On Saturday, Jan. 24, a second 37-year-old American citizen was shot dead in Minnesota by federal agents. The first was Renee Good, who was killed on Jan. 7 while apparently trying to drive away from ICE agents who had been demanding that she get out of her car. The second, killed on Jan. 24, was Alex Jeffrey Pretti, an ICU nurse, who, according to witnesses, was trying to assist another demonstrator who had been sprayed with tear gas. Video footage of the incident shows him empty-handed, on his knees surrounded by agents at the time the shots rang out.
As Minnesota resident, and former FBI agent and 9/11 whistleblower Coleen Rowley told this writer in a videotaped interview, that six top Minnesota prosecutors walked off their jobs because of the FBI’s refusal to cooperate with Minnesota’s Bureau of Criminal Apprehension (BCA). Rowley reported, “Initially they thought, ‘Okay, well, the FBI will investigate with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension together, and they share interviews and things like that.’ But after a very short, maybe a few hours, the feds said, ‘No, we’re not investigating our ICE agent. We are investigating the victims of the shooting.’
“And when that happened, and they said it’s not a civil rights investigation that would be looking at the whether it was a good, a justified, or unjustified shooting by the ICE officer … six of our criminal prosecutors, the top career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney’s office, including the former acting U.S. Attorney, (and this was the guy that was the career expert and he even prosecuted the Somalian frauds), they resigned in protest … because this is so off the charts.…They said, ‘This is wrong. We aren’t going to investigate the victims. The BCA should be the ones investigating it.’”
Rather than question the overall “immigration enforcement” policy, which has led to the shooting deaths of two American citizens in less than three weeks, President Donald Trump has doubled down in defense of this Kafkaesque approach with a series of Truth Social posts, including “re-Truthing” a post from DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, who wrote, “In Minneapolis, these rioters attacked our officer, and one of them bit off our HSI officer’s finger.” For added incendiary drama, she added, “He will lose his finger,” and included a photo of the officer holding his bloody hand and a photo of the severed finger in a plastic Tupperware cup. Is it AI? Is it real? Who knows? Is the blood and gore being shown to seduce horrified Americans to look away from the shooting death of Alex Pretti, and incite them against the “violent rioters"?
After that gory post, Trump praised the performance of former acting ICE Director Jonathan Fahey, who had appeared on Fox News. Fahey was careful to start his sentences with, “if,” but then going on to say that “if” Pretti had a loaded weapon, “and I agree the investigation needs to be done [not really—ed.]” then these “officers could very well have prevented a major mass shooting.…”
When the Fox News interviewer mocked Minneapolis Mayor Frye for saying that “not one window was broken,” as he commended protesters for the peaceful march organized by faith leaders the previous day, Fahey snickered, “having a peaceful protest shouldn’t be a big achievement” (thereby admitting that the demonstrators were peaceful), and then whined that these protesters have been “impeding ICE from doing their job.” For those who don’t know, that’s called “civil disobedience” or “non-violent direct action,” neither of which is punishable by death in the United States.
Rome Redux
Nero and Caligula did not have access to television or social media, so they gathered the Roman people into large coliseums in order to inculcate a pornographic addiction to bloodletting, by having gladiators fight each other to the death for sport. St. Augustine writes about the addictive quality of being drawn into these horrific games in his Confessions, describing how his childhood friend Alypius is dragged along by a frenzied mob to the Carthaginian games, believing he can avoid looking, but after a very loud roar from the crowd, he opens his eyes “to make way for the striking and beating down of his soul.” Augustine writes that after Alypius looks and sees the blood, it is as if he has imbibed a bestial poison from which he could no longer turn away.
It should be needless to say (but apparently isn’t) that the barbaric, bestial, and violent society known as the Roman Empire consumed itself with depravity and collapsed.
That empire collapsed not because its leaders were not cruel enough or because its subjects were not terrified enough of the whims of the various emperors. It collapsed because such depravity is a violation of the principles of natural law.
Natural Law
Ever since the miraculous appearance of little single-celled organisms on our planet, or earlier, since the Sun was born, or even before that, our universe has been developing with increasing energy, complexity, and beauty.
Life on our planet has evolved from animal to plant, from fish to bird, from amphibian to mammal, and mysteriously to human beings, who are much weaker than all of the animals in various of our physical attributes; but we have been endowed with an invisible spirit of creative reason, which has enabled us to improve and develop what nature has already provided.
The purpose of fleeing Europe to form a republic on this side of the Atlantic was to create a form of government that would protect the freedom of each equally-born individual to develop his or her talent in such a way as to contribute to the immortality of our species.
Because of that dedication, the American colonists, aided by like-minded people from across the globe, including back in Europe, defeated the vast and powerful British Empire.
In this 250th year since our Declaration of Independence, we should remember that what allowed us to achieve that victory for mankind was not our strength, but our goodness.
