An American Murder
from the the-land-of-the-free,-home-of-the-brave dept
Two weeks ago, ICE agent Jonathan Ross murdered Renee Nicole Good in cold blood. I said then that we had to abolish ICE and impeach Trump & Noem before they incited another murder.
As more details have emerged, it’s only looked worse. Multiple angles of video showed Good was trying to avoid hitting anyone. Ross, stupidly, stepped in front of her vehicle to film her license plate. The video shows her backing up and turning away from him.
Now the gunshot evidence reveals it was even worse than we knew. Of the three shots Ross fired, only one was fatal: one fired well after her car was clear of him, shooting through the side window. He executed her as she drove away.
The administration lied. They claimed she was aiming to harm ICE agents when she was doing no such thing. They called her a domestic terrorist.
Then Tom Homan made a promise. He claimed that if people didn’t stop calling ICE and CBP murderers, they were just going to have to murder again.
Now they have. In cold blood, they murdered Alex Pretti.
It was an American murder.
Let’s be clear about what Pretti did and did not do. He was not protesting. He was not brandishing a weapon. He had a legal, holstered gun, which he never touched and never sought to grab. His “crime” was helping direct traffic, videotaping what immigration officers were doing, and then moving to help a woman who had been pepper sprayed and knocked down on the ice — even as Pretti himself had been pepper sprayed.
He was helping. That’s all.
And yet, once again, the worst of the Trump administration rushed to blatantly lie. They claimed he was a terrorist. That he came to murder federal officers. That he brandished a weapon. None of that is true.
By all accounts Pretti was a good person — an ICU nurse at the VA hospital, someone about whom there has been an outpouring of stories describing a kind, gentle, helping man. But none of that should matter. If he wasn’t an ICU nurse. If he wasn’t a nice guy. Even if he wasn’t an American citizen. Nothing he did would justify being shot multiple times in the middle of the street.
Incredibly, the party that made the Second Amendment’s “right to bear arms” the most consequential and central plank of their entire identity is now trying to claim that merely possessing a legal, holstered gun justifies being murdered by federal agents.
It was an American murder.
Kash Patel went on Fox News and claimed, falsely, “You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have a right to break the law and incite violence.”
Except that’s bullshit. The MAGA right has a long history of proudly showing up at protests brandishing loaded weapons. Sarah Longwell compiled some examples that make the hypocrisy unavoidable. MAGA doesn’t care. They know they’re lying and they get a thrill from it. It’s a game to them to lie because it “triggers the libs.”
They will justify and celebrate murder so long as they can meme it and parade around how mad it makes empathetic people to see their friends and neighbors murdered.
Hell, Kyle Rittenhouse became a hero of the MAGA right not just for showing up to a protest brandishing a loaded weapon, but for killing people. Kash Patel publicly berated “the left” for not giving Rittenhouse “due process” (which he did, in fact, receive), and now claims that Pretti deserved to be murdered for doing far less.
JD Vance, who has been blaming Minnesota officials because he knows he has to make shit up, once praised Kyle Rittenhouse:
He saw a bunch of thugs and rioters destroying his community, and no one was doing anything about it. You know one of the values that represent my community, if not honor and loyalty and devotion to your community. This 17-year-old boy saw no one protecting the businesses, the people, the community. So he went down there and did it.
It wasn’t even Rittenhouse’s community. He lived in a different state entirely.
Pretti did live in Minneapolis. And he, too, saw thugs and rioters destroying his community. They just happened to be federal agents. And he got murdered for trying to help.
The MAGA world rushed to blame him.
It was an American murder.
A man, a helper, shows up to help. Yes, he’s carrying a gun. But it’s legal to do so. He had it legally. He could carry it legally. He never once sought to use it. Instead, he sought to help people. Help them navigate a crowded street. Help witness the actions of federal agents who were kidnapping and attacking people. Help the woman near him who was pepper sprayed and knocked over.
And he got murdered for it.
Every bit of it is obscene. Every bit of it is unnecessary.
