This past week gave us a tragedy which shows how divided, by way of the country's reaction to it, the United States really is. Oddly, it gives me a little hope that we're now at the point where we're going to start the process of overcoming it as well.
I'm writing, of course, about ICE agent Jonathan Ross's killing of immigration protester Renee Nicole Good.
Body cam footage of Renee Nicole Good seconds before she was shot by ICE Officer Jonathan Ross, a ten year veteran of ICE. Prior to ICE, he served with the U.S. Border Patrol from 2007 until 2015, and before that he served in Iraq in the Indiana National Guard. Contrary, therefore, to my suspicions, he wasn't a new or green officer.
Or, at least, I'm writing about it, somewhat. What I'm more particularly writing about is the reaction to the killing and the instant polarization surrounding it.
Let's start with the killing itself and what we actually know if it.
Good was killed by Ross on January 7, 2026, a few days ago. ICE was operating in Minneapolis, Minnesota, a quite liberal Minnesota city in which ICE was undoubtedly wholly unwelcome. Donald Trump has used ice in various municipalities, but he's sent it into liberal bastions as what may be regarded as a sort of taunt. ICE, moreover, has acted like a pack of Brownshirts everywhere it's gone. Not only as militarized police, but as Sturmabteilung, stormtroopers really, for Trump.
Good was there as a protestor, and she was blocking their way with her car. To the extent we know much about her, she was a classic Minneapolis lefty. Apparently originally from Colorado, she was graduate from Old Dominion with an English degree, she was a poet. She had a daughter who was 15 years of age and sons who were 12 and 6. While not alway so identified, she presently identified as a lesbian and was "married" to another woman.
On January 7, what was known to Ross was none of this at all, other than that she was blocking the road. Another ICE officer went to confront her in the typical heavy handed ICE fashion, a fashion that no trained municipal force, and I've worked a lot with municipal police forces, would have used. A trained municipal force would have, rather, simply walked up and said, "ma'am would you move your car?" Based on her last words, she would have.
This always leads to the loss of innocent life sooner or later. Good had no legal right to block ICE, but what she was doing is a time honored, and mild, form of protest.
Good appears to have turned her car wheel to the right, in compliance with ICE's wishes, but not in compliance with being drug out of her car, which an ICE agent was stupidly, but typically, trying to do. I wouldn't have done that either, and frankly I have actually been in a vehicle, by accident, at the wheel, in the midst of a huge urban protest. I wouldn't have gotten out my truck in that for anyone, including the police.1 Ross, inexplicably, got in front of her car. He drew his sidearm, and as she moved forward, armed as he was with a 9mm, a fine police weapon, he shot her three times, exhibiting the training that's carried over from the Armed Forces where the anemic 9mm is a known complete dud, necessitating multiple shots to kill.2 As a police weapons, supplaning the old .38 revolver round, which doesn't kill either, it was perfectly adequate.
Shot three times, she died, probably instantly.
There's a lot to break down here. 3
Which might give us a slight bit of hope.
For most Americans today Kent State doesn't mean anything at all, or if it does, that's because they're a student of history. For some of us yet, however, Kent State is both a prescient moment in history, and a personal memory.
I was only seven years old or so when Kent State happened. I feel like I can remember it, but that may be a false memory. In 1970 we had a television and my father and mother watched the news every night. The television, which we had only had for two years, was by that time located in the kitchen, moved from the living room in our 1958 vintage house which was not designed to house a TV. It seems to me that I can recall this event from them, but I might not be able to. Having said that, I can remember seeing some of the rioting of the 1960s on television, and seeing Jimi Hendrix on the news on the last morning of Woodstock, so my memory goes back to my early years.
Kent State was a pivotal moment in the Vietnam War and in the ushering in of the liberal 1970s.
Much like some are now about the end of "forever wars" when the regime that promised the end to them kills Venezuelans for some reason, and then entertains oil executives in the White House shortly thereafter, while also acting as Putin's agent, for one reason or another, in making claims against a NATO Ally.
