Anatomy of a Failed Moral Panic

“Killer Agent Unmasked,” screamed a headline in The Drudge Report. I know, I know, hardly anyone sane reads the Drudge Report anymore. But its headline and accompanying stories did stake out the let’s-see-if-we-can-spark-the-George-Floyd-reboot territory. So did a supremely irresponsible opinion column in The Chicago Tribune, which argued that “every last American” should agree that the shooting death of Renée Nicole Good in Minneapolis a few days ago was “an abomination.”

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Should they? Was it?

Soon-to-be ex-Minnesota governor Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey certainly think so. Walz has been comparing ICE agents to the Gestapo for years. Frey abetted the “fiery but mostly peaceful” burning of Minneapolis in 2020 after George Floyd died of a drug overdose while resisting arrest, and Frey acted entirely according to form in denouncing ICE and Donald Trump in response to the shooting of Good by an ICE agent.

The destructive, anti-American left thought they were getting the band back together. Mobs in various cities have been protesting, harassing, and impeding the lawful activities of ICE. In Minneapolis, mobs are going from hotel to hotel in search of ICE agents, smashing windows, blaring horns, and screaming obscenities.

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For just a few days, the city of Minneapolis—and other blue cities across the country—teetered back and forth. Full summer-of-love-smash-everything riots? Or impotent progressive-white-female fury and hysteria, aided by low-testosterone soy boys in the media and ranks of Democrat officeholders?

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