#youtube transcript

Look, I want to be working on videos about smallpox history and peat bogs and the ocean sunfish. And I would, of course, much rather this video be any of those videos. I don't want to be talking about this. I want very badly to be an internet science guy because that is a very good job with this fairly low stress.

It's very interesting. But one of the things about being a science guy is that truth just feels really important because that's what science is, right? It's like a bunch of tools that we use to get a sharper and sharper understanding of reality. As we say a lot on this channel, everything we know is something we figured out. And if you're thinking, and I know some of you are, God, I wish Hank would stay out of politics. I do too. I don't want to be here.

But I can't stop thinking about Renee Good and truth. There are a lot of things that we don't know about Renee Good or the man who killed her. But there are things that we do know. We know that Renee Good turned her steering wheel so that her car would not be pointed toward the officer. Now certainly the officer may not have noticed that but we do know that if she had wanted to kill him she would have acted very differently.

And there are some other facts here like that Donald Trump said that she viciously ran over an ICE officer which is not true. And Kristi Noem said that what she did was an act of domestic terrorism and that is also not true.

I was raised in the era of "I did not have sexual relations with that woman." I know that politicians lie. But there's something different going on here. They have no chance of getting away with their lies. We all know that she was not a terrorist who ran over an ICE agent. Everyone agrees she would have taken very different actions if her intent were to kill someone.

Now, there's probably some people composing a comment right now, either in their heads or down in the comments. They're going to write, "She shouldn't have been doing what she was doing. She shouldn't have been fleeing. She should have been listening to what the officers are saying."

This video isn't really about that. It's not about what she should have done. It's not even really about what the ICE agent should have done. I'm not going to show you the video, of course, but it is very clear in the video that the first shot went through the windshield and the second and third shots went through the open driver's side window.

And I know that it's just not my bias, saying that this is difficult to justify because instead of attempting to defend it, JD Vance simply lied about it. In a reply to a tweet about this, he said,

"Side window?" You could see the photos of the car with bullet holes. The shots came from the front of the car because that's where the officer was standing when he was hit by the car. He is allowed to discharge his weapon in self-defense.

"The shots came from the front of the car." [...] "You could see photos of the car with bullet holes." These two sentences astound me because they indicate that either the vice president has been basing all of his commentary about this situation on an incorrect belief that could be corrected by watching the video that much of America has already watched, or he is perfectly okay lying about well-known and easily discoverable facts. The officer fired two shots through an open side window point blank.

And JD Vance says the shots came from the front and there are bullet holes to back him up. These statements are not true. I don't know anyone who thinks these statements are true. These lies are about very simple, visual, concrete things, things that millions of people can independently verify for themselves.

And this is the thing I can't shake. In science, when someone shows you data that contradicts your claim, you have a few options. You can update your belief. You can argue about interpretation. You can point out limitations. You can even say, "I was wrong." What you cannot do, at least for very long, is pretend that the data don't exist. Reality doesn't cooperate with that strategy.

What we are watching right now is a set of leaders behaving as if reality is optional. As if the goal is not to understand what happened, but to establish dominance over the narrative as quickly and as forcefully as possible. And this is of course unscientific, but it also feels to me like fundamentally disrespectful to the intelligence and agency of the American people. I know that there are some folks who are like along for the ride with these guys. Like some people certainly are fine with the lies because they feel that the lies are in service of some greater mission and that makes them justifiable. But that's not most Americans. Most people see a lie for the disrespect that it is.

And this is important. Like, this is not a verifiable fact. But but do you think that they would be lying about this if they didn't think the shooting deserved more justification than the facts gave us? They'd stick to the truth if they thought the truth was enough. And so I think that they are showing by their actions that they also don't believe the shooting was justified. Otherwise, they wouldn't be lying.

I keep thinking about this for two reasons. First, it matters a lot for America whether or not we are a country where the truth still matters. But second, and this is I'm sorry, but I keep thinking about Renee Good. She has been treated terribly. And not just by random trolls on the internet or jerk pundits whose job is to get attention-- by the men who have been entrusted to lead this nation.