Dymitri Harszewski Blog 1660

[Photograph of Dymitri Harszewski]

2-26-26

A Pretti-Good Thing in Minnesota

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So, the news in mid-February is that ICE thugs in Minneapolis will have will have to all start wearing body cams, you know, cuz of public executions? Seems like a "Pretti Good" idea to me, though too late to save the lives of their first high profile victims, Alex Pretti and Renée Good. Both were 38 years old, both committed to public service (a nurse and, I think, a teacher?), and both were shot to death advocating for others, literally murdered in cold blood and broad daylight. Neither of them presented any threat to anything other than the fragile egos of a feral pack of masked mercenaries.

So yes, ok, this is good news, relatively speaking, but beyond the long overdue oversight, another interesting question of timing presents itself in Minnesota. Does it seem odd to anyone else that after months of intense protest, which had no effect at all on the smugly relentless brutality that continued with no hint that anything short of the total decimation and demoralization of Minneapolis' populace could ever make these grinning goons leave, it was just a couple days after the bodycam announcement that we heard the next announcement: ICE is pulling back from the fierce badlands of urban Minnesota.

Hmm, I say. Hmmmm....

What an earth could account for such a sudden reversal? Gosh, let's think about that. Maybe it was just coincidental timing? Maybe the "good guys" captured all the "villains" (even the kindergarten ones)? Or maybe the whole goof troop had a collective change of heart and began to see other people as actual human beings and not mere hashmarks to fill up their quota cards? Yes, sure, anything is possible. In fact, I might even become the next president of whatever becomes of what used to be America, you know, after Trump's cryogenically preserved McNoggin is finally retired after 10 or 15 years of billionaire enrichment and social repression. Maybe. But there could be a more likely explanation for the shift than any of those scenarios. I propose this one: perhaps, just perhaps, the reality sunk in that their crimes could no longer be committed in secret, and that's really all that made these mad dogs finally abandon their frenzied terror campaign? Maybe what changed their "mission" was knowing that the next murder or mauling would definitely be caught on camera, and that video would be a first-person perspective rather than something that might get filmed on some un-executed bystander's phone, possibly from a distance or awkward angle that still allows ICE to escape accountability, assuming the event is recorded at all and the phone can't just be pried from their fragile little fingers before it goes viral?

Golly, I just don't know.

They say correlation does not determine causation. True. But sometimes coincidences aren't as random as they appear, either. Especially when they don't seem random at all.