Murder Most Foul in the Winter of Our Discontent

And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover...

I am determined to prove a villain...

Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,

By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams...

As I am subtle, false and treacherous

--Shakespeare, "Hamlet"

This America, man.

--Unidentified witness, "The Wire"

 

"Pretti was a domestic terrorist." --Steven Miller

The murder of Alex Pretti is so clearly murder most foul, and if the Bard provides lines for us then we have to see ourselves in our winter of discontent, to put it mildly.

Bovino All Dressed Up 

Mad Dog continues to find his eyes are drawn not to the scene of ten shots fired into the back of a subdued victim, but beyond to his murderers and beyond that to those who defend the murder, nay, even exalt in the murder.

Oh, there are the efforts to distract, to claim the victim was to blame, to defend the ICE or Border Patrol or whatever sort of federal agents were in fear for their lives because, well look at this horrific weapon! But then, the photo of the weapon was fake and we know that because we can see the actual pistol in the hand of one of the agents, removed from the reach of Pretti, who just seconds later is shot 10 times.

Ten times. Think about that. What does that tell us about the murderers?

Gotta Love the Hat

And we try to learn more about who these hit men are, but Trump conceals them. 

Trump Will Pardon

But we do know something about this Foreign Legion organized for local duty. One was heard saying, "Cool! This is just like 'Call of Duty,'" as his unit, decked out and dolled up just like Seal Team Six, stalked down a city street with their body armor, helmets and combat boots, attack rifles and face masks, ready to do battle with Minneapolis housewives and off duty nurses. 

Some percentage, maybe 35%, are recent immigrants who love the machismo, which is part of their culture, and they have such minimal education the best job by far they can get is with ICE, where they fall upon less fortunate immigrants, like those Kapos from the World War II concentration camps, who were allowed to live as long as they helped exterminate the new arrivals off the Eichmann trains at Auschwitz and other camps. 

For the Anglo ICE/Border Patrol mob, these are the losers, the high school drop outs, who spent too much time in their mothers' basements playing "Call To Duty," knowing the closest they'd ever come to living out those games was buying another game, until...ICE called!

Phony Photo: Lying All The Time

They are the INCELS--the Involuntary Celibates who know they cannot attract women and resent women and their mothers and the whole world because of that and "since I cannot prove a lover...I am determined to prove a villain."

I'm Not an INCEL!

Not to go all Freudian, but apparently this psychology goes all the way back to the 1600's and Elizabethan times, to Shakespeare.

Ideal ICE agent Candidate

These guys, like their idol, Trump, on some level, know they are profoundly unattractive--repellant really--and they make war on the world, especially on people who look more successful to them, like housewives and mothers driving SUV's, or men with full time professional jobs, like the nurse Pretti, or just about anyone who is not a fellow INCEL.

I am King of this Realm

There is an old story about racial hatred which actually probably applies to what is going on inside the heads of these ICE agents. It has been told in different forms, most famously in "Mississippi Burning," where a sheriff tries to explain racial hatred with the story about his father killing a mule for no apparent reason. In the case of ICE agents the motivating complaint is not race, but the motivation of felt inferiority and one's place in the pecking order is identical.

Allow Mad Dog to update that story to today's ICE agents.

Miller: He Who Pulls The Strings

A reporter is sitting at bar with an agent for the Federal Agency of Urban Khaos-Unlimited (FAUK-U) and they are drinking amiably. The FAUK-U agent does not know his drinking companion is a reporter.

REPORTER:  So, I hear you guys got another illegal today.

AGENT: Sure did. In fear for our lives,  you know. (He winks and grins.)

REPORTER: Fucking bitch?

AGENT: Not this time. Faggot. Worked as a nurse, if you can believe that. Didn't know that at the time, but he had the look, you know?

REPORTER: I heard he pulled a gun.

AGENT: Well, that's the story.

REPORTER: Not realy?

AGENT: Naw, that freak was down. 

REPORTER: So why the lead poisoning?

AGENT: You know, if I'm not better than some faggot, what am I?

Trump's Bitches

And remember: You cannot spell INCEL without I-C-E

VIOLENCE

 

Mad Dog had to Google the law which says advocating for the violent overthrow of the government is illegal.

It turns out, it's the Smith Act of 1940, Title 18.

