The Execution of Alex Pretti
Execution may actually be too weak a word. Alex Pretti was slaughtered this weekend, turned from a man into a bloody, riddled carcass.
He was, of course, a very good man. Much like Renee Nicole Good, he was loved ferociously by his family and his friends. What they admired was a quality of fundamental kindness, gentle demeanor, and concern for his neighbors. At the first hint of a gas leak, he alerted the authorities. His former wife testified to his aversion to violence.
He put these strengths into an admirable career as a nurse in the ICU of his local veteran’s hospital. I’ve spent plenty of time looking at his picture and I can imagine that having Alex as your nurse would be a source of security and consolation. We are not looking at some lone wolf crazy, self-radicalized by hours in front of a screen in his basement. He had no addictions to conspiracy theories or dark suspicions. He was, most certainly, not an enemy of the people.
But once again, that is not the story of the administration. It needs an enemy as a pretext for further violence. It needs Alex Pretti to be some ISIS operative, bent on the massacre of Homeland Security. And so the execrable, dissembling Kristi Noem took to the airwaves to describe this placid man as a dangerous enemy who charged federal officials. Such is the nature of the murderous infiltrator, the terrorist who lurks on the ledge of the roof! He had a gun, she brayed, and multiple rounds of ammunition! He had chaos and mayhem in his poisoned heart!
The problem with this story is that it’s a sick fabrication. Yes, Alex Pretti had a gun on his person. I haven’t seen the ammunition, but I believe that, too. But as much as I may oppose citizens carrying guns, it is perfectly legal to carry a firearm in Minneapolis. Alex Pretti bothered to qualify for a permit and the gun he carried was as legal as a fountain pen. You are not allowed to kill an American in the street for a crime he most certainly did not commit.
On top of that, there is video evidence that he never pulled a gun on anyone in the street, let alone a federal officer. I have looked at the recordings like a page of Talmud. The only reason he moves toward the phalanx of ICE-men is to defend a woman they have shoved into the snow. When the officers turn on him, he goes down immediately, subdued in the scrum of over-kill swarming. He uses one hand to hold his phone and the other to shield himself. There is no gun in the video until it is removed by an officer who has probably reached into Alex Pretti’s pocket. It is then that the ICE execution begins: ten gunshots in rapid succession. At this point Pretti had already been immobilized. A minute later he was pronounced dead on the scene.
We will not, of course, get a full accounting of this episode. The Administration cannot afford the truth, which is a set piece of extra-legal violence. Just like Trump’s imaginary victim on Fifth Avenue, Alex Pretti was slaughtered in the street, the second citizen martyr in the War Against Minneapolis. Trump and Co. need these episodes to justify the mobilization of federal troops. How else will he clinch the argument about the midterms? You can’t, after all, hold a national election in the middle of a dangerous insurrection.
ICE Barbie told us that Walz and Frey were individually responsible for the death of Alex Pretti. In order to distract attention from the Somali fraud story, they have turned Minneapolis into a blood-soaked riot zone. I know a little about political distraction, and ICE Barbie has it all wrong. The distraction here is of Donald Trump’s making, and it is designed to camouflage an authoritarian coup.