From: punditster@gmail.com   
      
   On 1/27/2026 10:55 AM, Noah Sombrero wrote:   
   >   
   >   
   > Even poor students of history can see what’s happening to the U.S.? ?   
   > ROBYN URBACK? G&M   
   >   
   > In 1935, American author Sinclair Lewis published It Can’t Happen   
   > Here, a dystopian novel about the rise of a populist demagogue named   
   > Berzelius “Buzz” Windrip, who becomes the U.S. president after   
   > cultivating a cult following for his nationalism, anti-elitism, and   
   > quixotic promises. Windrip was fixated on restoring domestic   
   > production of material goods and hated the press.?He establishes a   
   > paramilitary force called the “Minute Men,” or “M.M.,” who are   
   > initially primarily made up of retired military personnel, but grow to   
   > include farmers, industrial workers and even former criminals, all of   
   > whom to appear to revel in the opportunity to wield control and power   
   > over their fellow citizens. M.M. officers spy for the state and   
   > violently break up protests, and as Windrip’s presidency metastasizes   
   > into authoritarianism, they arrest and execute perceived dissidents   
   > with complete impunity. The regime justifies these actions by claiming   
   > the M.M. only targets malicious agitators: “The way to stop crime is   
   > to stop it!” Windrip declares to great fanfare.?   
   > Mr. Lewis’s novel was of course informed by the real-life tyranny   
   > engulfing parts of Europe at that time, but his point was that America   
   > was not impervious to those same forces. “All dictators followed the   
   > same routine of torture, as if they had all read the same manual of   
   > sadistic etiquette,” he wrote. “And now, in the humorous, friendly,   
   > happy-go-lucky land of Mark Twain, [Americans] saw the homicidal   
   > maniacs having just as good a time as they had had in central   
   > Europe.”???   
   >   
   > There is a video,   
    >   
   Apparently, this guy at the Globe & Mail saw a video on social media and   
   has a made a summary judgement. The videos all could have altered using AI.   
      
   Didn't we just go through this yesterday?   
      
   Don't take a loaded gun and ammunition into town to a peaceful street   
   protest, even if you have the right to carry a concealed weapon. ICE   
   will not like that. That's my advice.   
    >   
     taken this weekend in Minneapolis – nearly a century   
   > after Mr. Lewis wrote his book – of an ICE agent clapping after his   
   > colleagues execute an American citizen on the street. That American   
   > citizen – 37-year-old Alex Pretti – was recording ICE agents   
   > conducting their work when he went to assist a woman who was shoved to   
   > the ground by one of the officers. Mr. Pretti asks her, “Are you   
   > okay?” and then is immediately pepper-sprayed in the face and tackled   
   > by a half-dozen officers. One agent removes a firearm that Mr. Pretti   
   > had in its holster – which Mr. Pretti had the right to carry under the   
   > Second Amendment – and only after Mr. Pretti is disarmed and on the   
   > ground, the agents execute him, firing a handful of bullets into his   
   > body. It’s in that moment that one of the ICE agents starts clapping.   
   > In the humorous, friendly, happy-go-lucky land of Mark Twain, we see   
   > the homicidal maniacs having just as good a time as they had a century   
   > ago in central Europe. ?The regime then came out to justify the   
   > killing, just as it had weeks ago, when an ICE agent shot another U.S.   
   > citizen on the street – Renee Nicole Macklin Good, also 37 – whom the   
   > White House and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) subsequently   
   > labelled a “domestic terrorist,” though she was actually a mom in an   
   > SUV who seemed to be turning her car away from the agent in front of   
   > her. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem almost immediately   
   > declared that Mr. Pretti “attacked” law enforcement and was   
   > “brandishing” a gun, which were lies easily disproven by various   
   > videos of the interaction. But White House staff persisted with the   
   > fiction that Mr. Pretti “tried to murder federal agents” anyway,   
   > telling Americans not to believe what they could plainly see with   
   > their own eyes. The people being executed by state agents on the   
   > street were effectively criminals-in-waiting, according to the White   
   > House, and the way to stop crime, of course, is to stop it. ?Opinion   
   >   
   > A witness to the killing of Mr. Pretti gave a statement hours later in   
   > which she said that the story that the DHS has fed the public is   
   > wrong. But just as disturbingly, she said she fears reprisal from the   
   > government because she witnessed what actually happened. “I feel   
   > afraid,” she said. “Only hours have passed since they shot a man right   
   > in front of me and I don’t feel like I can go home because I heard   
   > agents were looking for me. I don’t know what the agents will do when   
   > they find me.”?   
   >   
   > Even poor students of history recognize what it means when governments   
   > shrug off their own citizens’ rights, as members of the Trump   
   > administration have done in insisting that Ms. Macklin Good and Mr.   
   > Pretti decided their own fates. They know what it means when an   
   > administration blocks investigations, when citizens are afraid that   
   > members of a masked, state-backed militia might show up at their homes   
   > to interrogate them or worse, when innocent people are executed on the   
   > street, and when the public is fed lies about agitators and domestic   
   > terrorists. It happens slowly, and then all at once. And as Mr. Lewis   
   > presciently noted, it could happen anywhere.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)