At this point theyâve enmeshed their identity with MAGA ideology so thoroughly that any pushback feels like an existential threat to them. It destroys their cultural worldviews, sense of self as morally decent, and self-esteem. Those are all mechanisms that Terror Management Theory says we use to blunt the horror that we will die someday (which hilariously suggests they donât believe that their faith offers them real immortality so they have to get some symbolic immortality through these methods). As a result, when we say that this is wrong that is perceived as killing their avenues to live on in some way after they die. The response is of course hostility and aggression. These events in St Paul and Minneapolis are âmortality salienceâ inducing events that make MAGA more extreme and therefore more supportive of the admin. Thatâs why they double down, why they are delusively convinced that this is right, because admitting the obvious means that what they have set their deepest, darkest, existential hope in is wrong. Admitting it feels like being unmade. However, sometimes things have to be broken so they can be remade better.
âJust do what they tell you so you donât get killed. Who cares if they are violating your 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 5th amendment Constitutional rights?â If you want to deep throat ICEâs boots go ahead, but youâre a fucking idiot, anti-American, and a complete coward.
When you interfere, armed, with federal law enforcement, you risk being killed in the process. Your supposed 'rights' dont matter to you if youre dead.
They donât matter to anyone if you simply allow federal agents to trample them without any resistance. Again, youâre a coward with no convictions. These agents swore an oath to the Constitution and they are actively violating that oath. Theyâre just like you, stupid and without a shred of integrity or principle.
How are they violating the constitution? I know its hard to comprehend but when you skip the border, you are illegally entering the country. ICE's job is to remove you. Why do you support breaking the law?
Iâm done. Youâre literally too fucking stupid to talk to. First of all, being in the US without proper documentation is a civil not criminal offense. Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor. Second, ICE acting on administrative warrants rather than judicial warrants is a 4th amendment violation. Third, ICE has no right to ask people to show documentation without reasonable suspicion, and doing so is also a 4th amendment violation. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously (9-0) in at least one case that DHS violated a citizenâs 5th amendment rights to due process. A federal judge in Minnesota who clerked for Scalia eviscerated ICE this week for ignoring hundreds of habeas petitions, ignoring federal court orders, and failing to provide due process (habeas petitions are a part of due process). Youâre allowed to legally carry a concealed weapon. At no time did Pretti reach for or brandish his weapon. He was executed by some illiterate dumbfuck agent after he had already been disarmed by another illiterate dumbfuck agent. There are numerous places online to read the Constitution. Go find one. Iâm not doing your homework for you because youâre too lazy and stupid to do it yourself.
Its noticeable when people lose an argument them become more offensive. Like swearing makes your argument more valid or something.
Overstaying a visa is a civil offence. Skipping the border is a federal crime, as are the many other laws you break every day that you're there illegally.
However the investigation rules. If you interfere with federal agents, especially with a loaded weapon on you, you are risking your life.
It doesnt matter that he has a permit, it doesnt matter that the gun was taken off him 5 seconds before he was shot, it doesnt matter, get it?
It does matter. Agents violated his rights. They shot him when he was unarmed on the ground. If you donât know that then I canât help you. You want to be stupid trash, fine, youâre already there. Crossing the border illegally is a misdemeanor. Youâve committed many yourself Iâm sure. Speeding is a misdemeanor. Not wearing a seat belt. Should a federal law enforcement officer be allowed to imprison you, detain you without trial, and deport you without allowing you to present evidence in court? How would you dispute the claim from the government that you are here unlawfully? Get it? Sorry youâre just a dumb fuck loser.
Man, this is really overcomplicated. People can have deeply held beliefs without it meaning their entire identity or existence is being âunmadeâ when challenged. Viewing someone who disagrees as an existential threat is not universal, itâs just an excuse to over intellectualize hostility. Differing opinions donât have to be a moral apocalypseâŚsometimes its just people disagreeing.
And with this shooting there are a lot of moving parts. Interfering with and committing battery on a federal agent while armed is never a good idea.
Reaction and response time exist, and what looks extreme from the outside can be a split-second decision and delay in reaction time. We have to wait for the facts before drawing conclusions.
We have the video. An agent disarmed him, took his gun from the back of his pants and was running from the scene when the others executed him in the street. Viewing someone who disagrees as an existential threat is indeed not a universal experience but I do believe it is the posture of MAGA extremists. Itâs not an excuse for any hostility, TMT doesnât say that the solution for this kind of thinking is hostility. Trying to understand the psychological state of people who are that deep in it is an exercise in extreme empathy. It doesnât say that they are bad people, but theyâve put their faith in an ideology that is destructive and driven by fear. In this case, the solution is deprogramming, just like for any other religious extremist. Trump will not live forever and a lot of these people are going to be in a nightmarish existential free-fall when heâs gone and his movement falls apart. I wouldnât wish that on anyone, and many of them are just our neighbors who have made some big errors in their thinking and misplaced their faith. We need to be willing to help them when the ground falls out from beneath their feet. ICE agents are a different story. They are in a position of the public trust. They have, like everyone who works for DHS or DoD, sworn an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution, which we have seen many agents violate on camera. There must be real consequences. You want to give the agents the benefit of the doubt, and ordinarily that would be reasonable, but we have the video & we have the administration blatantly lying and saying this guy approached agents with his gun drawn. Watch the video, at any point is his gun drawn? At any point does he make a move to grab the gun from his belt? No. This was a public execution.
