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I’m Mad as Hell; How About You?

Will the murder of Renee Goode be enough to wake Americans from our slumber?

Pete Koutoulas

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Estimated time to read:

6–9 minutes
Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the 1976 film, "Network."
Are you mad as hell yet? Peter Finch as Howard Beale in the 1976 film, "Network."

Note: The author has edit­ed this sto­ry to update some of the inflam­ma­to­ry lan­guage used in the ini­tial version. 

We tried to warn you.

During the 2024 elec­tion cycle and into President Trump’s first year, WinCity Voices pub­lished at least six com­men­taries on Project 2025 and how the poli­cies described in that “Policy Bible” were intend­ed to cre­ate an American dictatorship.

Project 2025 and the Trump administration

Some of the com­men­taries pub­lished by WinCity Voices about the dan­gers of Project 2025 include the following.

Project 2025: Creating an American Dictatorship — WinCity Voices

Project 2025: But the Constitution! — WinCity Voices

The ‘Project 2025’ push con­tin­ues — WinCity Voices

Project 2025 rebrand­ed as a ‘tran­si­tion project’, but it’s the same right-wing fan­ta­sy as before — WinCity Voices

‘The Big Beautiful Bill’ is tak­en straight from the Project 2025 play­book — WinCity Voices

Do you know what’s real­ly in Project 2025? — WinCity Voices

People said we were exag­ger­at­ing. The Trump cam­paign denied any con­nec­tion to it. Ultimately, a slim major­i­ty of Americans vot­ed to return Donald Trump to the high­est office in the land.

It didn’t take long after Trump’s swear­ing-in as the 47th President for Project 2025 to begin being implemented.

Beginnings

It start­ed with Elon Musk’s DOGE, which pur­port­ed to be about mak­ing gov­ern­ment more effi­cient but achieved lit­tle beyond forc­ing thou­sands of career gov­ern­ment employ­ees out of their jobs and, more notably, ille­gal­ly seiz­ing per­son­al infor­ma­tion about mil­lions of Americans.

Since then, Americans have watched as the guardrails of democ­ra­cy have been weak­ened or destroyed. They have wit­nessed the sys­tem­at­ic over­throw of cen­turies-old prece­dents and norms that had sta­bi­lized our nation.

They said they want­ed to dis­man­tle the sys­tem that favored the rich and the pow­er­ful. Fair enough. But sad­ly, what they got instead was a dis­man­tling of the very safe­guards that reined in such abuses. 

And we tried to warn them:

Welcome to the United States of America in 2025. An author­i­tar­i­an theoc­ra­cy where straight, white male evan­gel­i­cals of European descent are first-class cit­i­zens — and vir­tu­al­ly every­one else is left unpro­tect­ed and unserved by their gov­ern­ment. Or worse.

You say it can’t hap­pen? What if I told you the plan is already in place? All that’s miss­ing is for Donald J Trump (or some­one who shares his thirst for pow­er and lack of respect for all Americans) to be elected.

It’s called Project 2025, and it is bone-chill­ing­ly terrifying.

(Exerpted from WCV May 31, 2024 com­men­tary, “Project 2025: Creating an American Dictatorship.”)

I could go on and on about the crush­ing over­reach of the cur­rent admin­is­tra­tion and the dev­as­tat­ing effects it has had on the mid­dle class and on the most vul­ner­a­ble among us. If you keep up with the news, you already know the litany of horrors.

Among the most heinous mis­use of fed­er­al pow­er, Trump has used the National Guard, ICE, and oth­er insti­tu­tions to ter­ror­ize not only undoc­u­ment­ed immi­grants, but also American cit­i­zens on the streets of their own cities and towns.

But last week might have been the turn­ing point.

A turning point?

The killing of Renee Good, a 37-year-old wife and moth­er of three, by ICE agents has sent a rip­ple of exis­ten­tial fear among Americans of all persuasions.

This time it wasn’t a brown-skinned immi­grant. It wasn’t an accused ter­ror­ist. It wasn’t a drug-run­ning crim­i­nal. It was a woman whose last words to her mur­der­er were “I’m not mad at you.” Moments lat­er, Renee Good was dead.

The death of Renee Good has sparked protests in Minnesota and around the coun­try. People may final­ly be angry enough to demand action to restrain the Trump administration’s abus­es and force him out of office before the end of his term.

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There is a famous scene in the 1976 film Network, in which the aging TV News anchor­man Howard Beale (por­trayed by Peter Finch) goes off script on a live broad­cast and riffs on the sor­ry state of tele­vi­sion news. Part of that rant includes the following.

All I know is that first you’ve got to get mad. You’ve got to say, “ ‘I’m a HUMAN BEING, God damn it! My life has VALUE!” So I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the win­dow. Open it, and stick your head out, and yell, “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!” 

I want you to get up right now, sit up, go to your win­dows, open them and stick your head out and yell, “I’m as mad as hell and I’m not going to take this any­more!” Things have got to change. But first, you’ve got­ta get mad!... Then we’ll fig­ure out what to do about the depres­sion and the infla­tion and the oil cri­sis. But first get up out of your chairs, open the win­dow, stick your head out, and yell, and say it: “I’M AS MAD AS HELL, AND I’M NOT GOING TO TAKE THIS ANYMORE!”

