If you stand for nothing, you’ll fall for anything

The official response in the U.S. to the shooting of Renee Nicole Good is exactly the one you expect from an authoritarian state. No pity. No remorse. No empathy. They slander and lie and smear.

People crawl out of the woodwork to parse the event, proving that she was a terrorist.

It’s monstrous.

It is the sign of a deeply sick society, a broken culture.

These people exhibit such a deep lack of empathy, and such a disinterest in ensuring that this never happens again.

They need—and kind of want—something like this to happen occasionally, because it keeps the sheep in line.

Many people have no problem with a world ruled by violence. They know that it will never touch them or anyone they love.

As long as their personal numbers go up, they don’t care. I’ve got mine, Jack.

This is a time of monsters, indeed. They are running the asylum.

In the mind of the man who shot her, she was an uppity, obstreperous “bitch”. She didn’t follow orders. That was very obviously her prime offense.

People will parse this event.

They will talk about how she reacted incorrectly, how she brought her murder on herself.

This, too, is standard.

People will reasonably talk about how she should have known better. That she is to follow all orders by anyone who asserts authority.

This, too, is standard.

Americans have rights. There are procedures. The police work for the citizens.

These are not police in any realistic sense of the word. These are masked, armed men in the street. They are domestic terrorists.

What so-called reasonable people are arguing is that Americans should get comfy with the fact that they live in Gaza now, that they have no rights and that they are to follow all orders from anyone with a gun.

If they don’t do what they’re told by anyone who happens to tell them, they run the risk of being murdered in broad daylight, right in their own neighborhood.

For the rest of us, the normalization is the worst part. It is a reminder of our powerlessness before violence.

Those who equivocate, those who look at the video evidence and try to thread the needle where it might have been a “good kill” are part of the machine. They are there to soothe ruffled feathers, to remind you that it will never be you, because you know how to behave, right?

They’re all a bunch of chickenshits, afraid to lose anything, afraid to lose audience, to lose money, to lose opportunity. They have no principles. They understand only self-preservation. They don’t stand for anything.