And the rush by Trump officials and their cult-like followers to justify it? That’s American too. The lies, so blatant, so obvious. These people have learned that truth doesn’t matter anymore, so long as they can repeat the lies enough on enough friendly TV networks. They will always have pathetic cult members who will repeat and pass them on.
Renee Good’s final words were “Dude, we’re not mad at you.”
The agent who murdered her responded “fucking bitch” after shooting her through the head.
Alex Pretti’s final words were “Are you okay?” — spoken to someone who needed help.
Some of the agents involved in his murder mock cried “boo hoo” at the people screaming at them for killing a man in the street who did nothing wrong.
Where else but America could you have a helper murdered by federal officials in broad daylight for doing nothing but helping, while carrying a gun he did not brandish?
Where else but America would you see federal officials mock those who were shocked and upset by the murder?
Where else but America would you see federal officials immediately blame the victim for exercising his Second Amendment rights — the same rights those officials claimed to hold sacred?
Where else but America?
This was an American murder.
Filed Under: alex pretti, cbp, dhs, ice, jd vance, kash patel, lies, minneapolis, murder, renee good, tom homan
Comments on “An American Murder”
Abolishing ICE must now go hand-in-hand with punishing ICE. “Trials at the Hague” is now the moderate option—not the ceiling, but the floor. And while we’re at it, abolishing the fascist-sounding Department of Homeland Security would be a good thing, too. One could argue it’s necessary because of 9/11, but I’d argue that DHS could’ve been a thing before 9/11 and it likely still wouldn’t have stopped that attack.
We got along fine before DHS and ICE, we can get along fine without them again, and immigrants (regardless of legal status) are far less of a problem than billionaires. Renee Good and Alex Pretti would still be alive today if not for Trump and his cronies giving more of a shit about punishing brown people for being brown than about helping poor people due to extreme wealth inequality. I’m an atheist and I still hope all of those fascist fucks burn in Hell forever.
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“One could argue it’s necessary because of 9/11, but I’d argue that DHS could’ve been a thing before 9/11 and it likely still wouldn’t have stopped that attack.”
That’s a very good point. An adversary careful, patient, and thorough enough to plan the 9/11 attacks is also careful, patient, and thorough enough to route around DHS.
A possible counterargument to this — which I’ve heard — is “But then why have no such attacks happened?” to which my response is “Why should they?” The US has already done an incredible amount of damage to itself, and now the pace at which that damage is being inflicted is dramatically increasing. There’s no need for any adversary to do anything…but wait.
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To wit: Russia. Putin could have actively tried to tear down the current world order, but why should he have to put in the effort himself when Trump is doing the job for him? Even if Trump isn’t actually a Russian agent, he’s still a useful idiot.
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And that ironically, these fucks deserve to be as hated as the 9/11 hijackers. Never again.
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They hate America and its people more than the 9/11 hijackers.
Re: Still want to know
WHO the hell is training these folks??
Also
Where are the Personnel Camera’s?
Why do they have Bullets? This is supposed to be Peaceful. Cant you see all the pepper spray?
Why do you need 20 people to capture 1 person?
How did you get a list of people to arrest, when you are Stopping Every car down a main street?
When are you going to Visit Rep States? I think you went to texas?? and got kicked?
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And people did argue such, which is why it exists. But more Americans have died from avoiding the TSA and their bullshit (in road accidents while driving instead) than died in the terrorist attacks.
At first, I though that this shameless administration would say that Pretti was under “Excited Delirium” because he was pretty agitated when many officers were busy smashing him.
But no, we’re really dealing with fucking immoral people that will continue their purge against anyone not applauding them, and will blame the partial shutdown to trying to be even worse for the next months.
Silly me for thinking they would stop murdering people once immigration would be at history low. They’ll always need more blood.
So when is ICE going to stop bringing guns, inciting violence, and breaking the law?
There will be a reckoning.
At some point, this criminal Administration will be out of office, and sane individuals will be elected to the Presidency and Congress. And, when that happens, those that have perpetrated crimes and abuses must answer for them.
Two things should happen here:
First, the United States should formally join the Statutes of Rome, subjecting it to the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court. At that point, we should then hand over the highest-level criminals of this administration (Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Stephen Miller, others) to the Court, to stand trial on charges of war crimes and/or crimes against humanity.