1968 saw the American public abandon support for the war in Vietnam, but not for the American soldier. A new Republican President came in promising to end the war with a secret plan. Richard Nixon was going to make things better in some vague, undescribed, way.
The war hung on and 1970 arrived. By that point college campuses were solidly opposed to the war. The working class, in contrast, remained behind it, sort of, with it supplying the troops. University students who didn't want to serve in Vietnam found ways towards deferrements, with people like Dick Cheney, and Donald Trump, finding ways not to serve. Working class people, on the other hand, largely served, and in many instances joined the National Guard and ARmy Reserve, something that rich people like Donald Trump would not condescend to do.
This was the situation in Kent, Ohio, in 1970. Often missed in the analysis of the terrible events that happened there, the students at the university were neither serving in Vietnam, or serving in the National Guard. Those in the Ohio National Guard were from the town. Blue collar men who didn't go to college, and because they were in the Guard, were not in Vietnam. They were likely in the Guard as they didn't want to go to Vietnam, although that wouldn't univerally work for everyone who joined the Guard, contrary to what's commonly imagined.4
The Cold War National Guard was trained for the Cold War, not riot patrol, and in 1970 it would have had a lot of older soldiers in it who had served in World War Two and Korea. Even when I joined the Guard a little over decade later we still had one soldier who had served in World War Two, and a lot who had served in Korea. Soldiers do not make very good policemen as they aren't trained to be police and are trained to react to a threat with aggression.
Perhaps for that reason, it's always surprised anyone familiar with this role of the Guard that the Guardsmen at Kent State had been issued ammunition That alone would have predisposed them to believing that they were going to need it. What occurred such that they used it has never been clear, and there are of course conspiracy theories associated with it. What's clear is that rocks were thrown and shooting started. Allison Krause, age 19, an honors college student and anti-war activist, Jeffrey Miller, age 20, a psychology student who was participating in the protest, Sandra Scheuer, age 20, a speech and hearing therapy student who was walking to class, and William Schroeder, 19, a psychology student and ROTC member, also walking to class, were all killed by National Guard bullets.
It's the reaction to the event that causes our long winded recollection of it here.
In 1970 Americans were still divided over the Vietnam War, but the mass of American people had pulled away from strongly supporting it. The 1968 Tet Offensive had been an American tactical victory and a NVA disaster, but the public was so shocked it no longer supported the war or trusted the Government. In the 1968 Election the Democrats paid the price and Republican Richard Nixon, with a "secret" plan to end the war came into power.
If Nixon ever had a "secret" plan to end the war, we don't know what it was, but it quickly became pretty unmanageable for him. His basic strategy seems to have been to turn the war over to the South Vietnamese, and let them fail, which he ultimately did, but in trying to get breathing room to do that he ended up having to occasionally expand the war or the war's violence. The Kent State protests were over the invasion of Cambodia, which had just occurred.
Young college bound people had turned against the war. Middle Americans, however, were hoping in Nixon to find a way out. Kent State turned a lot of those people against the war as well. Americans moved to the left. By 1972 and 1973 they'd moved substantially to the left. The collapse of the Nixon Administration with Watergate brought a wholescale distrust of the Republican Party that had come in to power as it was perceived that the Democrats had no solution to the war.
Sort of like Donald Trump and the GOP coming in as it was perceived that Biden was senile and Harris a bad candidate, and they were all responsible for COVID era inflation. . .
The shift was massive. Large elements of the American population went from weakly opposing the war to strongly opposing it, and strongly backing an increasingly left wing Democratic Party. The military, both active and reserve, was held in open disdain. Law enforcement also was. The active duty military would not recover its reputation for well over a decade and the Guard for two decades. Contempt for policemen remained widespread into the 1980s.
