The stormtroopers hired with your tax dollars are murdering your fellow citizens in the streets.
A nurse this time. A white one, even, not some stray or homeless George Floyd style dog, not some Palestinian girl toddler half a world away. Does that make it better, or worse?
It Happened Again: VA Nurse Killed by ICE in Minneapolis
In the context of things like AI and snow reports and football championships and getting on with the business of living our best lives …
I just thought you should know.
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Toward the end of this video, two little scraps of additional documentation emerge, and on top of the obvious catastrophe of murderous ICE agents executing law-abiding citizens, I found these particularly tragic.
One was from the aged parents of this latest victim, who try to spin their son’s death into some stale anti-Trump message. Clearly, they’re blue-no-matter-who Boomers. The fact that they would use the opportunity in this way makes me frankly sick. Yes. Granted–those killer agents nominally work for the orange man. But god damn it, you tools. He’s just the latest in a long line of propped-up bobbleheads fronting for the real masters of system. Ask one of your dear black friends how this personal tragedy of yours is any different from business as usual in America. Ask yourself how this time from all the times under Biden or Obama or Bush or Lyndon fucking Johnson.
The other clip from some time ago was of the victim himself, Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked at the VA, ritually intoning over the corpse of a deceased veteran. His words form and extended riff on the whole ‘thank you for your service’ meme. It’s all about defending our freedoms and all that bamboozling claptrap. What it says in the end is that this latest death was of someone who had drunk and internalized the poisonous Kool-Aid narrative about what the Empire actually stands for, and probably since he was born.
Meaning, in a limited metaphorical sense, that he was dead long before the gestapo pumped two rounds into his neck and chest, and three more into his back for good measure as he died on the ground, unarmed by then, no threat to anyone ever again.
What will you or I do about his murder?
Very probably nothing, beyond clucking for a minute and getting on with whatever distractions we think we can afford.
One thing we can do, though, is to educate ourselves about the way this sick society really and truly works.
Because at least then, by the time they come for us, we’ll be able to die like people who actually lived in real freedom, instead of mired in the Matrix from our first breaths to our shivering last ones.
A cold comfort, perhaps.
But I for one will take what I can get, morally, spiritually, and if that’s the best I can do … so be it.
Live free AND die, my doves. The last part is mandatory. But the first part is a choice.