Long before this law, Justice Oliver Wendel Holmes made it illegal to undermine the federal government by decrying the draft for World War 1, in that famous ringing phrase crystalizing the limits of free speech: "You cannot falsely cry 'Fire!' in a crowded theater causing a panic." He said that the printing (in Yiddish of all things!) of a pamphlet decrying the draft and distributing it outside a factory encouraging workers to not support the draft constituted a  "clear and present danger" to the United States of America.

War At Kent State

Holmes, at least when he wrote his opinion, was no friend of free speech.

But we all, or most of us, agree free speech is an ideal with some practical limitations.

Sometimes, however, men decide to ignore laws and to act, to do violent  things and they feel justified in violently  taking life on principle.

As a tool for revolution, for opposing despots, violence is often ineffective, or at best, inefficient. Or as they say now, nobody can out gun the federal government.

My parents always told me: "Don't be a martyr. You can't win from the grave."

And even a source as dubious as General George Patton said, "You don't win wars by dying for your country. You win wars by making that other dumb bastard, your enemy, die for his country."

Martyr

On the other hand, once all other options have been tried without success, sometimes violence has a certain appeal.

There is a famous scene from the movie, "Mississippi Burning," between an FBI agent  and the local sheriff assigned to help him. The Sheriff is the agent's native guide; he has grown up in the South and knows the local folks. When the car belonging to the three Civil Rights workers is hauled out of a local swamp, it's apparent the three have been murdered and the agent orders up 100 police to search the location for the bodies. 

"Don't do that. Don't do it." the sheriff warns the agent. "You'll start a war."

And the agent replies, "There's a war been going on here long before I arrived."

By that time in the movie, we have seen enough of Mississippi to know exactly what he means. It is a loathsome, fifth circle of Hell, populated by mean, ignorant, violent, haters. 

The agent is willing to incite violence to meet violence.

After Renee Good was murdered by an ICE agent, even before federal agents murdered Alex Pretti as he tried to protect a woman agents had slammed to the ground, Mad Dog probed some of his local friends and members of the Democratic Club about at least beginning an academic discussion, a thought  experiment, about what the options might be for resistance to the Trump terror.

We might begin with the simple, harmless things, like bringing food to immigrants who are afraid to leave their home, or blowing whistles when ICE shows up on the block or holding up protest signs on the corner. 

When neighbors held up those signs, Mad Dog asked the leader if she had held any exercises about how to react if ICE arrived, the way those Freedom Riders and students who did sit ins at segregated lunch counters were trained in the sixties. She looked a little uncomprehending, and said, "Well, we'd get arrested."

Mad Dog thought, "But that's not training."

Do these folks with the protest signs know what to do when they are arrested? Do they have a plan for arrest? What if they are beaten? Do they have a plan?

When you are trained how to resuscitate someone, you are trained what your first step should be--establish an airway--then, the next--thump the chest--and if that doesn't work--start pumping. And if that doesn't work...And so on, for each failure, what is next.

Okay, you've tried the big marches with the balloons and pink hats with ears. None of that worked: What next?

Martin Luther King argued  with Malcom X about peaceful resistance v Armed revolution. 

Today, we think non violent resistance worked and was the smart choice.

But Mad Dog has always wondered: What if Gandhi had been protesting against Hitler? We'd never have heard of Gandhi, or at most, he'd have lasted a single news cycle. If Gandhi had faced ICE rather than the British colonial officers, he'd have been dead within the first week he'd tried his Salt march to the sea.

Non violent protests only works against authorities who won't shoot you within seconds of arriving on the scene.

Watching Alex Pretti taking each step toward his own death, you could see he had a limited plan: video the ICE agents, back off as they approached him. 

But then one of them slammed a woman to the ground near him and he had not planned or been trained for that moment and he dived in and died.

His death will not change anything any more than the death of that student in the famous photo from Kent State.  That martyred student at Kent State did not end the war in Vietnam. The violent Tet Offensive ended the war in Vietnam. 

So, maybe we'll talk some more about what we'll do, how far we'd be willing to go when ICE comes to Hampton.

And you have to walk it all the way through to the violence.

Do we organize a militia? We have  guns in town. This is open carry New Hampshire.  

Do we have a dozen men show up with their assault rifles shouldered? 

What do we do when ICE calls in more troops with their assault rifles?

Do we level our rifles at them?

Do we shoot?

The Minutemen may or may not have had a plan at Lexington and Concord, but they actually wrecked havoc on the British and made them retreat.

