In the grand, rotting theater of American politics, we have reached the stage where even the cold embrace of the grave is subjected to a Nielsen rating. Donald Trump, the orange-tinted architect of our collective national descent, has once again demonstrated that for him, reality is not a series of human events, but a ledger of brand loyalty. The latest entry in this ledger concerns Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother who was inconveniently shot dead by an ICE agent—an organization that serves as the blunt, frequently malfunctioning instrument of the state’s insecurities. In a move that would make Machiavelli wince and Narcissus feel underachieving, Trump expressed his ‘hope’ that Good’s father remains a ‘tremendous fan.’ It is the ultimate expression of the modern political condition: your life is a footnote, your death is an anecdote, but your ‘fandom’ is the only currency that doesn’t depreciate.

Let us deconstruct the sheer, staggering vacuity of this sentiment. This is the same man who, in 2020, took a brief break from his busy schedule of tweeting in all caps to label Good a ‘professional agitator.’ In the taxonomy of the Right, ‘agitator’ is the term used for anyone who dares to suggest that the machinery of the state shouldn't be allowed to ventilate its citizens without a receipt. By labeling her an agitator, the state pre-emptively justified her demise. After all, if you are ‘agitating,’ you are essentially volunteering for the bullet. It is the bureaucratic version of ‘she was asking for it,’ applied to the terminal end of a federal firearm. But now, years later, the rhetoric has shifted from condemnation to a bizarre, parasitic hope for continued adoration from the survivors. It’s not enough to be dead; your family must still provide the applause.

Of course, the Left will respond with their usual choreographed paroxysms of outrage. They will fire up the fundraising machines, drafting emails with subject lines like ‘UNTHINKABLE’ and ‘HOLD HIM ACCOUNTABLE,’ while simultaneously voting for budget increases that ensure ICE remains the most well-funded paramilitary force in the suburbs. They treat these tragedies like limited-edition trading cards, collecting the grief of others to bolster their own sense of moral superiority without ever actually dismantling the structures that produce the corpses. They are the ‘performative mourners’ to Trump’s ‘unabashed sociopath.’ Both sides are engaged in a ghoulish dance where the music is the sound of a flatlining EKG and the prize is a three-point bump in the polls.

The concept of the ‘fan’ has replaced the concept of the ‘citizen.’ A citizen has rights, grievances, and a modicum of dignity. A fan, however, is a consumer of a brand who is expected to maintain their brand loyalty regardless of product failure—even if that product failure results in the death of their own kin. Trump’s comment isn’t just a slip of the tongue; it is an honest articulation of the contemporary political contract. He is asking, quite literally, if the father’s devotion to the Golden Calf is strong enough to withstand the sacrifice of his own daughter. It is a biblical level of hubris, stripped of the poetry and replaced with the aesthetic of a failing Atlantic City casino. We are being asked to witness the transformation of grief into a focus group metric.

Historically, rulers at least had the decency to pretend that the death of a subject was a tragedy for the state. Now, the state—or the man who views himself as its personification—views the death as a loyalty test for the bereaved. It is the pinnacle of necro-politics. The ICE agent who pulled the trigger is merely a cog in a machine that neither side actually wants to fix, because the machine is too useful for campaign ads. The Right uses it to signal ‘strength’ to a base that confuses cruelty with competence; the Left uses it to signal ‘compassion’ to a base that confuses retweets with revolution. And in the middle, we have the actually dead, like Renee Good, whose only remaining utility is whether or not her grieving father will still wear a red hat at a rally.

We live in an era where the tragedy is not the loss of life, but the potential loss of a ‘tremendous’ supporter. It is the ultimate triumph of the image over the individual. To Trump, Renee Good isn't a woman, a mother, or a victim; she is a former ‘agitator’ whose death might have caused a minor fluctuation in his approval rating among her immediate family. The hopelessness of our situation is underscored by the fact that this is not an anomaly. It is the logical conclusion of a system that has turned governance into a reality show where the stakes are life and death, but the judging is done by a man who thinks empathy is a brand of off-brand bottled water. We are all just extras in this production, and the best we can hope for is that our deaths don't alienate the fan base.