domestic terrorism

Unmasking the Divide: Jake Lang vs. Renee Good – Two Faces of Activism in a Fractured America

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The events unfolding in Minnesota this month highlight a stark contrast in how individuals engage with controversy and authority. On one side stands Jake Lang, the January 6 pardoned agitator who assaulted police officers with a baseball bat and shield during the Capitol riot. On the other is Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three, poet, and community member who was fatally shot by an ICE agent on January 7, 2026, amid the dramatically heightened Federal immigration enforcement operations in Minneapolis.

While I ultimately disagree with Renee Good’s methods along with life choices—confronting Federal agents in a way that escalated a tense situation—I see her as a misguided local mom standing up in her own community against what appeared to be an overreach by armed Federal officers. Reports describe her stopping her vehicle near an ICE operation after dropping her child at school, possibly to observe or support neighbors in a residential area. Federal accounts claim she attempted to use her car as a weapon, but the bystander videos, witness statements, and local and state officials have disputed this, calling the shooting unjustified and questioning whether the agent followed proper training and protocols. Good was killed during the encounter, sparking nationwide outrage, protests, vigils, and calls for accountability—though the DOJ has declined to investigate the agent.

Good’s death feels like a tragic escalation born from genuine concern over Federal actions in her neighborhood, even if her approach risked danger. She wasn’t traveling cross-country to provoke; she was in her own backyard, acting on what she saw as violations of rights—potentially the 4th and 5th Amendments amid warrantless stops and aggressive tactics.  And while I may not agree with her politics or lifestyle, she’s a citizen of the United States.

Expediency isn’t an excuse.  A violation of one principle or person is a threat to all.

Contrast that with Jake Lang, who I believe actively harms conservative causes and civil discourse alike. Lang, pardoned for his role in January 6 violence, has a pattern of inserting himself into flashpoints to inflame divisions. He recently organized a very small “March Against Minnesota Fraud” rally near Minneapolis City Hall on January 17, 2026—framed around anti-immigration and anti-Somali messaging, including plans to burn a Quran. The event drew massive counter-protesters who outnumbered his group, chased him away, doused him with liquids in freezing weather, and left him bruised and claiming injury (including a reported stab wound). Photos show a Black protester lifting his plate carrier (foolishly worn without plates) amid the scuffle; rumors of him losing control in the moment circulated widely.

Lang’s stunts—Nazi salutes outside AIPAC, provocative bacon displays in Dearborn, and now this anti-Islam rally—seem calculated to exacerbate tensions. He poses as an Evangelical Christian white nationalist and “America First” voice, yet his actions ring as performative and divisive. Traveling thousands of miles simply to instigate, he turns peaceful concerns of citizens into opportunities for opponents to paint the entire right as extremist. This fascist agitation discredits legitimate criticism of policies (like immigration enforcement or foreign influence) by manufacturing associations with hate.

I’m really hoping that my conservative friends can distinguish between: a guy who helped turn a peaceful protest of alleged election fraud into an opportunity for Democrats to brand the entire Jan. 6 crowd as insurrectionists—who literally assaulted a police officer with a baseball bat, who should not have been pardoned, and who at least acts like a Nazi with his Sieg Heil salutes and who travels thousands of miles just to cause trouble;
and a misguided mom being active in her own community, standing up to what looks like an invasion of federal agents, and truly exposing what look like violations of the 4th and 5th Amendments.

Does this truly represent American conservatives?

Lang’s agitation fits a broader destabilization playbook: pitting factions against each other to deplete energy on all sides, fueling fear of Islam (if love for Israel can’t be won, hate for Muslims will do), and manufacturing “Nazi” strawmen to smear America First views. It distracts from real scandals—like Epstein-related corruption or DOJ transparency failures—while provoking chaos that benefits neither side.

Renee Good’s story, tragic as it is, stems from local concern gone wrong. Jake Lang’s thrives on manufactured conflict that poisons discourse. Conservatives should reject the latter and focus on principled, community-rooted engagement—not imported provocation. Let’s see through the agitators and reclaim civil, substantive debate before more divisions tear us apart.

The Bigger Deception

Good, agree with her or not, was probably what she appeared to be: A lesbian leftist who did not agree with Trump’s unprecedented immigration enforcement regime which is clearly violating the rights of US citizens by officers demanding they prove their legal status.  Civil disobedience has been a feature of American politics since at least the time of the Boston Tea Party.  She’s akin to the colonial Minutemen warning “the British are coming” to those who wanted to protect their illegal stash of military arms.  The legendary Revolutionary “shot heard ’round the world” was fired against those impeding a policing operation who had refused to disperse, like the many Minneapolis residents—including Good.

Jacob, by contrast, may shout “Christ is King” and say he is part of the America First movement, yet he probably represents a foreign regime.  Does a real Christian put a funny hat on their head and kiss a wall in Israel?

If he’s not a Psyop, then he sure acts the part.

Why is he kissing the wall?

