Reminded of a semi-academic comment years back that stuck with me: commendable human behavior and shitty human behavior and everything in between ... are all human behavior. Yet so much rhetoric hinges on idealizing "human" as though "pro-social" or "progressive" or "noble" or whatever is baked in...
In [sympathy with/contrast to] Kendall, my not-necessarily-helpful "perspective pet peeve" is to whine about the [il]logic of exclaiming "I can't believe this is happening in ####!"
The UDHR needs constant boosting and awareness campaigns.
There should of course be ongoing discussions, across & between nations, of what behavior might/should vitiate or forfeit one or more of those rights in individual cases. The bad faith suffusing the U.S. Republican party's (in)actions over the past, eh, 60+ years? — but especially the last 10 — is a prime example. My inner enlightened despot itches to permanently remove certain government actors' ability to communicate (or even make any kind of contact) with any other human ever again. (Okay, maybe they'll be permitted to scream one final missive to their beautician, reflecting on whether it was all worth it.)
Let’s have a nice video that shows who Minnesotans are. Because the video of Pretti being blatantly murdered is truly horrific. With or without him having a gun they just were itching to kill somebody and get away with it. So help me God, if there is one, do not let them.
“People who don’t care will never understand those who do.”
Yes, there haven't been enough white people who responded with the same horror and revulsion to the police state we've been building up since the 70's and 80's because it was focused on the poor, Black people, and Latinos.
But many are responding with horror and revulsion now and also with action, so as frustrating as it is, welcoming them to the tent might actually get them to address and care about the dangers our over militarized police have always imposed and the damage to the communities they inflicted it on while a lot of us weren't paying attention.
I think what’s different now is so much of it is caught on camera. In the past, they’d have been able to smear the victim by saying he pulled his gun on an agent—now though everyone can see the video showing nothing of the sort (literally gunning him down after disarming him and he’d never pulled the gun he legally carried).
It does help that he’s white but more importantly he’s got no criminal record or any other compromising history the fascists could use. They really fucked upbeat killing a boy scout.
And the people saying “I can’t believe this is happening” aren’t ignorant of Bull Connor, or the Japanese internment camps, or the Tuskegee experiments. They were idealistic, believing we are an improving country, that learned from shit like that and should be better than this.
I’ll also add that in some ways this is a new low because if this had happened under [name your most hated president besides Trump, like Bush] the president would publicly express regret, his DOJ would launch an investigation or Special Counsel, and open de escalation would be immediate. Instead we have a guy who can never be wrong, who mocks the victims, and who demands his cronies double down. There’s not even a show of decency here, and that’s very much a new thing.
Rodney King was one watershed moment that opened a lot of people's eyes for the first time, because it was all captured on video. And now, Alex has become another one. YES, it's because they finally shot a white man! We've been trying since Reagan to warn people about the direction the Republican Party was going, and if this is what it finally takes, then that's what it took. In the meantime, as child psychologists have advised, "don't punish people for doing the right thing." We don't have to think ex-MAGAs (and there are about to be a ton of them) are sincere, or that they've ever been nice people. We don't have to trust them afterwards to welcome them to fight alongside us.
I’ve found that my working class relatives who lived through segregation are far more upbeat. The world has drastically improved despite people like Trump’s best efforts
Yep. I remember in 2008 explaining to a friend why so many people were going nuts over Obama getting elected that there were people who voted for him who can also remember a time in their adult life when if they tried to register to vote they could be severely beaten for that, and now could elect a black man to the presidency.
Yes it takes constant work—then and now—but a lot of progress has been made and we owe it to our forbears’ sacrifices to remember that.
I'm thankful for Alex Pretti. He gave his life so others could live, and there's no greater love than that.
Note that we are going to have to work extra hard to protect the next victims (and we know there will be more) because Maladministration 2.0 has their captive, fully powered rightwing media human centipede. This is why the monsters there immediately smear their victims so that on every bit of reporting there are deluges of chuds below carrying forth their slander.
They're going to kill someone—just based out of statistics—who isn't an "angel" or whatever. So be prepared for that. Our best 'weapons' at this point are cameras and solidarity. All of the cameras. All the time. Keep resisting, keep recording.
