A defining moment for the United States

There have been many times in both of Donald Trump’s presidencies when you had to have thought a crucial line had been crossed. A point when, finally, the American population looked hard and said, “This is the last straw.”

The last few weeks, you would think, would put that in overdrive. Launching a military operation in Venezuela to kidnap its president, and then claiming the U.S. would market all of that country’s oil, while the proceeds flowed — in violation of U.S. law — into offshore accounts directly controlled by Trump.

The withdrawal of the United States from a huge number of international agencies and commissions. Continuing threats against Denmark and Greenland, along with threats against Mexico, Iran and Colombia.

Then, on Wednesday in Minneapolis, an ICE agent shot and killed 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good, a mother of three, a poet and an American citizen, as she tried to drive away from ICE agents trying to stop her and drag her from her vehicle. She had just dropped her son off at school.

Luckily, there was plenty of video of the attack from a variety of angles, because even before the woman was identified, the highest levels of the U.S. government — including Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — claimed the driver had deliberately tried to kill ICE agents and that she was a domestic terrorist. Trump claimed that Good was responsible for her own fate, saying “She behaved horribly, and then she ran him over” before she was shot.

(There are reasons why the Trump administration has mused about making it illegal to record ICE agents in action and it’s not to protect the health and safety of Americans.)

The videos don’t show anyone being run over before the shooting started: Minneapolis police say no one else was injured or killed, except Good. The ICE agent who shot her, still masked, fled the scene. Other ICE officers kept a doctor from helping Good — on one video, an ICE agent says “who cares?” when the doctor identifies himself — and ICE officers kept an ambulance from reaching the scene.

That alone should be gutting for anyone who takes the time to carefully watch and analyze what happens. And it should, if there is any humanity left at all, be the point at which the American population truly has to say “enough is enough.”

You would think it would have been when ICE paramilitary officers began appearing in American cities.

Masked attackers with no visible identification — who, in fact, refuse to identify themselves other than claiming to be law enforcement — brandishing weapons and ordering you out of your vehicle. Arresting you without cause. Ordering you to stop recording their actions.

You would think that all of that would be an anathema to freedom-loving Americans fond of defending their inalienable, constitutionally guaranteed rights.

And yet…

Remember this: Trump often lets you know exactly what he believes.

Remember what he said in Sioux Center, Iowa, in January, 2016: “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK? … It’s, like, incredible.”

It is incredible. And horrific.

And Trump’s policies, enlarging ICE and empowering its ever-growing violence, did exactly that. Except it wasn’t Fifth Avenue.

It was a snowy suburban street in Minneapolis.

And the person his policies are responsible for shooting and killing was Renee Nicole Good.

You have to wonder what per cent of his voters condone those policies.

If Good’s death is not a tipping point for Americans, than, frankly, nothing will be.

Canadians should be aware of what is happening in America, and prepare in any way we can.