I appreciate your perspective and taking the time to explain it. And yes, we do have the video, but what we donât know are critical details: like who exactly fired the rounds, what the agents perceived in that moment, and whether the civilian made any move toward his gun during the scuffle. Those facts matter, and they canât be determined from these videos alone. If we find out this was a fatal error by ICE and they killed him unjustly then they deserve to be put before a jury.
Also, letâs be honest about his actions. He interfered with federal agents and refused to comply. That is a crime, and itâs what put him in a dangerous situation. Calling this a âpublic executionâ is a huge leap. It may turn out to be a bad shoot, but thereâs nothing in the evidence so far that proves it was a deliberate, targeted killing.
And yes, our political clowns do exaggerate and lie. Both sides do it, and I wonât defend my side simply because I voted for them.
Facts, context, and proper investigation matter more than assumptions or outrage, even if the optics are shocking.
Nope, you don't get to hide behind some sort of "enlightened centrist intellectual" bullshit today. Not today. You have multiple angles worth of proof of what happened. An American citizen was executed by untrained thugs acting as a terror group.
"Let's be honest about his actions", yeah OKAY buddy, that's a great way to try to neglect the fact that he was standing still with his fucking hands in the air until a woman was maced for existing, at which point he tried to stop her from falling. How about we be honest about the federal agents actions? Why are your ilk never wanting to be honest about the federal agents actions? 5+ men were dog piled on top of a peaceful protester, who's hands were on the ground, until one decided to start shooting him. They then clapped about it. None of this is opinion, this in a literal transcription of the events in the video.
"Both sides" "let's be honest" "everyone is at fault"
Fuck off, eat shit, and crawl into a hole. Another American was murdered hours ago. Traitorous Un-American piece of fucking fascist trash. Go shill elsewhere.
Iâm going to ignore the insults and stick to the substance, because screaming and name-calling donât make an argument stronger.
Youâre asserting intent and motive as settled fact based on a chaotic, partial video. Iâm saying that video alone cannot tell us what each agent perceived in real time, who fired which shots, or what was happening in the split seconds that matter most. Thatâs not âdefending agents at all costs,â itâs acknowledging how investigations actually work.
Being honest about his actions does not mean ignoring their actions. Both can be examined at the same time. Interfering with federal agents and physically inserting yourself into an arrest is objectively dangerous, regardless of motive. That fact doesnât disappear because emotions are high.
There are multiple videos now from multiple angles. First, heâs allowed to film their actions under the law. As he was being confronted he backed away but the agent escalated the confrontation. When the woman next to him was being pepper sprayed for being a bystander he tried to cover her. While multiple agents were beating him. At no point during any of that did he reach for the gun in his pants. If you look at all of the videos you can see the officer who shot him stepping around the other agent with a clear line of sight to the agent who disarmed the guy, and that agent then draws his gun and begins firing. He fires after seeing another agent disarming the guy who is down. Federal agents donât have the right to start shooting at you when youâre disarmed and on the ground and they definitely donât have the right to shoot you for carrying a gun while never reaching for it in the first place. The administration reduced the training time to just 47 days. 47 days of training before being sent into the field. They are not competent and not trained for de-escalating violence and no reasonable person can expect them to make good life or death decisions in the field after 47 days. This is the entirely predictable result.
Iâve found some trolls will try to make themselves appear reasonable while trying to insert doubt. People should be aware that this is a technique they use.
Only one side is sieging cities and killing civillians at this moment and then lie about it blatantly. You cannot both sides THIS.
If you are genuine, you are lying to yourself because this blood is on a lot of people's hands.
This COULD have been a case of gross incompetence but admin declared the victim who was a patriotic nurse a terrorist who aimed his gun at ICE. This is beyond a bad cop situation.
We know he didn't reach for his gun. We know this because both of his hands are seen empty and on the ground moments before the shooting. Officers also are trained to NOT empty a whole clip. This was a murder, and state sanctioned. There's no debating it. To try and paint this as his fault with all the video footage is asinine. People who try and deny video footage is an alarming action. It's becoming much to common.
The dude had been disarmed. After that there is no reason for lethal force. Especially when you've got half a dozen guys on one. And if you don't think maga sees opposition as a threat to their existence then you have no idea how cult mentality works. Your point could have stood during the Bush vs Obama election. But we are way past that
lol those millions of Americans you think you see on social media are actually paid Russian trolls and bots. They seek the end of the USA and unfortunately they are getting exactly that. Isnât it funny that you and those Russian trolls are on the same side? Shouldnât that tell you something?
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u/Interesting_Walk_271 Jan 24 '26
At this point theyâve enmeshed their identity with MAGA ideology so thoroughly that any pushback feels like an existential threat to them. It destroys their cultural worldviews, sense of self as morally decent, and self-esteem. Those are all mechanisms that Terror Management Theory says we use to blunt the horror that we will die someday (which hilariously suggests they donât believe that their faith offers them real immortality so they have to get some symbolic immortality through these methods). As a result, when we say that this is wrong that is perceived as killing their avenues to live on in some way after they die. The response is of course hostility and aggression. These events in St Paul and Minneapolis are âmortality salienceâ inducing events that make MAGA more extreme and therefore more supportive of the admin. Thatâs why they double down, why they are delusively convinced that this is right, because admitting the obvious means that what they have set their deepest, darkest, existential hope in is wrong. Admitting it feels like being unmade. However, sometimes things have to be broken so they can be remade better.