Second, there must be a Nuremberg-style trial for all officers of ICE. For those guilty of the most heinous crimes, we must erect gallows.
There are other aspects of the reckoning that should happen, including measures, both in statute and in Constitutional Amendment, to ensure that, like the Holocaust, this never happens again. We will never be able to hold our heads up among the free nations of the world again unless this is done.
There will be a reckoning.
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Third, do not forget that this regime had the blessing of around a third of the electorate. Pick any 2 of the people on your block, and on average one of them shares the blame of enabling this.
Oh, and the blame also falls on a large part of the big donors, who wield the actual political power. They too were OK with this.
Speaking as a European: if you really want to re-join the civilized nations, then abolish the death penalty before you bring the monsters to trial.
Re: Re: You have to watch out with collective blaming
The resolution of WWI was all about making Germans collectively pay. That was the on-ramp to WWII.
In contrast, after WWII the Marshall Plan achieved several generations of political, social, and economic stability.
An eye for an eye (more often than not, generously rounding up) may seem just to the one exacting it. It doesn’t work for deescalation.
If you want to go at a third of the populace for their voting choices, you’ll end up with civil war. For better or worse, you need to confine the penalties to the criminals and work on the enablers with ultimately getting their buy-in with the alternatives.
When you have to choose, it makes more sense to fix the future than the past.
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Now tell us about what a wild success the Reconstruction’s pardons for Confederates were.
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In my mind, the next President should issue an executive order reading much like this:
Whereas I find that the MAGA ideology, as espoused by former President Donald Trump and as enshrined in the “Project 2025” document from the Heritage Foundation, is inherently authoritarian, pedophilic, and fascist in nature, and as such, is anathema to the Constitution and people of the United States; and
Whereas the events over the second term of the former President (2025-2029) bear witness to the nature of this ideology;
Therefore be it ordered that anyone advocating or promoting the MAGA/Trumpist ideology henceforth SHALL be liable under 18 USC § 2385, advocating the overthrow of the government, and shall be subject to prosecution and sentencing under that provision as prescribed by law.
(Yes, the language will need fixing up, by someone who is an actual lawyer.)
Effectively, our government has been overthrown by the Orange Felon and his ilk. A measure like this would emphasize that we can’t let it happen again.
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The idea is tempting, but it once again has to deal with the same problem that a lot of similar ideas have: If you give this power to the people you trust to use it correctly (and the courts uphold it), you also risk giving this power to the people you wouldn’t trust to have it. What happens if a conservative president uses a court ruling that says “yeah, sure, that order is perfectly legal” to both undo the original order and issue an order that targets left-leaning political beliefs?
As much as it pains me that we can’t punish Trumpists for being Trumpists under the law, that’s how it must be. The protections we give their rights are the same ones we give to our rights. Any attack on their rights is an attack on ours; pull that trigger at your own peril.
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Here’s the deal, Stephen: As we reconstruct the government and pass new laws post-Trump and post-Trumpism, it’ll be you and your principles that you built up under the pre-Trump status-quo, versus the lived-in experiences of the victims of Trump’s regime. Which do you think should win out in the end?
As with other nations that went through authoritarian hell, we are going to have to pass laws and directives to stop it from happening again. And honestly we wouldn’t be going through this nightmare had we passed real hate speech laws post-WW2 alongside the nations who actually had to live through the hell of fascist invasion and occupation.
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No there won’t be a reckoning. Stop deluding yourself. If there were going to be a reckoning there already would have been, and cheeto would never have been elected again. But he was, and if that doesn’t clarify for you which direction our country prefers to go, then I don’t know what will.
There will be no reckoning. All of these sacks of shit will go on with their merry lives and have no repercussions whatsoever.
Even the NRA’s going “Whoa, hold on there, did you just say it’s okay for the cops to kill people just because they’re carrying?”
Now that ICE has killed a white guy with a gun, white guys with guns have finally discovered empathy.
Re: A more dangerous weapon
My take on it is that Pretti was executed because he was carrying (and using) a far more dangerous weapon than a gun:
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Yeah, I watched that Jon Stewart monologue too.
