On the one hand, thank goodness there are videos.

But on the other, America's current leaders couldn't care less what the videos show. They are prepared to say anything at all with a straight face, and there remain millions of Americans happy to believe what these leaders tell them rather than their own eyes.

Here's what the videos show.

Renee Nicole Good, an American citizen, sits idling in her car on a Minneapolis street, her car perpendicular to the sidewalk, partially blocking the street but leaving enough room for cars to pass. Good isn't armed. Her car is stationary. She's not doing anything except sitting in front of the wheel.

An ICE agent named Jonathan Ross circles her car, filming it. From an open window on the driver's side, Good says, "That's fine, dude, I'm not mad at you."

Two federal agents pull their car up a few feet from Good's car and approach it, shouting, "Get out of the car! Get out of the f—-ing car!" One goes to Good's car door and tries to pull it open. Someone shouts, "Drive!"

By now, Ross has gone around to the front of the car, slightly to one side. Had Good wanted to ram him, she could have simply stepped on the gas and driven forward.

She does the opposite.

She puts the car in reverse, moving it away from Ross, exactly the way you do it when you want to turn your car in a different direction. After the car moves in reverse a few feet, she turns the steering wheel hard to the right, in order to get away from the officers, and leave the scene by turning right and driving down the street.

Ross takes out his gun and, as Good is trying to pull away from him, fires one shot through the windshield. Good's car has already moved past Ross, to the right, leaving Ross directly to the side of the driver's car door as Good's car moves away from him. He fires two more shots into Good through an open window.

We know which way Good's car was going, because it continues down the street away from Ross and the other agents, before it crashes into another car down the street. Good crumpled in front of the steering wheel, dying. A voice believed to be Ross's is heard saying "F——ing b—-ch."

Less than thirty seconds later, the gunman, Agent Ross, slips into a car and is driven away.

Meanwhile, a passerby identifies himself as a doctor and asks the agents to let him try to save Good's life.

They tell him no.

In the America that many of us still hold in our hearts, our leaders would express remorse, contact the victim's family and confine themselves to pronouncing it a tragedy. They would pledge a full and fair investigation, pledging that the facts and the law would dictate the outcome. They would act decently, with humanity.

Not these people.

President Donald Trump immediately posted that Good was "a professional agitator," who "was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting, who then violently and viciously ran over the ICE officer."

J.D. Vance accused Good of "classic terrorism," accusing her of "aim(ing) her car at a law enforcement officer." Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem pronounced Good a "domestic terrorist," insisting that she had "weaponized" her car against law enforcement.

These are lies.

In the America we want to cling to, certain things would be obvious.

It doesn't matter how Renee Nicole Good felt about ICE, or that her car was perpendicular in the street to mark her opposition to ICE.

Only two things matter.

The first is that a federal law enforcement agent went up to her stationary car as she sat in it and deliberately pumped three bullets into her face as she first put her car into reverse to get away from him, and then yanked the car in the direction away from him to try to flee the scene.

The second is that we have a president, a vice president and a secretary of homeland security who immediately went out and lied their posteriors off about it.

In the America in our hearts, this would torment our national conscience. But we no longer live in the America that is in our hearts.

Jeff Robbins' latest book, "Notes From the Brink: A Collection of Columns about Policy at Home and Abroad," is available now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Apple Books and Google Play. Robbins, a former assistant United States attorney and United States delegate to the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, was chief counsel for the minority of the United States Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. An attorney specializing in the First Amendment and a longtime columnist, he writes on politics, national security, human rights and the Middle East.

Photo credit: Michael Förtsch at Unsplash