Martyrs Without a Cause

The twin tragedies of Ashli Babbitt and Renee Good

This January 6 marked five years since the infamous White House riots, in which a motley crew of Trump supporters converged on the Capitol building with vague plans to disrupt congressional proceedings after what they thought was a stolen election. Over the years, what happened that day has somehow been both underplayed and overplayed, depending on which magazine you’re reading. Some Republicans have rewritten the protest as entirely peaceful and toothless, while Democrats somberly commemorate it like another Pearl Harbor, complete with candlelight vigils.

Such demonstrations tend to mark mass shootings or mass losses of life. But the only person to lose her life that day was one of the protestors. Her name was Ashli Babbitt, and she is either a traitor or a martyr, depending on which magazine you’re reading.

By grim chance, her fate now lives side by side in American history with the fate of a woman shot dead by an ICE officer on January 7—a woman who, like Babbitt, was passionate, angry, and searching for her identity in political agitation. And, like Babbitt’s death, Renee Good’s death was caught on video, to be disseminated and dissected a thousand thousand times as public opinion parts like the Red Sea. In both cases, an armed officer makes a split-second choice to pull the trigger—lionized by those who believe he has enforced just law in the face of a threat, vilified by those who believe he has committed murder on behalf of a corrupt entity.

I’ve written before about my deep uneasiness with discourse cycles that take “scissor” events like this and instantly turn people into political avatars, on one side or the other. I feel this way even when my own sympathies tend in a clear direction. I was definitely in Kyle Rittenhouse’s corner after he shot two men in self-defense, but I was also relieved that the right failed to turn him into some kind of pundit. I was likewise glad that Daniel Penny was able to disappear back into obscurity, after being acquitted for the sad result of his have-a-go heroism.

My uneasiness runs even deeper when the person being made into an avatar is dead, and the wheels of political discourse start turning before the body is cold. To add anything to that discourse at all, however “careful” or “nuanced,” almost feels wrong. And when a case is still developing, new evidence can emerge that forces you to eat your words. Then again, evidence doesn’t move the needle as much as you might think. Witness the fact that a new video has just come out from the perspective of the officer who shot Renee Good, showing last words and close-up context around the moment, and both sides are claiming it as fresh support for their contradictory positions.

In comparing the cases of Babbitt and Good, I want to be careful not to imply that they’re identical. Though the differences don’t all cut one way. On the one hand, Babbitt was unarmed, while Good was behind the wheel of a car. On the other hand, Babbitt appeared to be spearheading an angry mob, while Good was alone. You could pick apart the similarities and discrepancies all day. But the cases’ general shape, and the shape of their political fallout, seem similar enough to prompt some sober reflection.