Let’s go ahead and get this out of the way right up front: The United States is currently being run by a criminal enterprise. That’s not hyperbole; it’s not opinion. It’s just stone cold fact. The Trump regime has broken laws, which, by definition, makes it criminal. The fact that it’s also immoral is my opinion. The fact that it’s criminal is not my opinion.
It has broken international laws and U.S. laws governing military invasions into other countries, as just happened in Venezuela. Its military attacks on alleged drug-trafficking boats in the Caribbean are considered illegal extrajudicial killings under international and U.S. law.
The regime’s immigration enforcement agencies have run afoul of laws governing due process, especially as they pertain to U.S. citizens who have been rounded up, abused, and arrested during one of the regime’s made-for-social media raids. Courts have pushed back against the illegal actions. But the regime ignores the courts.
A masked and heavily armed officer at one of those agencies – the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency – just shot and killed an unarmed U.S. citizen in Minnesota while ICE was out on one of its raids. It’s all on video, and it is very damning. You know it’s damning because the Trump regime is trying to block state officials from investigating it, which also skates on very thin legal ice.
Google the videos. Watch them. Judge for yourself.
These are criminal acts. Most Americans know it. The rest of the world knows it. The only ones defending the regime long ago gave up any pretenses to honesty, accountability, or rationale thought. They simply nod their heads in unison whenever the regime tells a lie.
For now, there’s only so much we can do about it. The criminal regime holds most of the power, because America, in all its infinite wisdom and arrogance, decided to elect the known and convicted felon over the woman of color, never imagining that America is just as susceptible to fascism and Nazism and authoritarianism and criminal regimes as any other country.
We thought we were above all that. We aren’t.
At some point, justice will prevail, because it always does. It might take a while. But it will happen. Voters will push back and put the opposition party back in charge. The legal system will deliver part of the justice. Angry citizens will deliver part. Karma and conscience will take care of the rest.
Some of the criminals — not all — will have to look justice in the eye and explain how they could possibly do what they did. Worse than that, they will have to look their kids and grandkids in the eye and explain the same thing.
Karma.
*****
The image accompanying this blog shows the final few seconds of the woman shot and killed by the ICE agent. Her name is Renee Nicole Good. She was a 37-year-old U.S. citizen, mother of three, Colorado native, and former Christian missionary who enjoyed singing and writing poetry.
She was sitting in her car during the ICE raid. She had just dropped her 6-year-old son off at school. ICE agents approached her. She and the agents engaged in some back-and-forth. At one point she said, “It’s fine dude, I’m not mad at you.”
A few moments later an ICE officer shot three bullets through her windshield and killed her. I won’t go into the lies being vomited out by the criminal regime in its desperate attempt to paint her as the bad guy and the ICE agent as the good guy – and cover its own ass, which is the most important thing to them. I wouldn’t waste a millisecond on their side of things.
Instead, I’ll ask you to look at the image of Renee Nicole Good during the final few moments of her life. Does she look like a criminal to you — one who is such a threat she should be gunned down by a federal agent?
Renee had just dropped her son off at school. Her son will never see her again.
There is nothing on earth that can justify that. Not now, not ever.
Vance Cariaga 