But what happened then? 

Do we want to engage in a full out fire fight in Hampton?

And you cannot out gun the federal government.

And if we did try, would that not play into the hands of the Trump/Miller/Noem/Bovini hands? 

Oh, look, see! We told you they were dangerous, murdering leftists!

Or are we already past that? 

Has the war already begun, as in Mississippi?

18 U.S. Code § 2385 - Advocating overthrow of Government

• U.S. Code
• Notes

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Whoever knowingly or willfully advocates, abets, advises, or teaches the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying the government of the United States or the government of any State, Territory, District or Possession thereof, or the government of any political subdivision therein, by force or violence, or by the assassination of any officer of any such government; or

Whoever, with intent to cause the overthrow or destruction of any such government, prints, publishes, edits, issues, circulates, sells, distributes, or publicly displays any written or printed matter advocating, advising, or teaching the duty, necessity, desirability, or propriety of overthrowing or destroying any government in the United States by force or violence, or attempts to do so; or

Whoever organizes or helps or attempts to organize any society, group, or assembly of persons who teach, advocate, or encourage the overthrow or destruction of any such government by force or violence; or becomes or is a member of, or affiliates with, any such society, group, or assembly of persons, knowing the purposes thereof—

Shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

If two or more persons conspire to commit any offense named in this section, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both, and shall be ineligible for employment by the United States or any department or agency thereof, for the five years next following his conviction.

As used in this section, the terms “organizes” and “organize”, with respect to any society, group, or assembly of persons, include the recruiting of new members, the forming of new units, and the regrouping or expansion of existing clubs, classes, and other units of such society, group, or assembly of persons.

Predictable? Inevitable: The Plan All Along

 

Ken White, a lawyer whose podcast "Make No Law" was a wonderful exploration of the United States Constitution,  now has a new podcast, "Serious Trouble," and he has posted a list of "arguably predictable consequences," which foment violence from the government toward the people they govern/oppress.

ICE Agents Fearing for Their Lives

My only argument is with his word, "arguably." 

A Confused Narrative

These consequences are inevitable. They are a step by step recipe for what any tyranny cooks up. 

Government at Kent State

"We the People," become  dupes and neutered witnesses as the dogs of tyranny are unleashed. 

Government at Selma

Try reading this and not thinking of Steven Miller, Pete Hegseth, Krisit Noem and Trump. It reads like a playbook, and not just Project 2025 but Mein Kampf, or at least Joseph Goebbels diary entries. 

This is a plan, not just something that happened.

A Recipe for Violence

Members of groups hated by the ruling party and its supporters — including racial and religious groups, immigrants, and dissenters or critics — can be assaulted and even murdered with practical impunity, both by government actors and by private individuals favored by the ruling party. The ruling party can lie to justify said assaults and murders and no reliable institution can call the lies to account. The ruling party can expand the hated group without rights at will. The constitutional and statutory rights of the hated groups can be violated at will. Anyone objecting can be punished by violence or by abuse of government power. The populace is increasingly confused and uninformed because the institutions that should inform them are unable or unwilling to do so in a coherent manner. If any of this sounds  familiar, well then you have been paying attention. But if you pay attention to all this chaos, maybe you'll forget about Jeffrey Epstein.  From Predictable to Inevitable

MAGA REVEAL ON THE 2ND AMENDMENT

 

Another terrorist, worst of the worst, paid protester, Somali loving, likely rapist has been bravely dispatched by ICE, where, Trump/Noem/Bovino/Miller (can never keep these mopes straight) tell us he threatened federal agents with a gun, and fearing for their lives...you know the rest.

Noem with Photo of gun
ICE said It took from Nurse
Doesn't look like gun we see from video

And if you are confused on any of that, it's you who are confused, because it is very clear what happened, but let me repeat it: An armed rapist, immigrant like, leftist terrorist was heroically killed by ICE or Border Control or someone from Homeland Security (a name which beggars irony--as if these Federal killers are providing security for anyone, even White mothers). Got it now? If we keep saying it, it must be true.

He was, apparently shot over 10 times because he had committed the crime of carrying a licensed firearm and he was at the site of a demonstration where people were trying to exercise their First Amendment rights, (and don't they deserve to be shot for THAT?) and, apparently getting those violated, along with their 2nd Amendment right to keep and bear arms. 