I believe kids deserve and need the "warts and all" version of history.
Yes, our soaring foundational rhetoric was penned by slave owners.
The two natural-born Americans who improved on Jefferson & Co's ability to stir the heart and the mind were gunned down for their trouble.
The sons of imprisoned Japanese immigrants, along with Native Americans from the Rez enlisted to fight the fascists.
And on and on.
Squaring that circle can be a fools errand at best. Still, youngsters are smart enough to figure out when the grownups are being truthful. An honest overview of history fosters critical thinking at an early age. It can also act as a preventative for all the rabbit-holes waiting to suck in the unwary.
The kid may still say, "Ah, fuck it, I'll buy in with the oligarchs and devil take the hindmost."
I think what ultimately saves the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the fact that those white enslavers were procuring and ensuring the rights that they thought they rightfully deserved, and they were correct (with obvious exceptions, of course), but we and every American and person on American soil also deserve those rights.
I realize I am stating the obvious when I say this but it must be said: We must fight for those rights for every human being.
Well said, Stephen. America has never lived fully up to her ideals, which are high and worthy of achieving, or at least trying to achieve. Alex Pretti and Renee Good are two people who tried. MLK is another. There are many others that aren't well known, but we can't give up and let their lives and deaths be in vain.
I find all the “this has always been America, maybe you don’t know about the Trail of Tears” pedantry incredibly annoying. Congratulations, you know that we did evil shit in our history, you must have passed 6th grade social studies! Wait til you get to the chapter about internment camps in WW2. It’ll blow your mind, Will Hunting.
As you note, America can be defined either way. Define it by its greater ideals, or by its low points—if you go for the latter just because you think it makes you look worldly (I note, basically everyone you’re arguing with is aware of atrocities in American history!) you are agreeing with Trump when he says “you think we’re so innocent?”
We do have to keep vigilant because there is a nationwide effort to erase that unkind truth about things like the Trail of Tears and Jim Crow, etc. So there will be people who don't know it.
Oh certainly—and it goes to show how threatened by such knowledge the right wing is that they’re willing to generate more news suppressing it rather than ignore it.
Your comment also applies to those who glibly say, "Both parties are bad, so I don't support either side." It astounds me that anyone can say something so ignorant about their own history, and it's especially troubling that this cynicism can masquerade as wisdom.
It’s very shortsighted. It’s one thing to push your preferred party to where you want it to be, and recommend they do more to distinguish themselves from the other party, but it’s quite another to be unable to see just how stark the differences already are.
This is America. Me, you, the ICE agents, AOC, all of it is America. The good, the bad and everything in between. But the idea that we have some high minded moral core is, in my opinion, missing the truth of the situation. America is a collective, WE set the rules, WE elect our officials to make laws for us and WE choose to follow or not follow those laws. When WE decided collectively to turn our backs and cover our faces when a bunch of elementary school kids were murdered by guns in their school, that was a choice WE made. WE also elected the current administration and it might have been the last collective thing WE do. Do a large chunk of the population just check out on all that's going on around them? Yes, absolutely. Does their abandonment of their civic duty make them any less American? Nope, they are part of WE as well. Can the part of us that is paying attention, does want things to change (if we can even agree what we want to change) stop this madness currently terrorizing us? Sure. Will we? Who knows? This is America ,it's a death cult and it's getting worse every year.
I don’t define America exclusively by the actions of its worst actors.
When media convinces people that “doing nothing” is immoral, they stop doing the most important thing: staying alive.
This is what happens when online urgency replaces situational awareness.
Excellent essay, Stephen!
Thanks!
Not surprised that you referenced Cap because that's where my mind went when you referenced America as ideal instead of flawed reality.
Thanks again, SER.
Reminded of a semi-academic comment years back that stuck with me: commendable human behavior and shitty human behavior and everything in between ... are all human behavior. Yet so much rhetoric hinges on idealizing "human" as though "pro-social" or "progressive" or "noble" or whatever is baked in...
In [sympathy with/contrast to] Kendall, my not-necessarily-helpful "perspective pet peeve" is to whine about the [il]logic of exclaiming "I can't believe this is happening in ####!"