On the other side, however, right wing Americans backed cracking down on protestors and what happened at Kent State, regarding the use of arms as justified. I can remember this still being discussed in the 1980s. The right's hard drift in this directly helped shit it out of politics for the rest of the 1970s. The pre 1973 Republican Party never fully recovered and in order to come back into power in 1980 the Republican Party had to seduce Southern Democrats who were hardcore right wing populists, thinking that they could control them. The entire event went a long ways towards giving us the modern Democratic and Republican Parties.
We are starting to see history rhyming right now.
Donald Trump was elected in no small part because most Americans eligible to vote, don't. He's massively unpopular with large elements of the American public. While his supporters do not like to acknowledge it, and some cannot believe it, the majority of Americans do not like or support him. Trump himself, who is not a smart man, and whose been coddled by wealth his entire life, can't grasp why he isn't loved.
But there is no doubt that the Democrats helped bring his rise about due to ignoring many issues that we've referenced here for years. Immigration is certainly one of them. In reality, even though nobody wants to portray it this way except for those on the Republican hard right, most Americans have had enough of largescale immigration. Frankly, most Americans would like to see the country have a smaller population than it does. It's not just illegal immigrant that upsets people, it's immigration.
People wanted something done about that, but they did not want the Sturmabteilung in their cities, just as people wanted an end to the Vietnam War, but didn't want to bomb Hanoi and invade Cambodia to get there, and they didn't want National Guardsmen killing college kids on campus. In short order, they'd make it pretty clear that they didn't want a President who covered up a paranoid breakin, although they did return him to office in 1972.
We're seeing the same thing now.
People don't want militarized police at all, and they don't want masked policemen patrolling their cities dragging people out of cars. They don't want men who have been trained as part of ICE special units shooting women in the street. No amount of excuses as to why this occurred are going to matter at all. Middle American started shifting this past week, which it already was doing.
The right in turn is making the classic mistake on doubling down on the shooting, trying to justify it. The officer had PTSD, we are told in which case he shouldn't have been there and in which case it means, implicitly, if he had fully had his faculties he wouldn't have shot. The shooting was justified as it wouldn't have occurred if she wasn't there protesting, which is true but is true about every government act of violence wherever it occurs, from Tehran to Kent State. The film shows he was justified, just as, we were told at the time, the film at Kent State, which is in fact much more dramatic, shows that the Guard shooting was justified. No, it shows the opposite.
And finally, and not too surprisingly in our current era, there's the character attacks, which nobody who has participated in this discussion here has engaged in. Renee Nicole Good was a lesbian flake. She was woke. Well, she was a lesbian and she may have been a flake, but that doesn't mean, as is implied by those statements, that it was okay to kill her.
Nixon's managed to get elected, and handily, in 1972. Part of the reason for that is that the Democrats, as they tend to do, just flat out botched the election. They botched the election of 1968, and they did it again in 1972, although their 1972 candidate was better than 1968. Had they run from the center, Nixon may well have lost. It was all unraveling already however, and by 1973 he'd bring himself down in scandal.
Before he finally resigned, those around him were extremely concerned by his mental state. He was drinking heavily and impairing himself accordingly. Trump's becoming impaired quite rapidly by dementia.
Trump is unraveling, politically as well as mentally, right now. Americans are already upset by his continual weirdness, and a man elected on the promise of no more wars seems really eager to start them, while openly admiring some of the worst foreign powers that exist. Sending Guardsmen into the streets, as he has done, has been no more popular in 2026 than it was in 1970, and the same thing is beginning to occur. A National Guard that worked hard to avoid the errors of the 1960s and recover its reputation is finding it besmirched, and ironically by one of the very people who didn't serve in the 1960s. ICE and the Border Patrol, which most Americans had no opinion on before 2025, are regarded, and rightly, with suspicion. Now they're going to be disdained.
If there's any hope in any of this, it's this. The country did get over the events of the 60s and 70s and start to recover, although it would really take into the mid 1980s to do it. Looking back, almost everyone agrees that both sides were too extreme at the time. Part of the reaction in 1970s was that Americans didn't want a government that would kill American kids, and after the completion of the Nixon regime it didn't want one that foreign kids either. We're probably headed in the same direction.
