The rule of law, and the killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good |
Protesters gather in front of the Minnesota State Capitol in response to the death of Renee Nicole Macklin Good, who was fatally shot by an ICE officer, Jan. 14.John Locher/The Associated Press
The police killing of Renee Nicole Macklin Good in Minneapolis is an emblematic event of the Trump era because it highlights the government’s rejection of the rules and norms that limit the exercise of state authority.
It is not only the shooting itself, a killing that looks to be without any justification. It is everything that has followed, the blaming of the victim at the highest levels of the U.S. government, and a federal investigation that no one of good faith can trust to be fair-minded and impartial.
The death of Ms. Macklin Good, 37, in all its slow-motion horror, is thus of a piece with other policies of the Trump era, including international ones which he says are constrained, as we noted in this space on Thursday, only by his own morality.