Not that this comes as any surprise, but apparently Karoline Leavitt just blamed Democrats for these murders at a WH press conference.
The entire administration consists of sociopaths.
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Karoline Leavitt is a disingenuous, openly lying, insincere and unserious pathological piece of demagogical scum not worth taking serious or being called a human being.
As such, she is the perfect choice for speaking on behalf of the White House and current cabinet.
Shakes Head
I don’t think you peeps realize that as long as this government is in power it won’t let itself be held accountable for it’s own actions
Each and every crime they commit makes it less and less viable from their perspective for them to allow honest elections or even dishonest ones
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“A man’s rights rest in three boxes. The ballot box, jury box and the cartridge box. Let no man be kept from the ballot box because of his color. Let no woman be kept from the ballot box because of her sex.” — Frederick Douglass
I think you overestimate the support Trump and his regime have. You might also underestimate the ability of The Left™ to fight back if and when it becomes necessary. You think all the guns are held by right-wingers? You think right-wingers make up the majority of people in the streets doing legal observer duties and protecting their communities from the fascists? And do you really think even a slim majority of members of the American military are ready and willing to go into American cities and kill American citizens in the name of Donald Trump?
A belief in the members of this regime being punished for their crimes may be overly optimistic, sure. But a belief that they’re going to win—that they’re going to be in power forever, that the general public won’t fight back—is far more delusional. One look at the protests in Minneapolis should have taught you that.
Besides, the ability of this regime to cancel or even rig elections is rather limited. Republican-led states might go along with such plans, but Democrat-led states won’t. And believe it or not, Trump does not have the manpower to send soldiers and federal agents to every major metropolitan area in the United States. Even CBP and ICE can only do their operations in three major cities at a time at most because the country is just that big and the manpower of those agencies can’t cover all those cities in one fell swoop.
They are going to lose. Some of them may even be held accountable. To believe otherwise is to believe in fascist propaganda. All of us may not live to see that day, but we are going to win.
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“You might also underestimate the ability of The Left™ to fight back if and when it becomes necessary.”
Quite so. “Beware the fury of a patient man.” — John Dryden
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― Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
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This is a good point. But as Churchill said (or is often attribute to him): All it takes for evil men to triumph is for good me to do nothing.
I am somewhat optimistic. The level of protects, and people that actual care is encouraging. However, we are already at the ‘people are dying in the streets’ stage. I wish the US were at a point where we did not need any more martyrs.
You want to know the really fucked up part of all of this? The whole operation in Minnesota has and continues to be wildly successful. Allow me to explain.
First off, Donald Trump is not a racist. I don’t think he sincerely holds any actual belief that Minnesota is some sort of hotbed of illegal immigration in need of fixing (or that he holds any sincere beliefs at all really). What he does believe is that his supporters simply don’t care what happens there (up to and including killing Minnesotans, even Minnesotan Americans), and most importantly it gets the latest crisis out of the news.
It doesn’t matter to him that people are dying. People dying is great because that means the news cycle can’t focus on Epstein stuff, which is apparently the only public news topic that he really truly seems to care deeply about. The real fucked up part is that he’s killing Americans not in some hateful quest to stick it to non-white people, but simply to keep himself (or more likely someone quite close to him) from getting named in some at-least-ten-years-old smut.
And look. Lo and behold! It’s working. Trump’s administration continues (as it always has) to bleed people who thought they could ride the tiger but are now discovering they can’t stomach this [insert crisis du jour], only to surely be replaced with ever more embarrassing seals who are eager to heil, er, clap on command. Same as it ever was. “He’s losing support on immigration!” major newspapers trumpet, trying to find one statistic where Trump is sagging lower than he did last week, because they can’t report that his net approval rating still stands at 37% without having moved in a statistically significant manner since September. Trump has lost no real support at all, because Joe MAGA Hat in bumfuck Tennessee doesn’t care about
white responsible licensed gun owning/carrying Americans(Mike, plz add Strikethrough) LiBeRaLs getting gunned down by masked goons on the other side of the country. The Epstein report that apparently doesn’t even name Trump directly is still unreleased and the crisis over it has been all but forgotten.Multiple people are dead and the Donald is sleeping happily at night. He’s not even happy that they are dead. He doesn’t even know who they are. He actually just doesn’t even care.
