The shooting of Renée Nicole Good was a tragedy that made countless Americans angry at a visceral level. But not everyone was outraged. Some essentially shrugged and defended the shots fired as necessary for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent’s self-defense. This makes me more concerned about our country than anything else since Inauguration Day, the high number of fellow citizens defending a government agent’s potential murder of not just an American citizen, but a Caucasian one.

Make no mistake about it, this was going to happen. ICE has been intentionally confrontational and brutal in violently grabbing long-time residents as they go about their undocumented work lives or while waiting for their asylum claim hearings. The Department of Homeland Security has been intentionally lawless in unconstitutionally kidnapping people off the street and shipping them to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador, without due process. The president of the United States has talked openly about sending Americans there on purpose. And he seems to love to send the National Guard into cities that haven’t asked for and don’t need it, to incite fury and protest – anything for a reason to invoke the Insurrection Act.

Some may call that a conspiracy theory with no basis, but law-enforcement has been killing people for driving while Black for decades and hanging people for making eye contact with the wrong person for decades before that. State-sanctioned violence is not new if you are a person of color. It is only new if you are not.

It did not surprise me that outrage was minimal in the country at large over the death of Black American citizen Keith Porter, deemed an active shooter for firing celebratory gunfire into the air on New Year’s Eve in Los Angeles, and subsequently shot by an off-duty ICE agent. But I actually thought that some of these MAGA folks, who were angry at their hero over the Epstein files betrayal, would be a little bit upset about Mr. Trump’s masked men killing a Midwestern, middle-class, Caucasian, American mother. I thought there might actually be more incredulity on the level of Tucker Carlson, who asked why “so few conservatives are viewing this story through a human lens.” But I was incorrect.

MAGA outrage over federal law-enforcement shooting Ashley Babbitt at the Capitol while she was trying to break onto the floor of the House of Representatives On January 6, 2021, does not translate to outrage at federal law enforcement for shooting Renée Nicole Good. The latter white woman was a liberal who presumably opposed government overreach and cruelty in the enforcement of immigration policy. The former was a member of the MAGA faithful.

The safety of white Americans, as they stand before Executive Branch agents, is not assured if they do not support Donald Trump. Racism, antisemitism, homophobia, transphobia can now all be rolled into the one -ism that throws the majority culture and demographic in with the rest of us.

I hesitate to even put the word in print. It feels as if it has lost its power over the last year of the country’s existence and is now used to proclaim overreaction and Trump Derangement Syndrome. But the shooting of Renée Good requires us to acknowledge that we are one step closer to living in the -ism that is even unspeakable to the privileged and secure. Taking to the streets might make us feel better, but MAGA people in the streets is likely the only thing to stop the -ism in its tracks.