"I Don't Care"
Jan 14, 2026By Rosemary Gerber Dawson
A doctor asks to check her pulse. The agent’s answer: “I don’t care.”
Three words. The whole country in three words.
Minneapolis. This Wednesday. Twenty-eight degrees.
Renee Nicole Good had just dropped her six-year-old daughter at school, had just watched her walk through the doors, had just turned her maroon SUV back toward home. She was 37 years old, a mother of three, a poet who wrote about love and loss and the weight of ordinary days, a woman who had been alive for nearly fourteen thousand mornings and would not see another—driving less than a mile from the intersection where George Floyd died beneath a police officer’s knee five years ago. She was eleven seconds from the end of her life.
The video exists.
ICE agents approached her vehicle during an enforcement operation. What happened next depends on who you believe. The video shows her SUV moving. The state says she “weaponized her vehicle.” The video shows her wheels turned right, away from the agents. The state says she was a “domestic terrorist.” The video shows an agent stepping to the side, not in the vehicle’s path. The state says this was self-defense.
Agent Jonathan Ross fired through her window. Ten years of training. Ten years of protocols. Eleven seconds to decide.
Good’s partner was filming—reports said she had blood on her—screaming: “You guys just killed my wife!
The agents did not render aid.
A doctor who happened to be nearby approached the vehicle, asked to check Good’s pulse. Maybe she was still alive. Maybe something could be done.
“I don’t care,” the agent said.
The ambulance waited. Fifteen minutes while her partner screamed. Fifteen minutes while a woman who had woken up that morning, who had made breakfast, who had kissed her daughter goodbye, bled out in broad daylight on an American street.
Think about what it takes to say those words. A woman is dying in front of you. Someone is asking to help her. And somewhere inside you, the part that would have flinched, the part that would have felt the wrongness rising in your chest, has already gone quiet. You don’t decide to not care. You discover that you don’t.
I don’t care.
This is what power sounds like when it stops pretending.
Within hours, the official story was set.
Domestic terrorist. Weaponized vehicle. Tragedy of her own making.
The Department of Homeland Security. President Trump. Vice President Vance. Secretary Noem. All of them, the same words, the same story, as if reading from the same page. (This is the part they call law and order.) And what is that story, stripped to its core, but a longer way of saying I don’t care? She deserved it. She brought it on herself. Her blood is on her own hands.
Then people watched the video.
Frame by frame. Wheels turned right, away from the agents. The agent who fired standing to the side, not in the vehicle’s path. The SUV moving slowly, almost hesitantly, the way you might move if you were confused and frightened and trying to get away. Eleven seconds from approach to gunfire.
The video shows one thing. The state says another. And here is the point: no one in power cares that the lie is visible. The lie is not meant to convince. It is meant to demonstrate that truth no longer matters. What matters is power, and power is the ability to say I don’t care and face no consequences.
Within twenty-four hours, the same language appeared again. Portland. Border Patrol agents shot two more people during a vehicle stop—same phrase, “weaponized his vehicle.” Two shootings. Two days. The same script. A form letter for killing.
The pattern is not hidden. It is announced.
In March of 1936, a psychiatrist in Zurich published an essay titled “Wotan,” after the old Germanic god of storm and frenzy. His name was Carl Jung.
It was three years before the war. Before the camps. Before anyone would admit they knew where it was heading. Most people looking at Germany in 1936 saw a recovering economy, restored pride, a strong leader. They saw order. They told themselves the weather was fine.
That summer, the Olympics came to Berlin. Foreign journalists described a nation transformed—orderly, peaceful, full of prosperity. The New York Times ran stories about the “New Germany.” Anti-Jewish signs had been taken down for the visitors. Everyone agreed: the stories had been exaggerated. The games were a great success.
Jung saw something else.
“A hurricane has broken loose in Germany while we still believe it is fine weather.”
He was not writing about politics. He was writing about what happens to people—ordinary people who had been kind to their neighbors and loved their children—when something seizes them. He used the German word Ergriffenheit: to be gripped, taken over, no longer yourself. To speak with a voice that is not your own and not know it.
“One man, who is obviously ‘possessed,’ has infected a whole nation to such an extent that everything is set in motion and has started rolling on its course towards perdition.”
The possessed never know they’re possessed. That is the nature of the condition. They feel clearer than ever. The cruelty feels like honesty. The indifference feels like strength. The hatred feels like love of country.
Three years later, the rolling reached its destination.
Within hours of Renee Good’s death, the comments appeared.
“Dead SUV Karen.” “Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.” “One less lib.” “She f--ked around and found out.”
They said she was a terrorist. They meant she was disposable. They needed her to deserve it—because if she didn’t, then what does that make the country that killed her?
The agent said I don’t care. The state said I don’t care. Now millions say it, a chorus speaking in unison, seized by the same thing and calling it clarity.
What we permit reveals what we are. What we scroll past without feeling exposes what we have already become.
The same week Renee Good was killed, President Trump requested $1.5 trillion for the military—the largest ask in American history. He called it the “Dream Military.”
The dream is taking shape. Armed agents on American streets. Citizens shot through car windows. Ambulances held back. Doctors told I don’t care. A lie so obvious it doesn’t bother to hide.
A nation learning not to flinch.
What happens inside you when you read those three words?
I don’t care.
The recoil, if you still feel it, is proof you’re not yet seized. That flinch. That wrongness in your gut. That voice saying this is not okay—that’s the part of you still awake. Still your own.
But the recoil fades. Each time, a little easier. Each shooting. Each lie. Each shrug. You don't wake up and decide to stop caring. You just stop noticing when you stopped.
Jung wrote about Germany in 1936, but he was writing about us. About what happens when people stop being themselves. When they start rolling toward perdition and call it fine weather.
A woman is bleeding on a Minneapolis street. Her partner is screaming. A doctor asks to check her pulse.
I don’t care.
At what point do you feel it—the moment the weather stops being fine?
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