the attitude with arnie arnesen the friday edition Jan 9
Arnie Arnesen
on Renee Good
What gets lost when power rushes to justify itself is the ordinary truth of a life.
A mother of three does not live inside abstractions. She lives inside crumbs and corners.
The inside of Renee Nicole Good’s car does not look like a weapon. There’s evidence, evidence of love stretched thin across busy days. A stuffed animal shoved into the glove box because there was nowhere else to put it. Snack wrappers on the floor from backseat negotiations … of still being hungry, and “can we stop after school”. Crumbs pressed deep into seat crevasses from granola bars broken in half with one hand while steering with the other. A mismatched water bottle rolling under the seat. A forgotten library book. A receipt she meant to keep. A reminder note she meant to read.
That kind of chaos isn’t that of a menace.
It’s parenthood t’s the quiet archaeology of a life spent showing up … over and over … when no one is applauding. It’s the smell of sunscreen and stale coffee. The echo of arguments that ended in laughter. The residue of carpools and drop-offs and apologies for being late again.That is not what violence looks like.And yet the federal government chose a word that erases all of that.They chose terrorist.“Terrorist” is a word meant to flatten humanity. It strips away context, intention, interior life. It allows the listener to stop imagining the person as a person at all. Once the word is spoken, the crumbs disappear. The stuffed animals vanish. The children become inconvenient footnotes.
But this was a mother. Not an idea. Not a threat. Not a symbol.
And when you watch the video … really watch it … what you see is not intent. What you see is confusion. Armed men crowding a vehicle. Commands shouted from different directions. Hands at windows. Bodies positioned where no one should ever stand if they truly fear a moving car. Seconds collapsing into chaos. A vehicle barely moving … hesitation … uncertainty … panic. Then gunfire.
There is no clear moment of attack.
No unmistakable act of aggression.No frame that shows deliberate violence.
What it shows instead is something far more common and far more human … a person trying to understand what is being demanded of them while surrounded by authority moving too fast and thinking too little.
A mom trying to move through her neighborhood. A mom who knew that when armed men surround your car and shout over one another, fear is not aggression … it is instinct. A mom whose first reflex was not domination but survival … not conquest but protection.
Mothers protect in ways that don’t make headlines. They protect by staying awake. By worrying quietly. By keeping the world held together with routines and snacks and soft things tucked where children might need them later. By refusing to harden, even when the world keeps asking them to.
And this is where something darker enters the frame.
Because there are people who saw this and didn’t ask a single question.
People who didn’t pause at the crumbs.
Didn’t notice the stuffed animals.
Didn’t wonder about the children who would never again sit in that backseat.
They heard the government speak first, and that was enough.
Big Brother said self-defense, so they repeated it.
Big Brother said terrorist, so they nodded along.
No curiosity.
No skepticism.
No humanity.
Just obedience dressed up as patriotism.
That is the deepest obscenity here … not just that Renee Nicole Good was killed, but that the machinery of the state looked at the wreckage of a mother’s life and called it terror, and so many people accepted the story without ever looking inside the car.
There is nothing radical about crumbs.
Nothing extremist about stuffed animals.
Nothing violent about a vehicle built to carry children instead of weapons.
What is radical … what is dangerous … is a government so desperate to control the story that it must erase the humanity inside the vehicle before the facts are even known.
Because if we remember what that car really looked like …if we picture the nostalgic chaos of parenthood still sitting there when the engine went quiet …
then the lie collapses.
And what remains is not a terrorist.
It is a mother.And three children who will grow up knowing exactly how fragile life can be when power forgets how to see them.
part one:Higher ED: aside: In November, the A&M Board of Regents passed a sweeping rule banning race or gender ideology "advocacy" in lessons without a university president's approval. A Texas A&M professor has been told not to teach certain writings from Plato, a staple in introductory philosophy courses, because they may violate the university system's new rules against "advocate" race or gender ideology, or topics concerning sexual orientation, in core classes.“Plato has been censored,” said Martin Peterson, who clarified that he was speaking not on the university’s behalf, but as an individual.Peterson learned the decision Tuesday in an email, which was viewed by the Houston Chronicle. Philosophy department head Kristi Sweet told him that the directive stemmed from the Texas A&M System’s new policy. The email also directed him to remove modules on race and gender ideology or be reassigned to another course.
the interview:Nowhere to Go: Inside the Texas Boarding Home System Where Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation are Widespread. https://inthesetimes.com/article/texas-boarding-homes-elderly-disability-justice-healthcare-investigation-nursing-neglect-abuse
OTTAVIA SPAGGIARI is an award-winning investigative journalist and long-form writer. Her work has appeared in The Guardian, The New Yorker, Al Jazeera, The Nation and other outlets. She is currently the Endowed Chair in Journalism at Florida A&M University.
part two:
Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of How Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question in Politics. He was previously a national correspondent for The Week.
Bill Curry was a Connecticut state senator, comptroller and two time Democratic nominee for governor who served as Counselor to the President in the Clinton White House. He has written for Salon, the Daily Beast, the Huffington Post and the Hartford Courant and has provided commentary on National Public Radio, MSNBC and many other news outlets.
topics - Renee Good, Venezuela, war on blue states. By Killing Renee Good, ICE Sent a Message to Us All. https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/08/opinion/renee-good-minnesota-shooting-ice.html
D. ARNIE ARNESEN
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