The UDHR needs constant boosting and awareness campaigns.
There should of course be ongoing discussions, across & between nations, of what behavior might/should vitiate or forfeit one or more of those rights in individual cases. The bad faith suffusing the U.S. Republican party's (in)actions over the past, eh, 60+ years? — but especially the last 10 — is a prime example. My inner enlightened despot itches to permanently remove certain government actors' ability to communicate (or even make any kind of contact) with any other human ever again. (Okay, maybe they'll be permitted to scream one final missive to their beautician, reflecting on whether it was all worth it.)
Let’s have a nice video that shows who Minnesotans are. Because the video of Pretti being blatantly murdered is truly horrific. With or without him having a gun they just were itching to kill somebody and get away with it. So help me God, if there is one, do not let them.
“People who don’t care will never understand those who do.”
Let’s make them care as well.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXhVWMKQPjQ
Yes, there haven't been enough white people who responded with the same horror and revulsion to the police state we've been building up since the 70's and 80's because it was focused on the poor, Black people, and Latinos.
But many are responding with horror and revulsion now and also with action, so as frustrating as it is, welcoming them to the tent might actually get them to address and care about the dangers our over militarized police have always imposed and the damage to the communities they inflicted it on while a lot of us weren't paying attention.
I think what’s different now is so much of it is caught on camera. In the past, they’d have been able to smear the victim by saying he pulled his gun on an agent—now though everyone can see the video showing nothing of the sort (literally gunning him down after disarming him and he’d never pulled the gun he legally carried).
It does help that he’s white but more importantly he’s got no criminal record or any other compromising history the fascists could use. They really fucked upbeat killing a boy scout.
And the people saying “I can’t believe this is happening” aren’t ignorant of Bull Connor, or the Japanese internment camps, or the Tuskegee experiments. They were idealistic, believing we are an improving country, that learned from shit like that and should be better than this.
I’ll also add that in some ways this is a new low because if this had happened under [name your most hated president besides Trump, like Bush] the president would publicly express regret, his DOJ would launch an investigation or Special Counsel, and open de escalation would be immediate. Instead we have a guy who can never be wrong, who mocks the victims, and who demands his cronies double down. There’s not even a show of decency here, and that’s very much a new thing.
Rodney King was one watershed moment that opened a lot of people's eyes for the first time, because it was all captured on video. And now, Alex has become another one. YES, it's because they finally shot a white man! We've been trying since Reagan to warn people about the direction the Republican Party was going, and if this is what it finally takes, then that's what it took. In the meantime, as child psychologists have advised, "don't punish people for doing the right thing." We don't have to think ex-MAGAs (and there are about to be a ton of them) are sincere, or that they've ever been nice people. We don't have to trust them afterwards to welcome them to fight alongside us.
They’d do well to interact with Black people who can assure them that there’s still a long, very very long, way to go.
I’ve found that my working class relatives who lived through segregation are far more upbeat. The world has drastically improved despite people like Trump’s best efforts
I agree. Even with all this shit I'm glad to be living in 2025 rather than 1955. Or even 1985 (well I was alive in 1985, but you know what i mean).
(on edit: 2026, uuugh. It feels like 2025 has never ended)
Yep. I remember in 2008 explaining to a friend why so many people were going nuts over Obama getting elected that there were people who voted for him who can also remember a time in their adult life when if they tried to register to vote they could be severely beaten for that, and now could elect a black man to the presidency.
Yes it takes constant work—then and now—but a lot of progress has been made and we owe it to our forbears’ sacrifices to remember that.
I'm thankful for Alex Pretti. He gave his life so others could live, and there's no greater love than that.
Note that we are going to have to work extra hard to protect the next victims (and we know there will be more) because Maladministration 2.0 has their captive, fully powered rightwing media human centipede. This is why the monsters there immediately smear their victims so that on every bit of reporting there are deluges of chuds below carrying forth their slander.
They're going to kill someone—just based out of statistics—who isn't an "angel" or whatever. So be prepared for that. Our best 'weapons' at this point are cameras and solidarity. All of the cameras. All the time. Keep resisting, keep recording.