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Oh. Strikethrough works now. It’s not in the Markup. Boy do I feel silly now.
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what
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God, I was so thrown by that I didn’t even notice this
You…don’t seem clear on what “net” means.
or this
What an odd thing to say. How do you know what’s in the unreleased documents? And if Trump’s not implicated, why won’t he release them?
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Donald Trump kicked off his political career by referring to Mexicans as thugs and rapists. His entire political career started specifically because he wanted to upstage the first Black man to be US president after said Black man mocked Trump to his face. He and his father once settled a lawsuit involving racial discrimination that the government said showed the Trumps had failed to comply with the Fair Housing Act. For fuck’s sake, he hired Stephen Miller—a man who is legitimately more racist than Trump and truly believes in white nationalism—to work in the regime. To say Donald Trump isn’t a racist is to whitewash his history as a landlord and a politician.
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Also, all the shit he’s been saying about Somalis is racist as fuck, and being pretextual doesn’t make it less racist.
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And he also bought into and helped spread the slander against Haitians during the 2024 campaign season.
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Yeah, the examples of his racism are legion. The NYT had a pretty good list back in 2018 (Donald Trump’s Racism: The Definitive List) but that was just a year into his first term; it’s woefully out-of-date.
“Donald Trump is not a racist” is just a staggering thing to say, and of a piece with n00bdragon’s posts which are always superficially anti-Trump but usually include some subtext that he’s not as bad as we think, or if he is he’s still not as bad as Harris, or if he is we should “resist” him in a way that actually benefits him like voting third-party or opposing defensive gerrymanders, but anyway it’s all hopeless and nothing’s going to change.
I don’t think we’ve had a poster put so much effort into ineffectually pretending to be anti-Trump since Mason Wheeler.
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There is an argument to be made that Trump’s racism is essentially opportunistic. He is racist because it buys him more votes than it costs him. Populism, inciting vocal majorities against minorities, is the Achilles heel of democracy since the only defense is education and insight into the value of compassion.
The U.S., however, is already all-in on capitalism on the basis of the idea that greed and self-interest are the best and most reliable building blocks for a stable society.
Trump doesn’t have morals. None. Arguably he embraces racism because it pays for him. Get your fellow humans to stop rewarding him for it, and he’ll change approach.
He is a succubus feeding on and feeding human weaknesses. Evil is just a means to an end for him, it doesn’t carry meaning. For him racism is not a conviction but a strategy, like the “Southern Strategy” has been for the Republican Party.
It may be true that he is not inherently a racist. What he is is worse.
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Which means he’s worse than actual racists, their beliefs aren’t centered around opportunistic selfishness. Still, the rule of goats apply.
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And wouldn’t you know it, he uses the same tactic Mason always did when called on his bullshit: whoops, where’d he go?
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Don’t forget how 35 years ago he ran full page ads in New York papers demanding the deaths of the innocent Central Park Five, and even after the real culprit confessed and the DNA he provided proved it was him, Trump still suck to this position.
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Remember when Trump promised to build a wall and have Mexico pay for it? If things get bad enough in the U.S., Mexico might have to go ahead and do that.
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Canado could pay for a wall in the North, and maybe Denmark can be persuaded to pay for a lid.
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You forgot about taking out a full page ad in the newspaper to call for the execution of five black men before the trial was even over, and NEVER apologizing for it even after they were found not guilty, and in fact DOUBLING DOWN at every opportunity on lying about their guilt. Cheeto is a racist down to his very core, it informs his every motive and every.
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Just because the actions in Minnesota aren’t actually about immigration doesn’t suddenly mean that Trump isn’t a racist.
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First, I’m generally very skeptical about claims that Horrible Thing Donald Trump Has Done Number 1 is a distraction from Horrible Thing Donald Trump Has Done Number 2.
Second, even in cases where such claims might actually be true, I don’t really see why I should care that much.
There’s nothing American about having a Gestapo branch in a US Federal agency.
