.” Noem declared, “an individual approached U.S. Border Patrol officers with a 9mm semi-automatic handgun. The officers attempted to disarm this individual, but the armed suspect reacted violently. . . . This looks like a situation where an individual arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage and kill law enforcement.” Gregory Bovino said Pretti “wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.” Shills in conservative media instantly ran with the administration narrative, calling for a more severe crackdown against left-wing terrorists.
To put it mildly, this isn’t what everyone saw. Pretti was in the street filming until he saw the woman go down. When first accosted by agents, he held his phone in one hand and raised his other hand in surrender. There’s no evidence he reached for his gun, and an officer appears to have disarmed him before another agent shot and killed him. Administration officials accuse Democrats of “fanning the flames,” and they’re right. But a quick glance in the mirror would expose some flame-fanning from the other side. The hypocrisy is maddening: Officials warn about escalating rhetoric by escalating rhetoric. Their lies are Orwell-level.
My friend’s cautions ring in my ears: We shouldn’t draw conclusions so quickly. Wait for the review to work itself out. But shouldn’t the administration set the example by withholding judgment? Blame social media: It drives us crazy. Knowing this, why are our rulers so quick to hit “post”?
Forty-eight hours in, cooler heads seem to be prevailing. Without retracting his earlier comments, Bovino is now urging everyone to wait for the process to play itself out. Tom Homan, who seems as fair as he is forthright, is taking over the operation in Minnesota. President Trump hit the nail on the head with his appeal for cooperation between federal, state, and local authorities. Where such cooperation has prevailed, as in Memphis, ICE has conducted its work without major incidents.
When we take a step back, the political landscape is unsettling. Sympathy for political opponents has been cast aside—with a hearty “Good riddance!” from some conservatives and Christians. Conservative media has performed a minor miracle: Just when the mainstream media has been discredited and demoralized, conservative pundits shoot themselves in the head by amplifying the administration’s lies and distortions. After spending years decrying the mainstream media as state media, they’ve become state media.
Jean Baudrillard famously described postmodern society as “hyperreal.” Signs have traded places with reality. What’s real no longer determines how we simulate it; simulation comes first and determines what we think is real. Copies, images, narratives, sound-bite tweets are more real than reality. Even war has become a hyperreal media event, with video-game graphics of bombs blowing up boats in the Caribbean. Drawing from Jorge Luis Borges, Baudrillard observes, “The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. It is . . the map that precedes the territory . . . that engenders the territory.” Just as famously, Carl Schmitt argued that the friend-enemy distinction is the essence of politics, the basic reality to which all political actions and motives can be reduced. The enemy is “the other, the stranger,” and, whatever other relations we might have with him, the enemy remains so alien there’s always a “real possibility of physical killing.” Politics is always war-to-the-death by other means. It’s more than a little troubling to see this mentality take hold across the political spectrum.
We’re no longer governed by laws or prudential statesmen. We have government by tweet, a politics of spectacle and partisan narrative. Public officials of both parties have the means and every incentive to post hot takes that stir up the friend-base and rile the enemy. If Baudrillard and Schmitt had a baby, it would be the Trump administration. It will take a miracle to pluck us from the flames we’re stoking up for ourselves.
AP Photo/Adam Gray
