The last words Renee Good ever spoke, after dropping her six-year-old son at school, were delivered with a calm smile: “That’s fine, dude,” she said to a masked federal agent in full combat gear. “I’m not mad at you.”Twenty-four seconds later, he shot her in the face. The last words she ever heard — assuming she lived a few moments beyond impact — were her killer’s parting insult: “F***ing bitch!”AdvertisementIt was all recorded by the agent’s own cellphone camera. Similar videos from multiple witnesses show that she posed no threat to anyone. A poet and mother of three, Good was in her car on a snowy street in Minneapolis, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were rounding people up for deportation. Perhaps she didn’t get out of their way speedily enough. Or perhaps she just didn’t show them sufficient deference.ICE and other federal agents now flooding American cities are kitted out like front-line infantry: Automatic rifles, flak vests, helicopters, MRAPs, everything one might need to patrol the streets of Kandahar. Last year, at the request of Donald Trump, Republicans gave ICE more resources than all but a dozen of the world’s national armies. A force with the capacity to repel a foreign invasion is turning its guns against undocumented gardeners and nannies.Also Read | An ICE killing in Minneapolis and the search for the un-AmericanSend thousands of poorly trained, barely vetted, but very heavily armed men into any community, and you’ll get uncontrolled violence. Since the start of Trump’s second term, immigration agents have behaved like an army of occupation. But when its victims are non-citizens (most of them Latino migrants, legal or not), it has been easy for most Americans to look the other way.AdvertisementBefore any investigation, Trump declared Good’s killing justified, and the rest of his administration snapped into action. His Homeland Security Secretary proclaimed the victim a “domestic terrorist”. Vice President J D Vance opined that her killer “deserves a debt of gratitude.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation (run by a Trump loyalist) seized control of the case, and denied both state and city officials access to evidence.Any prior president would have followed a normal-times playbook: Try to calm the situation down, hold off on all judgements until a thorough inquiry — and if it turns out the officer is as guilty as the videos suggest, then let him face the consequences of his action. But these are not normal times.Why does Trump do things like this? After a homicide right in the middle of an American street, which we all can view on YouTube ad nauseam, why would he side with the killer rather than the victim? And particularly when the victim is as sympathetic as Renee Good?Because brutality isn’t coincidental to Trump’s programme, it’s central to it. Trump hopes to terrify all other Renee Goods — that is, all the rest of us — into submission.“The cruelty,” as writer Adam Serwer noted in Trump’s first term, “is the point.” So much of the MAGA agenda could be accomplished far more easily, and with far less political blowback, if it were done without being vicious for the sake of viciousness. Trump could have deported migrants without putting their children in cages. He could have cut foreign aid without yanking food and medicine quite so abruptly from millions of the world’s most vulnerable. He could have cracked down on drug smugglers without blowing up their boats and shooting missiles at shipwrecked survivors.Why does he always choose the most savage action rather than the most effective one? Partly to feed a sadistic hunger, both his own and that of his most ravenous fan base. But largely for the same reason that tyrants throughout history have engaged in exemplary violence: To intimidate, to demoralise, and to subdue.Most of Trump’s victims have been marginalised people: Undocumented immigrants, members of racial or ethnic minorities, the impoverished, the sick, those who can’t fight back. So most Americans are able to view his programme as something that doesn’t really concern them: If you’re a middle-class, white, English-speaking citizen, odds are high that you can stay out of Trump’s gun sights.Renee Good was middle-class, white, English speaking, and a citizen.So are most of the millions of Americans who’ve turned out for massive protests, like the “No Kings” marches held three months ago at over 2,000 sites in all 50 states. More people turned out for the October protests than for those in June, and more turned out for those than for the first ones in April. How many tens of millions will turn out for demonstrations this year? At what point will enough Americans stand up to Trump — and maybe even prompt Congress to impeach and remove him from office?Trump clearly does not want to find out.In a free society, non-violent protest is a basic right. I’ve participated in many demonstrations over the past year, and I’ve always understood the stakes: Assuming one remains peaceful, the worst possible consequence might be a minor injury or an uncomfortable night in lock-up. But would I go to a protest, or (as I’ve also done) blow a whistle to alert immigrants when ICE is in the neighbourhood, if the potential penalty were something far more dire? I hope so — but if bodies continue to stack up, I can’t say for sure.most readWas Renee Good a committed activist, or just a mother in the wrong place at the wrong time? She might have been either, or both, and it doesn’t really matter: She was a middle-class, white, English-speaking citizen. And none of those things protected her from a bullet to the head.Which was exactly why Trump sided, as publicly as possible, with her killer.The writer is author of Arrow of the Blue-Skinned God: Retracing the Ramayana Through India and Mullahs on the Mainframe: Islam and Modernity Among the Daudi Bohras