The clear division is made to draw the line separating two sides. Whether Alex Pretti did gun out or the gun was taken away from him and he was shot. The video capturing the scene shows the latter was the case. Whether Pretti is a member of radical Antifa group or not, whether he was ready to shoot at ICE agents with his semiautomatic when he was on the site. The second death occurred Saturday in Minneapolis during the turmoil between ICE and protestors. Trump now tones down the allegation on Pretti as a domestic terrorist, rather he wants a thorough investigation on what really happened. The shooting at Pretti overshadows the welfare-fraud scandal in Minnesota and in other blue states, although there is also a line separating those two, which are though mixing into one to the other, seemingly. Trump allies defend ICE agents for the goal of the operation targeting criminals and illegal migrants at large to be the frame of its most enlarged mission policy. Protestors against ICE see it in a completely different way from the viewpoint of humanitarianism in the best, or as blitz opportunities to attack the Trump administration with no insight as their worst stance.
GOP candidate for the Minnesota governor's race, Chris Madel is reported to drop out from the race for running as a Republican is nearly impossible in the current environment after the killing of Paretti. The report is read in “The Lawyer for the Agent Who Shot Renee Good Thinks ICE Has Gone Too Far” (WSJ; 1/26), which was published this early afternoon, written by Neil Mehta and Valerie Bauerlein.
The WSJ Editorial Board also wrote “Time for ICE to Pause in Minneapolis” (1/25). Its middle section can be read as:
Videos of an event aren’t always definitive, but this is how it looks to us. Pretti attempted, foolishly, to assist a woman who had been pepper-sprayed by agents. Multiple agents then tackled Pretti, and he had a phone in one hand as he lay on the ground. An agent discovered a concealed gun on Pretti, and disarmed him. An agent then shot Pretti, and multiple shots followed.
The Trump Administration spin on this simply isn’t believable. Stephen Miller, the political architect of the mass deportation policy, called Pretti a “domestic terrorist.” He was a nurse without a criminal record.
Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, said the fact that he carried a gun and (she said) two magazines, meant he “arrived at the scene to inflict maximum damage on individuals and to kill law enforcement.”
But he had a license to carry a gun, which was legally concealed, not carried in his hand as some claimed. He was carrying his phone. To hear the ardent gun-rights advocates of the Trump Administration claim he had malicious intentions because he carried a concealed weapon is bizarre.
Pretti made a tragic mistake by interfering with ICE agents, but that warranted arrest, not a death sentence. The agents may say they felt threatened, but it’s worth noting the comments over the weekend by police around the country who say that this isn’t how they conduct law enforcement.
Either many ICE agents aren’t properly trained, or they are so on edge as they face opposition in the streets that they are on a hair trigger. Either way, this calls for rethinking how ICE conducts itself, especially in Minneapolis as tensions build.
I’ve been consistently a supporter of Trump administration and even now I still strongly hope for the success of Trump presidency 2.0. However, I share a normal sense of many people, whether conservative or liberals, regardless. Killing protestors in such manners is not an act in a decent society of liberal democracy.
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Another compelling piece in WSJ is written by Damian Paletta, “Miller, Noem Dig In on Immigration Tactics, but Political Reckoning Is Coming” (1/26), which points out what will be coming. Democrats will aim to shut down the government if DHS changes no immigration policy, or more precisely speaking of it with immediacy according to me, if the department doesn’t withdraw the tactics completely. Trump is already taking nuanced tones on the issue.
Whether the ICE agents’ shooting those two protestors, Renee Good and Alex Pretti, is “murder”, or law enforcement agents’ self-defense, or their following a trained protocol, becomes the point of investigation, in my view.
Now, minute by minute, WSJ updates the happenings in Minneapolis and in the congress. The updates can be read as: Federal Officials Deployed Chemical Irritants at Minneapolis (13 min ago as of 3:24pm, 1/26); University of Minnesota Students protest Federal Agents in Minneapolis (1 min ago). Also,House Democrats are backing the impeachment of DHS secretary, Kristi Noam, is reported.
In my sense, Trump will reduce ICE agents sooner than expected.
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What conservatives are now saying? Just few days ago, Nick Fuentes was a guest speaker on TIMCAST IRL, Tim Pool’s podcast. They basically talked down on the larger purpose for ICE and pointed out Dems’ contrived strategical moves to kill the conservative far right movement, whatever happens. It’s true that White Supremacy is brought up, whatever happens, by liberals in one strong tendency. However, to what extent such is true in the Minneapolis case at this time? Nevertheless, Fuentes usually makes bold points by looking at the system’s defectiveness and peoples being entangled into due to their focused interests of their own. Conversely, none of them will agree on killing protestors instead of arrest, I strongly sensed. Therefore, talking points inevitably fall into socio-political frames, but not into a specific case such as Pretti’s in details.
Tim Walz’s initial statement is heard as ICE agents are untrained. In Ep 5093 of his War Room, Steve Bannon repeatedly dismissed Walz’s words. As for me, in my opinion, ICE agents are well trained professionals, war veterans, or those with many years of law enforcement experiences. Thus, they regard the site as a quasi-war zone and act accordingly. Such must be a protocol given by DHS in my guess.
In Ep 5093 of Bannon’s War Room, Brad A Thayer came in to speak. On the Minnesota turmoil, Thayer didn’t focus on a life of Alex Pratti as a person. Rather, Antifa funding, Open Society and Soros, Chinese communism disguised as Progressives in the US, and (in my paraphrase) the danger of their tactics able to manipulate liberal sentiments of American democracy.
Then, I went to Google search AI mode to find out a bit more about what I want to know and confirm.
Below are screenshots from the conversation with the Google AI mode. The shots-insertion is for you to know I did really converse with the AI, not I’m saying anything imaginary to fool you.
[Extract from my conversation with Google AI mode]
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There are in fact two more screenshots in addition to a fact that the conversation ran more before and after the portion which I did screenshot. It’s French, yes it is, because French is the designated language which I decided to be when conversing with AIs. Occasional exceptions are only with Grok.
The structural problems in abstraction are true in both sides, far rights and far lefts almost equally, as everyone would see it clearly. In my view however, the worst falls upon the liberal side because they love the beauty of abstract theorizations. The biggest issue is therefore there would be no other way to handle realties of all details with all detailed specificities without crystallizing narratives.
This article comes at the perfect time. Spot on with the narrative framing, realy important stuff. Thanks!