THOUGHT 2/ #AlexPretti was exercising his constitutional rights as a US citizen, to film in public, to carry a legal firearm, and to offer assistance to a woman who had been assaulted.

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THOUGHT 3/ #AlexPretti was a damn fool to carry a gun into that chaos. Yes, it was his constitutional right to carry a gun, but he was a damn fool to exercise that foolish right of a foolish empire. There was no likely scenario where his gun would help him or anyone else, but many situations where it would endanger him or others. That folly is now part of the pretext for his own killing. Guns are for fools.

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THOUGHT 4/ #AlexPretti was a nurse. By all accounts a highly experienced and skilled nurse, working in the high pressure environment of an ICU. He probably helped save many lives.

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THOUGHT 5/ #AlexPretti was a deeply compromised nurse. No nurse or doctor can be unaware of the devastating damage a gun can do to a human body, and any nurse or doctor who owns such a device is a sick, self-defying soul. Any nurse or doctor who actually carries a portable killing device into a crowd of civilians under attack is a sick menace.

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THOUGHT 6/ #AlexPretti was part of the #MilitaryIndustrialComplex. His work for the VA is part of the welfare package offered to entice people to join the American war machine, and reward them after their service.

He was part of the reward for very bad, very violent men (and some women): top medical care for war criminals. (contd)

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6a) Alex Pretti cared for tne people who invaded Iraq, occupied Afghanistan, drone-bombed Pakistan, invaded Panama, rode in ballistic missile subs ready to blow up the world, or fired cruise missiles at people who they mocked as "ragheads" or "towelheads".

Meanwhile, many Americans who had the decency to not invade anywhere often have to choose between medical care or food and housing. Alex Pretti didn't work fòr America's sick poor; he worked for America's sick killing machine.

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THOUGHT 7/ #AlexPretti must have treated many people who had been deployed overseas with similar tactics, training and missions to those of #ICE and #CBP in #Minneapolis: to snatch suspects, kill resisters or objectors, and terrorise communities. He was a part of the machine of violence and the ideology of violence which killed him, in what #ChrisHedges calls the #ImperialBoomerang.

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THOUGHT 8/ #AlexPretti was not just some neutral nurse giving healthcare to whoever needed it. He was an active participant in the glorification of the military. There is nauseating video footage of him leading a moment of militarist hero worship for a dead veteran.

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THOUGHT 9/ So far as I can see, #AlexPretti is no hero. He was a man who did good stuff for bad guys, venerated an evil system which massacres foreigners, but disliked the same system being turned against his own town. One day, he set out to stand against that violent assault on Minneapolis, but his folly may have escalated the invaders' violence and triggered his murder.

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THOUGHT 10/ For me, all of this makes #AlexPretti a very deeply American kind of martyr, a jumble of sin and kindness and vice and folly and dedication and care and contradiction. The interwebs are full of people taking their own narrow angle of that jumble, desperately trying to simplify the complex murderous realities of the genocidal empire marketed as freedom.

ENDS