American politicians and activists are too eager to fight each other

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Unfortunately, in the current political and law enforcement environment, the shooting in Minneapolis of Renee Nicole Good was inevitable. Politicians and courts have spent decades elevating police into a privileged class whose members demand deference and immediate obedience from the public. At the same time, the United States is fracturing along ideological and partisan lines with the factions becoming increasingly confrontational and violent. Those developments met in Minneapolis where Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) agents wielded as political weapons by the Trump administration ran up against opposition activists who have repeatedly clashed with the feds. Good died as a result.

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Much of the response to the Jan. 7 shooting involves Kennedy-assassination-style parsing of video of the incident and of Department of Homeland Security use-of-force guidance. That’s important and I have my own opinions on the matter. My initial impression is that the ICE agent’s shooting of Good was not justified, though I expect more information may come out in the course of the investigation.

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Looking at the larger picture, my concern is that shortly before the incident, the Trump administration announced that it was sending as many as 2,000 federal agents to Minnesota in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement Acting Director Todd Lyons called the “largest immigration operation ever.”

The announcement came as administration officials spar with........

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