From: fedora@fea.st
On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 16:02:48 -0800, Dude wrote:
>On 1/27/2026 1:19 PM, Noah Sombrero wrote:
>> On Tue, 27 Jan 2026 13:11:26 -0800, Dude wrote:
>>
>>> 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?
>>
>> True, the clapping might not be real. It depends on how soon after
>> the event the video appeared. It takes a few days to put together a
>> decent fake.
>>
>You may not be aware of live streaming with iPhone or Android Smart
>phones cameras and coded Signal chats. Still have your two-way wrist radio?
Live streaming, 2 days after the event?
>>> 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.
>>
>> The fact that you might get shot has nothing to do with whether ice
>> can legally shoot you.
>>
>So, Nick made a good point. From the perspective of the Agents, thing's
>might have looked very different. Apparently, you've not seen all the
>angles from the ICE body cams.
No, I don't care about days after the event. Give me 10 minutes after
the event.
> >
>
>>> 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.
--
Noah Sombrero mustachioed villain
Don't get political with me young man
or I'll tie you to a railroad track and
<<>> to <<>>
Who dares to talk to El Sombrero?
[continued in next message]
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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