After getting through another heartbreaking day yesterday of watching videos, listening to speeches, learning about a woman who was murdered in the street by a reckless, trigger happy, poorly trained, perhaps mentally unstable ICE agent…and watching the city I call home turned into the epicenter of political violence and unrest once again, just a couple days after the Governor that got us through some real trying times announce he’d had enough. On this day after, this is my takeaway:
These are the optics they’re going for? Really?
They’re going to double down on victim-blaming no matter how many angles come out. They’ll ignore basic common sense that most have earned from watching a single YouTube reel of a traffic stop, or any episode of On Patrol Live, Live PD, or COPS. You don’t run and stand in front of a car at a traffic stop. Especially one you just saw moving. Ever.
So the murdererr who we’re now learning is named Jonathan Ross (I honestly thought we’d never learn his name) either was reckless enough to put himself there—which means he wasn’t just trigger-happy, he was catastrophically incompetent—or the training was so bad that it might as well not exist. Either way, that’s not “law and order.” That’s negligence with a badge. I had assumed this was one of those MAGAs who took ’em up on the ads I keep seeing for big signing bonuses to be an ICE agent…turns out he’s been doing this a while actually, which doesn’t make it any better.
But let’s zoom out. Forget the slow-motion breakdowns. Forget the training manuals. Forget the guy’s mental fitness for the job.
These are the optics the T***p administration wants?
This is the message? These are the “terrorists” they’re supposedly hunting? Citizens…Moms in their 30s? This is how they want armed agents behaving in public streets—charging up to cars, screaming “get out of the fucking car,” with zero effort at de-escalation? Behavior that even a rookie cop wouldn’t pull after a high-speed chase, let alone as a first move?
I’ve noticed a strategy by the right in the past decade or more to never apologize, never admit mistakes, no matter how many facts are against you…. but I just don’t think that’s smart here. No press discipline. No reassurance to the public. No acknowledgment that de-escalation matters. Just brute force, chaos, and then blaming the victim. Even on the same fucking day it happened. Not “we’ll wait for the investigation to play out…” Conclusions were drawn. Fingers were pointed. Same fucking day. While a family and a neighborhood and major city and half of a country freshly grieves, you’ve already got your fucking finger out.
And then they act shocked when public trust collapses even further. It’s ridiculous. It’s reckless. And it guarantees exactly what comes next: more fear, more escalation, and more violence.
But maybe that’s the point. Chaos is the brand. It’s always been the brand for these monsters. This is Donald T***p’s fault—full stop—and instead of dialing it back, he’s chosen to pour gasoline on it. I was furious about this yesterday. A friend I talk to in Europe told me he couldn’t believe Americans aren’t in the streets in far greater numbers. In most European countries, he said, people would have hit their breaking point long ago and forced the issue already. We’re just too big of a country. Too siloed. I just don’t see a way half the country snaps out of it. Maybe this is the new norm for a couple generations to come and that’s just heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking.