What I mean by that is that intelligence agencies—like the CIA and Mossad—will run operations to sow seeds of discord.  In places like Ukraine (or Iran) they will stir protests, orchestrate terrorism and shoot police and protesters alike just to try to cause tensions to boil over.  There’s an excellent article in Foreign Policy magazine, “False Flag,” describing this underreported scheme to stoke hostilities between the US and Iran.  If you keep your enemies fighting each other rather than to finally notice who is actually driving the conflict—you gain by their loss.

If you don’t understand, here’s a personal story from my son’s elementary school days which illustrates how agitators operate:

One day, out of nowhere, my son got punched on the school bus. After he defended himself and punched back, the dust settled, and the truth emerged: a third kid had orchestrated the whole thing. This instigator had quietly lied to the attacker, claiming my son had said something insulting about him, deliberately provoking the fight while staying in the background as things unfolded.  Thankfully, the adults investigated quickly, saw through the manipulation, and punished the true originator—the actual bully who started it all—far more severely (three times as harshly, in fact) than the two boys who were drawn into the conflict not realizing they were being played against each other.

Things aren’t always as they appear.  I’ve run into those who think Lang is some kind of hero for his attention-seeking provocation.  They are typically Evangeli-con types too absorbed in the tit-for-tat of the culture war—or too obtuse to ever ask why Jerry Falwell Sr, a leader of the “Moral Majority,” was gifted a Lear jet by an Israeli Prime Minister in 1980.  The reality is that powerful players are manufacturing consent with characters like Lang or dozens of others taking the $7000 deal.  We’re being played.  Merchants of hate do not represent Christ or the American ideal conservatives claim to cherish.  Do not be a pawn in a game that you do not understand.  Instead consider this:

When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the Lord your God.

(Leviticus 19:33-34 NIV)

I keep running into those who argue expediency is necessary to save the country from an invasion of foreigners.  In that they’re completely fine with suspension of even the rights of US citizens so ICE can drag people off the streets for not producing proof of their legal status.  This is unlawful.  This is an infringement on the rights that were fought for during the American Revolution.  If the 4th or 5th Amendments can be ignored simply because someone looks foreign then they can be ignored if an officer claims you look guilty—and the right has been erased in a way not even George Orwell could have imagined.

If the Trump administration cared about pedophiles on the loose they would prosecute those named in the Epstein files.  Instead they continue to refuse to obey the law ordering the full and unredacted (other than victims) files.  Who or what is being protected by this ongoing cover-up?
I’ve been seeing a lot of tu quoque fallacy using indifference about one to justify their indifference about the other.  That’s not Christian love or compassion, that’s partisan hate.

Fixing the problem of illegal immigration isn’t the real aim.  At best it is a distraction.  At worse it is just another excuse (like Covid) to subvert law by using a manufactured crisis.  If the aim was truly to slow or stop illegal immigration they would go after those employing them.  What is happening is protection of our rights is being dismantled by those who—borrowing from George Bush—hate our freedom and democracy.  And, no, this is not those who the right-wing will typically identify as a threat, it is not Iran or a Muslim—it is an Israeli billionaire Shlomo Kramer saying that we need to limit the 1st Amendment to ‘protect’ it.

Those telling you it is “necessary to destroy the town to save it” have either lost their minds, lost the plot, or never cared about the ‘town’ to begin with and are deceiving you.  Those urging us to hate the foreigner, to set aside our Constitution, who side with authoritarians, are they really our friends?  Does an agent who exclaims “f*cking b*tch” right after shooting a woman an example of Christian spiritual fruit?  Is a man who attacks police with a baseball bat, who seeks to inflame tensions (literally has burned books and invaded mosques trying to provoke a Muslim response) adhering to the Romans 12:18 principle of living as peaceably with all men as is possible?

We need to police our own.  Not the other side.  We’re called to be examples, not self-exempted policemen.

We need to overcome evil with good.  We need to take on the lawless by being examples of careful application of the law.  Partisanship blinds us.  It is a tool used to keep us wasting all our ammo on each other, trapped in our cycles of violence and escalation.  We have many foreign agents among us—some with US citizenship—who claim they’re protecting us as they tear at the Christian fabric of this nation and its laws.  We need to stop being so exploitable and stand for something or we will just fall for everything.  Lang is not one of us.  He acts less Christian than the Muslims who recently saved him during one of his provocative stunts—we need to disown this fraud for the sake of the country if not the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Pendulum Swings: Charlie Kirk and the Turning Point of a Nation

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Watching my son’s football game, it felt as if there was an inflection point. The game got off to a rocky start—their offense stumbled on the first drive, the defense gave up a score, and that was the story of the first half. But in the second half, the game’s momentum changed—the defense sparked a three-and-out, their offense finally got on the board, and it was a whole new game. Even luck tilted in their favor, unlike the first half.

So what happened?

How does a team that gave up eight points rally to score fourteen in a comeback?