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Hey, you had a longer run than the Weimar Republic. You got complacent for too long.
And now we have the 21st century, Reichstag version of the parable of the Good Samaritan.
What, 20 comments already before this one, and AFAICS none of them is one of the usual trolls explaining the reasons why shooting a man dead with a series of shots while your buddies are simultaneously holding him down and beating him up is somehow self-defense? I admit I’m surprised.
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They’re waiting for their talking points.
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Yeah, that might be it.
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The way even right-wing mouthpieces like Fox News are criticizing this reminds me of January 6, right after it happened and before they’d gotten their story straight and gone back to carrying water for Trump.
The difference between then and now is that Trump was on his way out of office and they had years to gaslight their audience before he came back to power. But now we’ve had two extensively-covered ICE murders in the span of a few weeks and I’m sad to say that it’s almost certainly just the beginning. It’s a lot harder to make people forget what really happened when it just keeps happening.
American Murder?
Where else? All sorts of other totalitarian regimes. Iran. North Korea. Afghanistan. Many African dictatorships…
Wherever some tinpot despot and his cronies get the opportunity to set up shop, this almost always happens. Government enforcers murder critics. State propagandists spin it as executing a dangerous criminal. Rinse. Repeat.
The next old favorite is bound to be “We can’t hold elections due to a State of Emergency” which will last until they complete the task of rigging the electoral system.
The USA isn’t as special as you seem to think it is.
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Do you not know what “federal” means?
Oh. I guess you don’t.
For the record,I don’t really agree with the last couple of paragraphs, either.
If there’s some truth in that part of the post, it’s mainly because the kind of countries where this kind of thing happens all the time often don’t bother with a federalist form of government, so they might not have any such thing as a federal agent or a federal official. And the particular combination of crassness and bombast shown by the pieces of trash who want this and make it possible might be specifically USA-nian, though the current President of Argentina would make a good counter-example.
But replace “federal” with “state” or “government”, and there are lots of places where people do this kind of thing all the time.
There are many things wrong with the USA, and the people in charge keep adding more things to the list. But the idea that the place where one lives oneself clearly has to be the worst place in the world is usually an ultimate expression of provincialism.
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Yeah, that’s fair, you and Bolivar have a point and I was being too cute with the semantics.
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(Though in case it wasn’t clear, I am saying that the federal government can’t just cancel elections, that’s not how it works in America; elections are run by the states.
But the federal government can certainly interfere with elections, and that’s exactly what it’s doing in Minneapolis, both because sending in agents is a dry run for doing it again in November at various strategic locations throughout the country, and because Bondi is trying to get Minnesota to hand its voter rolls over to the DoJ.)
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My point was actually more that in a totalitarian state, you wouldn’t even have these kinds of “observers” and in the rare cases where you did, they would be unlikely to have legal firearms.
While they might be killed it would be for different reasons. Perhaps I’m threading too fine a needle, but…
And this what happens when you give knuckle-dragging thugs and cavemen power and deadlier clubs and then let them loose on the population.
What the actual fuck, America? Seriously.
Like, really, what are you doing, with the Gestapo executing innocent people on the streets, kidnapping toddlers and all the other shit that’s happening?
I never dreamed that the USA would one day become The Fascist States of America. Good luck. You’re gonna need it.
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That is a truly baffling thing for somebody who named himself after the Central Scrutinizer to say.
Like, did you just stop listening to the album after the first four words?
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That’s a piece of music, not the real world. Big difference, in case you didn’t know.
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And 1984 is a novel, and boy, I guess you must be super-confused that people keep bringing it up.
“Where else but America would you see federal officials immediately blame the victim for exercising his Second Amendment rights — the same rights those officials claimed to hold sacred?”
Extremely dishonest statement. Other countries don’t really have “second amendment rights” as such like we do, so of course you won’t see someone getting shot for exercising rights that aren’t relevant to their country. But you do see, for example, people in the UK being arrested and frog-marched to jail for posting edgy jokes on Twitter despite the UK nominally having freedom of speech.
American Exceptionalism is still American Exceptionalism when you’re claiming America is exceptionally bad.