Or at least that's how Trump/Noem/Hegseth/Miller have explained it.

Federal Agents 
Bravely Sudue
One Nurse

Federal agent removes Victim's gun
Before another shoots nasty terrorist
10 times as he lies on Ground

Well, actually, an ICU nurse, at the VA, who was holding a phone, while his licensed side arm was swept away by ICE/Border Control/Masked Raiders in preparation for his execution.

And, if you look at the photo above, that gun being held by the Fed does not look anything like the Howitzer Noem shows in the photo of the nurse's gun, which has what may be a laser sight attached. So, as she has virtually every time, Noem is lying, telling you to not believe what you can see with your own eyes.

Another Dangerous Rapist/
Murderer/
Leftist Mercenary

But he was ARMED! With a gun! What was he doing with a gun? What did he intend to do? THAT is the question! WHY did he bring a gun?

Here in New Hampshire, which is an open carry state, men pack heat on their hips or rifles on their backs to attend rallies, and especially Obama rallies, where all sorts of white males looking as if they were about to jump out of airplanes with the 101st Airborne show up to "listen" to Obama speak at Portsmouth High School, and if their weaponry spooked some Obama supporters, well, we do have the 2nd Amendment.

And, oh, about that 2nd Amendment, which begins, "A well organized militia, being necessary to the security of a Free State," well, what if the governor of the state, to restore order and safety, calls out the Minnesota National Guard to protect his citizens from ICE and then, what if Steven Miller and Secretary Noem and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth respond with Marines or deployment of the 101st airborne?

(Remember when the 101st was deployed in Little Rock, Arkansas to walk a little Black girl to school through a howling White mob? Boy, talk about a different sort of assignment.)

Invaders

So, if the Minnesota Guard were deployed to protect Minnesotans--imagine using the Guard to do something like that, rather than just piling up sandbags--Well, that's called Civil War, which, of course, is what MAGA has been calling for since January 6, 2021.

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED!

And this time, nothing new, it would be White people going to war to control non White people, poor White people, in service of rich, white plantation (Mar-a-lago, Epstein's Island) owners. 

Don't they Look Like
They're Having Fun?

Where the Executioner's Face is Always Well Hidden

 

Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
Where the executioner’s face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number
And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect it from the mountain so all souls can see it
Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’
But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’
And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard
It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall

--Bob Dylan

Another ICE execution today by Trump's MAGA men in Minnesota, where masked men carry out the Mad King's orders to restore order by murder. Or, as they call it: self defense in fear of their lives. These ICE agents are terrified. And they're the ones with the guns. So far. 

Maybe this time someone else had a gun. Maybe he had the right to carry that gun. The Second Amendment applies even in Minnesota. Not much is known, at the moment, except that Trump and Noem will say the ICE agents did the right thing.

Wimps Always Well Hidden

It's possible ICE shot in self defense, but given what we have seen and given what Trump, Bovino, Noem, J.D. Vance have said about the protestors who they always say are the worst of the worst criminals, rapists and murderers--like the mother of three Renee Good--the default, until we know more, is to think, "Oh, this is just another example of enforcement = execution."

Farhenheit 10 

Even if the man was armed, that doesn't mean he used his gun to threaten an ICE agent. And, as the Guardian newspaper reminded us, “Treat the US government and ICE claims like you’d treat a Russian government claim after they’ve shot down an airliner or bombed a hospital,” Higgins wrote. “America 2026.”

There is a difference between what is legal and what the public may think is just, and in the case of Trump, who has ordered ICE to ignore the need for a warrant to search a home, the idea of legal no longer has any real meaning.

A man named Bernard Goetz shot four Black teenagers in a New York City subway in December, 1982. This happened at a time when robberies and beatings were happening frequently on the subways, which is a vast system running 24/7/365.  

One of the teenagers demanded $5 from Goetz, who could have got up and moved to another subway car, but instead drew out a Smith and Wesson pistol and shot his interlocuter and his three friends. One was hit in the head, survived, but was paralyzed. None died.

In May, 1983, a woman was gang raped and one of the gang was one of the teenagers Goetz had shot five months earlier.

When Goetz was tried in 1985 for shooting the four, he was found innocent of attempted murder on the grounds of self defense. The subsequent actions of one of the crew he had attacked--the gang rapist--weighed heavily in the court of public opinion and, apparently with the jury.

