We’re being told Pretti was “brandishing a weapon” and “attacking” ICE personnel who then killed him. We all know now that it’s BS. Those claims are not supported by the video or the experiences of those who were there. What is borne out is something more familiar: a pre-written script activated on cue — a threat label, a justification phrase, and a dead civilian who can’t contradict it.
This is how the machine works. The facts become optional. The narrative is immediate. The person is dead. The paperwork follows.
And then comes the most nauseating part of this whole mess: the hypocrisy.
Many of the same people who spent years screaming about tyranny are suddenly fluent in “officer safety,” “split-second decisions,” and “just comply” now that it’s their side doing it. The rhetoric didn’t disappear. It just got laundered through law-and-order language. “They’re coming for our guns.” “Government overreach.” “Shall not be infringed.” All that chest-thumping evaporates the second armed federal agents start terrorizing people they don’t like — replaced by procedural sympathy for the state.
Let’s get this straight: a protestor, a citizen gets shot dead by federal agents, and the public response from certain quarters is “well, DHS says he had a gun”? That’s the red line? Guns are sacred when they’re on your hip, but magically become a death sentence when they’re used as a post-hoc justification by the state? Either the Second Amendment applies to everyone, or it never really did. We can’t pretend otherwise.
This is what modern tyranny actually looks like. Not jackboots and marching columns — but armed agents roaming neighborhoods, stopping people, killing civilians, and daring the public to question it. Tyranny is execution followed by a press release. Tyranny is labeling the dead a “threat” so the state doesn’t have to explain why someone’s life ended in the street. Tyranny is shredding due process and calling it order.
Notice how quickly the language slides from human reality to administrative abstraction: “use of force incident.” “Pending internal review.” “Policy-compliant action.” This is how violence becomes paperwork. This is how a killing becomes a case file. Bureaucracy doesn’t just hide brutality — it normalizes it.
And here’s the part we must be clear-eyed about: whether or not it’s coordinated, this escalation is structurally useful. It manufactures the conditions for “emergency” powers. You flood the zone with fear, you redefine proximity and noncompliance as danger, and then you point to the chaos you helped create as justification for expanded federal control. See? Things are out of control. Better hand the streets to the feds. Better suspend norms. Better militarize.
This playbook is not new.
We’ve seen it in Reconstruction and Jim Crow, where law and force were selectively applied to preserve dominance. In the Palmer Raids, where “radicals” justified mass arrests. In Japanese American internment, rubber-stamped by fear. In COINTELPRO, where activists were labeled threats and quietly destroyed. At Kent State, where protest became justification for lethal force.
Different decade. Same logic. Redefine people as dangers. Escalate force. Then claim the escalation proves you were right all along.
And once you start tossing around “domestic terrorist” like confetti, you’re not describing reality. You’re creating permission. It’s how illegitimate power shuts down thought. Slap on the label, kill the person, move on. If fear, panic, or noncompliance is enough to earn that word now, then it’s meaningless — and anyone who won’t kneel quietly is already pre-criminal by future association.
What makes this especially grotesque is watching self-described “freedom lovers” be perfectly fine with it, as long as it’s brown people, immigrants, protesters, or anyone they’ve already dehumanized. Turns out “don’t tread on me” often meant “tread on them.” That’s not fear of tyranny. That’s fear of losing dominance. There’s a difference, and this moment makes it hard to pretend otherwise.
“Just comply” isn’t a principle. It’s surrender dressed up as common sense. It’s the language of a system that has already decided who deserves rights and who doesn’t. And once that deal gets normalized, the line always moves. It always has.
So what do we do when escalation is the goal?
First, we recognize that many organizers, communities, and frontline groups have already been doing this work — often at far greater personal risk than people like me. What follows isn’t instruction from above. It’s an attempt to name patterns and support strategies that people are already using, and to make it harder to dismiss them.
We don’t give them the footage they’re fishing for.
Real resistance under these conditions looks boring, disciplined, and infuriatingly hard to demonize:
• We control protest optics — marshals, de-escalation, rapid isolation of provocateurs. Not because we’re polite, but because we refuse to supply their pretext.
• We force daylight — FOIA, court filings, independent investigations, civil discovery, inspector general complaints. Receipts beat riot footage every time. Receipts force them to argue in court instead of on cable news. They hate that.
• We decentralize pressure — cities, states, universities, unions, churches, professional orgs. Sanctuary policies. Non-cooperation. Institutional friction. Power hates friction more than it fears slogans.
• We wage legitimacy warfare — due process, constitutional violations, chain of command, policy failures. Make it procedural. Make it undeniable.
• We call the trap out in advance — clearly and repeatedly: this is about manufacturing consent for militarization. This is about creating chaos to justify control.
This isn’t pacifism. It’s denial of narrative terrain. It’s refusing to be cast as the villain in someone else’s emergency powers fantasy.
Because here’s the uncomfortable truth: if they really want expanded federal powers, they don’t actually need any of us to give them a reason. But they do need the public to believe the reason. Our shared work is to make that justification look thin, self-serving, and manufactured.
People don’t get to pretend they love the Constitution while applauding as it’s actively being shredded. They don’t get to scream about freedom while defending a government that kills first and explains later. And they don’t get to lecture anyone about law and order when what they’re actually defending is unchecked violence backed by a badge and a press release.
If this doesn’t make people angry, it’s not because the situation isn’t outrageous. It’s because they’ve already decided who it’s acceptable to be used against.
The trap is rage without strategy.
The answer is outrage with discipline.
Not silence.
Not submission.
Pressure. Process. Exposure. Friction. Time.
That’s how we resist without becoming the excuse.
My next post is a tactical field guide — focused on how we can make our will and our demands unmistakable, while denying the system the escalation it’s looking for.