An inflection point is a change where it feels as if a giant pendulum has swung, reached a peak in one direction, and shifted to a new or opposite course. The momentum shift may become clear only afterward, but often it’s something detectable in the air—an event or palpable shift in attitude that changes the entire complexion. In the game, it could’ve been a small adjustment by the coaches or simply an opportunity to reflect on mistakes and correct them. It could be that the ball broke in the right direction, a matter of probabilities, with the change mostly an illusion. But football is an emotional sport, and even dumb luck can inspire better play from everyone.

We also witnessed a similar shift during the presidential election. Biden was apparently leading in the polls (if such things are to be believed), and then Butler happened. The event came after the disastrous first presidential debate, where Biden clearly was not as advertised, yet it was the image of defiance—“fight, fight, fight”—that sealed the deal. Elon Musk saw this as reason to put his full weight behind Trump, and with a few McDonald’s drive-through moments and photo ops with garbage trucks, the greatest upset win since 2016 was complete.

Love him or loath him, Butler should have been a warning shot for the left—trying to kill your political opposition only makes them stronger and Trump won with a younger browner vote.

The paragraphs above were written before the murder of Charlie Kirk. Over the past few days, he went from the “prove me wrong” guy debating college kids to the center of a national debate. Since his death, there has been a groundswell of support. As those on the left reveal themselves through celebrations of his death and mockery, Kirk’s Turning Point organization has been flooded with 54,000 requests for new chapters at high schools and colleges. His death is a catalyst, much like the two assassination attempts against Trump, and a potential inflection point in the national conversation.

Before the U.S. Civil War officially began, there was an early attempt to free the slaves. John Brown, an evangelical Christian, believed he was on a mission from God to end slavery in the U.S. and led an insurrection that ended with a raid on a federal armory at Harpers Ferry in October 1859. Even before this, the issue of legal slavery had resulted in violent confrontations. In 1837, the abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy was shot while facing down a mob of pro-slavery vandals who were attempting to destroy his printing press. This event sent shockwaves through the U.S. and galvanized John Brown to publicly declare:

“Here, before God, in the presence of these witnesses, from this time, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery.”

John Brown fired the opening shots of civil war, his fierce opposition to slavery inspired by the murder of abolitionist Elijah Parish Lovejoy.

As a writer, I do not create the sentiment of my audience. I merely put into words what other people are thinking or help them organize their thoughts. In other words, if it resonates, it is only because I’ve stated something they’ve already noticed. It also emboldens—when people realize they are not alone in what they see—which is how regimes fall. When people know that others share their understanding and are given a means to articulate it, all it takes is a little push to turn popular sentiment into decisive action.

Synchronicity is one way to describe this. I have often observed many of my friends—likely tuned into similar sources and sharing the same basic assumptions—simultaneously reach an identical conclusion in response to events.

The assassination of Kirk is a moment that galvanizes. It has starkly illustrated how far apart the two partisan sides have become. Some celebrate the murder, spewing vile hatred for a man who was truly a moderate with views similar to those of many Americans. Others are rightly appalled, realizing there is no reasoning or unity with those who believe disagreement deserves a death sentence—that Kirk deserved the bullet.

In a civil society, matters can be debated. If a person says things we don’t like, we still honor their human rights and show respect despite disagreement. But to those on the far left, a statement of fact or an opinion they hate is declared “hate speech,” and saying it out loud constitutes a crime of “spreading hate” that deserves death. This is not an embellishment—a direct quote: “Let this be a lesson to all those conservative freaks, all those weirdos… you’re next in line.” This is a threat we must take seriously when the other side laughs and mocks Kirk’s death—they are not like us.

This is an inflection point, one of those culminating moments where conservatives are independently reaching the same conclusion, and a movement can become galvanized. It will arm Trump to crack down on Antifa and the left-wing in ways he could not have before, with the critical mass of public support he needs.

Freedom of speech doesn’t mean people must associate with you.  I’ve never seen the ‘right’ react with such energy before.

In reality, Charlie Kirk wasn’t an extremist leading anything; he represented the quiet majority who are still able to appreciate the difference between men and women and who want laws applied equally for the protection of all Americans—not favoritism or special preferences for some based on identity or political ideology. They are Charlie. He did not radicalize anyone. All he did was try to explain his perspective and articulate what many believe. But he will now be a rallying cry—like the death of Lovejoy that led to John Brown’s vow—that point in a conflict where the tolerance has been exhausted and it is necessary for the sane to make a stand.

Even for me, as someone who attempts to stake out a position independent of both popular sides, I must go with the side least likely to kill me as a default. There’s nothing I share in common with those who are gleeful and cracking jokes about a man deliberately killed in front of his fans, wife, and young daughters. Cheering for domestic terrorism cannot be tolerated. The backlash against those who couldn’t show civility even after a man’s murder will be a turning point, like the momentum shift in a football game—the people are done playing nice with these monsters.

RIP Charlie Kirk