The Acceptable Dead

“No country can rest on a crooked relationship to the truth.”
— Robert Musil

The MAGA Republican Party has fundamentally altered our nation’s ability to discern right from wrong and fact from fiction. Decades of inflammatory rhetoric from Rush Limbaugh to Tucker Carlson have cultivated a fervent base of individuals insistent that tyranny, corruption, and abuse are far preferable to the vision offered by the Democratic Party. The consistent destruction of social and democratic norms, particularly over the past decade, has resulted in an incentive structure dedicated to protecting a singular individual: Donald Trump.

The success and protection of a party’s chosen candidate is to be expected. However, the selection of a narcissistic demagogue has proven deeply toxic to the moral underbelly of the nation. Pundits and politicians alike are required to realign their messaging to ensure lockstep protection of the party leader. Lawlessness is reclassified as plenary authority [1], insurrections are transformed into patriotic protests [2], and Jeffrey Epstein was only into “very young teen types” [3]. Narratives are re-shaped to protect the party and satiate the base, regardless of the destruction inflicted upon the country.

The MAGA Party has an ongoing struggle with both moral reasoning and factual reality. That struggle manifested grotesquely in the reaction to the murder of Renee Good.

On January 7, 2026, Renee Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an ICE agent later identified as Jonathan Ross [4]. The response from the right-wing political sphere that followed was openly anti-social.

As videos of the shooting began circulating, the Trump administration moved quickly to control the narrative, insisting that the nation must reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. Immediately after the shooting, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem described the incident as an “act of domestic terrorism” and publicly defended the actions of the ICE officer, despite the absence of a completed investigation [5].

A domestic terrorist's nefarious tools. Source: The Minnesota Reformer

The following day, Vice President JD Vance addressed the American public. The press conference was opened by White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt, who highlighted “radicals in the Democratic Party” opposed to the enforcement of immigration laws. Vance then launched into a five-minute diatribe about “failed politicians” and federal programs being “defrauded by Somali immigrants,” state-sanctioned propaganda that bore little relevance to the stated purpose of the briefing: the killing of an American citizen by a federal agent.

Only after this digression did Vance turn to “what happened in Minneapolis.” He did so by referencing a photograph of a CNN article that had been sent to him. Pulling out his phone, he read the headline aloud to the press pool: “Outrage after ICE Officer Kills US Citizen in Minneapolis.” Rather than addressing the substance of the killing, Vance used the headline to chastise the media for its framing. He did not urge caution. He did not acknowledge that an investigation was ongoing. He offered no condolences.

Instead, he spoke with certainty and righteous indignation, asserting—without evidence—that Good was part of a “broader left-wing network to attack, to dox, to assault, and to make it impossible for ICE officers to do their job.” He made no concessions. The killing was not a tragedy; it was a justified response [6].

US Vice President JD Vance speaks during a press briefing in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on January 8.
Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

The administration remained firm in the construction of this narrative, and dehumanizing rhetoric from the broader right-wing commentary ecosystem followed in waves. Twitch streamer Asmongold reacted to footage of the shooting by jeering, “and then he shoots her; Gotchya bitch! And then he shoots her a few more times to finish her off,” followed by chuckles [7]. Matt Walsh of The Daily Wire referred to the deceased victim as a “lesbian agitator” who “gave her life to protect 68 IQ Somali scammers” [8]. Fox News pundit Jesse Watters described Good as “a self-proclaimed poet with pronouns in her bio” who “leaves behind a lesbian partner” [9].

The continual need to identify the victim’s sexuality is a concerted effort to place her in the “other” category. Watters and Walsh alike assure their audiences that it is acceptable that she is dead because she is not like us; she is like them.

The current Republican Party embodies a culture in which callous disregard for human life becomes acceptable when that life exists in opposition to the party. Death no longer demands recognition for those who do not obey their rule. Following a state-sanctioned killing, there has been no offer of restraint, uncertainty, or acknowledgment of loss.

It would be comforting to believe that the administration responsible for such levels of cruelty and inhumanity was behaving irrationally—but it is not. The statements are calm and confident. These actors are behaving rationally within a system that rewards their inhumanity in service of this President.

The Acceptable Dead

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