This was a case where a judgment on the nature of the people involved counted more than the details of the assault or the definition of self defense, which might have required that the shooter first  try to retreat and avoid confrontation. 

But the prevailing opinion in the city at that time is these teenagers got what they deserved, given the kind of people they are.

In 2021, the same logic is used by ICE agents and all those who sail with them: they are serving out justice in the form of executions. Or we might apply it to the ICE agents: they are just like the teenagers, ganging up on a prey they've separated from the herd and going in for the kill.

Terrorist Mother Threat to Badass ICE

Today, at the corner across from the Old Salt in downtown Hampton, 20 people stood holding signs: "NO ICE" and "ENFORCEMENT NOW MEANS EXECUTION," and "STAND WITH MINNESOTA."

It was minus one degree this morning in Hampton, but it warmed up 19 degrees by noon and the sign holding.  

Sign Holders in Hampton

One of the sign holders walked down to Blue Harbor coffee shop and bought a quart of coffee and a quart of hot chocolate for the crew standing out there on the corner. When he went to swipe his credit card the girl behind the counter, maybe 17 years old, asked him who the coffee was for. 

"The crazy old folks out there down the block, holding signs."

"No charge," the girl said, placing her hand over the credit card machine. 

"That's a pretty big order," the man told her.

"Your money's no good here. The owner told us."

"You know," the man said, "This makes you part of the resistance now."

The girl smiled. "Yeah, I know."

Resistance 

Robot Tango Tangle: Baiting the Bot

 

Mad Dog has no fear about dementia diminishing his capacity to communicate with his friends and relatives: He's got AI on his side.

Something Siggy said caught Mad Dog's eye: AI has been reading his emails.

Recently, AI has been reading Mad Dog's emails (probably has been for some time longer than he realized) and summarizing what was said:

"Laura commented that your recent blog sounded a bit harsh and may have hurt Anonymous' feelings."

But, then, best of all, it suggested a response:

"I did not realize that. Thanks for the advice. I'll try to do better next time."

So, there you have it, Mad Dog's own brain has really not got to perceive, interpret, integrate or even formulate a response. He can just sit outside the conversation and let AI go back and forth with Laura for him, while he goes out for a cappuccino.  When he gets back, Mad Dog might text Laura, because...well, why should he actually speak to her on the phone in person?

HAL from Urbana

Actually, when you think about it, there was probably a time when people decried the whole notion that speaking to someone on the phone could be "in person" because, after all, it was not really in person, i.e., face to face.

Decommissioning HAL

But that's another discussion.

Anyway, this all came to mind as Mad Dog read Siggy's responses to Anonymous, which is, pretty clearly now, an AI Bot which picks up key words, runs it through its algorithms and responds with other, matched key words. So, the mention of "Minneapolis" evokes a stream of ICE and crime and corrupt official related words and phrases among which "leftist" and "elitist" and "criminal aliens" always seems to surface. But then, occasionally, there are spin offs which go right down a rabbit hole and a blog post  about climate change somehow gets a BOT response about Hamas, September 7, child trafficking and pedophilia. 

Mar-a-Lago

Intriguingly, no mention of "Epstein" ever seems to provoke a screed about pedophilia, Trump, or at least it has never done until now.

Mad Dog is not sufficiently conversant in the technology of AI to really know, but Siggy seems to be now just throwing out what might be described as "algorithm bait" to see if he can get the BOT to really launch into outer space.

Of course, even as Mad Dog writes this, he realizes AI BOT ANON is reading it and learning, and may be able to parry the thrusts from Siggy because Mad Dog has helped program him with the observation.

For any fans of Battlestar Galactica, the robots become so like human beings in appearance and thought, it eventually becomes impossible to tell them apart, short of dissecting them in an autopsy room. 

And the echoes of Orwell, "The animals looked from pig to man and from man to pig and they could no longer tell one from another."

Pondering all that, Mad Dog turned to AI for an understanding of what it means to be human, because, well, after all, who else could he turn to?

Professor AI illuminates:

In Battlestar Galactica, the core distinction separating humanoid Cylons (cyborgs) from humans, often highlighted by characters like Caprica-Six, is the absence of true, felt emotion and the inability to comprehend the complexity of human love. While they mimic human form, they are initially defined by their digital, "fuzzy logic" nature, which contrasts with the organic, suffering, and spiritual capacity that characterizes human existence.