Footnotes:
1. In my case I happened to accidentally drive right into the middle of a Nation of Islam protest on Martin Luther King Blvd in Denver. It was large and I was the only person of my demographic on the street, and was driving a pickup truck with Wyoming plates at that.
I'll say, however, that the protestors were very gracious. I could see them looking at me, but as Wyomingites often find, I was protected in part by my cluelessness.
2. People hate it when this is stated, but the 9mm is a worthless military round.
A military sidearm serves one of two purposes, use or ceremony. If its to be used, it actually should stop the opponent immediately, keeping in mind that an armed combatant in war is a much different target than those the police normally face. Most of the time when a policemen uses a firearm a single bullet from a light weapon will stop the opponent who is much less motivated than a soldier in war.
For that matter, in most trained police forces the first resort anymore is to a taser, not a sidearm.
9mms were a Continental European round in armies which at first used pistols as sort of a gentleman's thing. Officers carried them, and rarely used them. By World War One that had changed, but the 9mm had set in. By World War Two any soldier who had the option to carry a .45 ACP rather than a 9mm did, which is why you see British Airborne so frequently armed with M1911s.
The 9mm hung on, however, and by the 1980s those armies used them had gone to the multiple shot, "double tap" technique, acknowledging its deficiencies. The round spread to the U.S. at the instance of NATO which wanted the service to play nice on this topic.
3. Ross wasn't green, so that doesn't explain what occurred. What might, however, is that he's seen too much service, quite frankly.
4. For much of the Vietnam War the National Guard was hard to get into.
The history of this isn't very well remembered. The Vietnam War was a big war, for the U.S, from 1965 until 1972. Contrary to what's popularly imagined, the majority of soldiers who served in Vietnam were volunteers, which is in fact somewhat complicated by the fact that people facing conscription often volunteered prior to being drafted. Conscription itself had been in place since about 1948, after briefly terminating after World War Two. Setting that aside, the U.S. had conscription pretty continually since 1940. Most men expected to be conscripted form 1940 forward and therefore, for that reason, they planned on military service as an aspect of their immediate post high school life. Those going to college and university obtained deferrements, up until the late Vietnam War period, which were just that, deferrements. They entered the service after they were done with university, which was the case for my father and two of my local uncles. Usually, although not always, that meant that they entered the service as officers and chose their branches, none of which was the case for men who were simply conscripted. Added to that, as conscripts only served two years, the service often assigned them to Reserve units following their active duty service, which was the case for one of my uncles. Indeed, men who were part of ROTC units often found that they were assigned to hometown Reserve units rather than active duty units, which was often to their frustration as it mean six years of Reserve duty rathe rather than two years of active duty.
As a lot of working class men who didn't intend to go to college didn't want to do two years away from home and disrupt their post high school lives, the Guard and Reserve were already popular options before the Vietnam War. That meant that it was nowhere near the case that men who were in the Guard were avoiding Vietnam. At the time a hitch in the Guard for an enlisted man was at least four years (it might have been six). Therefore, men who joined the National Guard as late as 1965 and prior to the Marines being deployed at Da Nang were still in the Guard in 1969. The war itself did not really start being unpopular until 1967 meaning that somebody joining the Guard in 1967 was still it at least until 1971. And the war would have had no impact on retention as the service was never going to call up anyone who had completed Reserve or Guard duty.
This does not mean that nobody joined the Guard to avoid Vietnam. I know at least one person who in fact did just that. But getting into the Guard was hard. Getting into the Reserve also was, although I know one person who joined the Reserve in order to avoid going to Vietnam.
People who really wanted to avoid joining the service, however, were better off finding a doctor who would qualify them as medically unfit, or, up until the end when conscription deferrements changed, staying in university.
Finally, contrary to what people imagine, some Guardsmen in fact served in Vietnam. Not many, but as the war went on some Guard units were called up and deployed to the war.
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