The char­ac­ter of Beale may have been a bit unhinged at that point, but I think he was right. Enough sen­si­ble Americans must get mad as hell before we see the atroc­i­ties of the Trump admin­is­tra­tion stopped, and stronger guardrails installed to pre­vent a future pres­i­dent from abus­ing the office as the cur­rent occu­pant of the Oval Office has done.

So how about it? Are you mad as hell yet?

Because I cer­tain­ly am.

A Litany of Abuse of Power

Below is a clear, evi­dence-based sum­ma­ry of major actions under the sec­ond Trump admin­is­tra­tion that observers, law­mak­ers, and ana­lysts have described as dan­ger­ous or deeply con­cern­ing. Each point is ground­ed in report­ing from rep­utable sources.

Immigration & Civil Liberties

  • Mass depor­ta­tion infra­struc­ture and rights vio­la­tions:
    The admin­is­tra­tion expand­ed expe­dit­ed removals, work­place raids, and large‑scale deten­tion plans, includ­ing pro­pos­als to use the Alien Enemies Act and mil­i­tary involve­ment to bypass due‑process pro­tec­tions. Many depor­ta­tions tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als for minor infrac­tions or polit­i­cal speech, includ­ing pro‑Palestinian stu­dents and academics.
  • AI‑driven sur­veil­lance and data‑collection for immi­gra­tion enforce­ment:
    Federal agen­cies con­tract­ed Palantir to build sys­tems like “ImmigrationOS,” which aggre­gat­ed exter­nal data sources to track immi­grants, rais­ing con­cerns about drag­net sur­veil­lance and civil‑rights vio­la­tions affect­ing both non‑citizens and citizens.
  • Escalating ICE enforce­ment lead­ing to civil­ian deaths:
    ICE’s aggres­sive tac­tics result­ed in fatal shoot­ings, includ­ing the killing of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis. Critics described ICE as act­ing with impuni­ty, and fed­er­al author­i­ties removed state inves­ti­ga­tors from the case, under­min­ing inde­pen­dent oversight.

National Security & Rule of Law

  • “Signalgate” classified‑information breach:
    Senior nation­al secu­ri­ty offi­cials used a group chat on the encrypt­ed app Signal to dis­cuss an immi­nent mil­i­tary strike in Yemen—an extra­or­di­nary breach of pro­to­col that experts called one of the most seri­ous national‑security laps­es in decades.
  • Use of per­son­al Gmail for sen­si­tive mil­i­tary com­mu­ni­ca­tions:
    Reports showed that high‑level offi­cials, includ­ing the National Security Adviser’s office, used Gmail for dis­cus­sions involv­ing weapons sys­tems and sen­si­tive posi­tions, cre­at­ing major cyber­se­cu­ri­ty vulnerabilities.
  • Politically moti­vat­ed fir­ings at the NSA and Cyber Command:
    Multiple top intel­li­gence offi­cials were removed based on conspiracy‑driven accu­sa­tions of “dis­loy­al­ty,” weak­en­ing U.S. cyber defens­es and desta­bi­liz­ing national‑security leadership.

Executive Overreach & Constitutional Concerns

  • Seizing con­gres­sion­al pow­ers and defy­ing court orders:
    A Senate report doc­u­ment­ed wide­spread exec­u­tive over­reach, includ­ing freez­ing con­gres­sion­al­ly appro­pri­at­ed funds, dis­man­tling agen­cies, remov­ing Inspectors General, and ignor­ing fed­er­al court rulings—actions described as unprece­dent­ed threats to con­sti­tu­tion­al checks and balances.
  • Retaliation against crit­ics and mis­use of fed­er­al author­i­ty:
    The admin­is­tra­tion tar­get­ed indi­vid­u­als and insti­tu­tions that chal­lenged it, includ­ing civ­il ser­vants, local offi­cials, and advo­ca­cy groups, rais­ing con­cerns about intim­i­da­tion and ero­sion of demo­c­ra­t­ic norms.

Foreign Policy Escalation

  • Unauthorized mil­i­tary action in Venezuela:
    U.S. forces con­duct­ed strikes lead­ing to the cap­ture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro with­out con­gres­sion­al approval. Lawmakers across par­ties ques­tioned the legal­i­ty of ini­ti­at­ing what some called an “unau­tho­rized war,” warn­ing it set a dan­ger­ous prece­dent for uni­lat­er­al mil­i­tary action.

Domestic Governance & Public Institutions

  • Federal takeover of local inves­ti­ga­tions and pub­lic spaces:
    The admin­is­tra­tion removed local over­sight from federal‑agent shoot­ings and attempt­ed to seize con­trol of Washington, D.C.’s munic­i­pal golf cours­es despite the non­prof­it operator’s suc­cess­ful stewardship—moves crit­ics saw as abus­es of fed­er­al pow­er for polit­i­cal or per­son­al motives.

Sources

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