John Pavlovitz

'ICE Destroyed Alex Pretti's Body. The Trump Administration Assassinated His Character. Conservative Americans Are Fine With That.'

johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/ice-destro...

ICE Destroyed Alex Pretti's Body. The Trump Administration Assassinated His Character. Conservative Americans Are Fine With That. Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE, in cold blood, without cause, and with giddy joy from his assassins.

I can only tell you that we are all tethered together, that every one of us has a life to leverage, and that we will rise or fall together.

May we meet this moment with the best of ourselves.

johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/ice-destro...

These are matters of conscience, and they cannot be made from a distance, but within the close yet cavernous places of our own hearts...

It will happen to thousands and thousands of families, unless we decide that we not tolerate it another day.

I know you’d like me to tell you what you should do in response, but I’m unable to.

I’m still working through what my response will be...

ICE murdered Alex.

The Trump Administration slandered him.

Conservative Americans have joined them.

This has happened to Alex Pretti and his family.

It happened to Renee Good and her family...

It’s not enough to grieve the loss of Renee Good and Alex Pretti; we must defend their memories.
We must not allow them to be slandered, mischaracterized, and dehumanized.
We must walk into our days and into every space in which we find ourselves, and we must speak truth about what is happening...

This is what Trump has done to a sizable portion of this nation, and it’s something the rest of us need to face with sober, unflinching clarity...

They will dehumanize us to the point that when we are beaten or kidnapped or executed, it will not elicit anything but the belief that we got what we deserved...

And they will look at the decent people across this nation, those with a conscience, those who refuse to deny reality, and they will say that we are the problem...

Actual, real, walking-around, business-owning, church-going, school board-attending Americans will choose to vilify slaughtered human beings instead of admitting they were wrong...

And they will dig in their heels, double down, and descend further into cultic tribalism while trying to bury the cognitive dissonance they have created...

To avoid accountability, and the courage and change that would require of them, they will willfully choose a comfortable fiction; a fantasy that declares them patriotic and righteous, and anyone whose presence disturbs that story, the enemy...

They will convince themselves that the truth is not the truth, because otherwise they will need to come to terms with the reality that they are complicit in this, that they have created this monster, that they have failed their nation and their faith...

"He was another Leftist extremist!"

"That's what you get when you attack officers."

This is the Conservative mass delusion being curated once again.

They will believe Trump, and Noem, and Patel, and Bondi, and Leavitt, and not their own eyes...

One of the saddest things about today is that I can imagine the conversations right now by my former friends, distant family members, neighbors, and people I used to pastor:

"Oh, he was threatening them!"

"He came at them with a gun. They were just defending themselves."...

And what soon followed by supposedly patriotic, Jesus-following Conservative Americans is sadly predictable.

Like you, I’m finding words difficult for the waste of it all, the deja vu of what’s unfolded, and the feeling that we’re slipping into something more dark than our minds can fathom.

It is as tragic and frightening as any day in my lifetime:

The complete disregard for his life by those thugs cosplaying as soldiers is beyond comprehension.

The utter contempt for his memory by this Administration is unrepentantly evil...

For simply bearing witness to a neighbor’s abuse, for being the kind of person we all say we aspire to be, for being present to an imperiled stranger, he was executed in the street by our government...

ICE Destroyed Alex Pretti's Body. The Trump Administration Assassinated His Character. Conservative Americans Are Fine With That. Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE, in cold blood, without cause, and with giddy joy from his assassins.

Alex Pretti was murdered by ICE, in cold blood, without cause, and with giddy joy from his assassins...

johnpavlovitz.substack.com/p/ice-destro...

It can happen to your family.

It will happen to thousands and thousands of families.

Unless we stop them.

Renee Good and Alex Pretti were murdered twice by the Trump Administration.

First, it destroyed their bodies, then it assassinated their characters.

Decent Americans cannot stand for it.

I'm old enough to remember when they said the Hitler comparisons were unwarranted.

It was the Fall.

America is being besieged by two ICE storms this weekend.

One we can't stop.

One, we sure as hell can.

For decades, Conservative 2nd Amendment zealots have screamed about needing weapons to protect their nation from a tyrannical government.

Then, when it actually shows up and murders citizens, they change the narrative.

What a bunch of sick, sad, phony patriots...

Minneapolis, Portland, Philadelphia, NYC, and every town, city, and village in this nation has a different dynamic and network.

It's time we all stopped waiting to be told what to do and did something...

(Note, this is not just for you but for every person who is asking what to do.)

Support nonprofits, partner with progressive faith communities, use the Internet to search organizations that support immigrants where you are, get to know your Dem politicians, talk to your neighbors, post on neighborhood apps...

You know your community, or you should. If not, that is the start.

The roadmap is local organization and presence...

Kristi Noem is going to face a tribunal before this is all over.

She is a willing instrument of murder.

A vile human being.

We need to stand with Minneapolis and stand up to this atrocity in every city across this nation.
There is no neutral position.
It's ICE or US.
It's time the American majority wielded our collective power.
Enough of this shit.
May the good people be counted now.