I believe kids deserve and need the "warts and all" version of history.
Yes, our soaring foundational rhetoric was penned by slave owners.
The two natural-born Americans who improved on Jefferson & Co's ability to stir the heart and the mind were gunned down for their trouble.
The sons of imprisoned Japanese immigrants, along with Native Americans from the Rez enlisted to fight the fascists.
And on and on.
Squaring that circle can be a fools errand at best. Still, youngsters are smart enough to figure out when the grownups are being truthful. An honest overview of history fosters critical thinking at an early age. It can also act as a preventative for all the rabbit-holes waiting to suck in the unwary.
The kid may still say, "Ah, fuck it, I'll buy in with the oligarchs and devil take the hindmost."
It is, however worth the risk.
I think what ultimately saves the Constitution and the Bill of Rights is the fact that those white enslavers were procuring and ensuring the rights that they thought they rightfully deserved, and they were correct (with obvious exceptions, of course), but we and every American and person on American soil also deserve those rights.
I realize I am stating the obvious when I say this but it must be said: We must fight for those rights for every human being.
Freedom is never free.
I think, it anything, this has had a galvinizing effect as opposed to a chilling one.
Well said, Stephen. America has never lived fully up to her ideals, which are high and worthy of achieving, or at least trying to achieve. Alex Pretti and Renee Good are two people who tried. MLK is another. There are many others that aren't well known, but we can't give up and let their lives and deaths be in vain.
𝗖𝗢𝗠𝗣𝗟𝗜𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 = 𝗗𝗘𝗔𝗧𝗛
https://bsky.app/profile/pleightx.bsky.social/post/3mdb2ejislc22
I find all the “this has always been America, maybe you don’t know about the Trail of Tears” pedantry incredibly annoying. Congratulations, you know that we did evil shit in our history, you must have passed 6th grade social studies! Wait til you get to the chapter about internment camps in WW2. It’ll blow your mind, Will Hunting.
As you note, America can be defined either way. Define it by its greater ideals, or by its low points—if you go for the latter just because you think it makes you look worldly (I note, basically everyone you’re arguing with is aware of atrocities in American history!) you are agreeing with Trump when he says “you think we’re so innocent?”
Yeah I hear that totally.
We do have to keep vigilant because there is a nationwide effort to erase that unkind truth about things like the Trail of Tears and Jim Crow, etc. So there will be people who don't know it.
Oh certainly—and it goes to show how threatened by such knowledge the right wing is that they’re willing to generate more news suppressing it rather than ignore it.
Your comment also applies to those who glibly say, "Both parties are bad, so I don't support either side." It astounds me that anyone can say something so ignorant about their own history, and it's especially troubling that this cynicism can masquerade as wisdom.
This 💯%. I have enough escapism issues without tossing on jaded cynicism that strangles good works in the fucking cradle.
It’s very shortsighted. It’s one thing to push your preferred party to where you want it to be, and recommend they do more to distinguish themselves from the other party, but it’s quite another to be unable to see just how stark the differences already are.
This is America. Me, you, the ICE agents, AOC, all of it is America. The good, the bad and everything in between. But the idea that we have some high minded moral core is, in my opinion, missing the truth of the situation. America is a collective, WE set the rules, WE elect our officials to make laws for us and WE choose to follow or not follow those laws. When WE decided collectively to turn our backs and cover our faces when a bunch of elementary school kids were murdered by guns in their school, that was a choice WE made. WE also elected the current administration and it might have been the last collective thing WE do. Do a large chunk of the population just check out on all that's going on around them? Yes, absolutely. Does their abandonment of their civic duty make them any less American? Nope, they are part of WE as well. Can the part of us that is paying attention, does want things to change (if we can even agree what we want to change) stop this madness currently terrorizing us? Sure. Will we? Who knows? This is America ,it's a death cult and it's getting worse every year.
I don’t define America exclusively by the actions of its worst actors.
But they sure do stand out.
What is *that* all about?
I guess you're looking in a mirror then.
Bye
Clearly not. Get some glasses, sweetie.