Why, for Too Many, Alex Pretti’s Murder Counted More

We must find sympathy for those unlike ourselves

The tectonic plates of American politics have shifted in the wake of Alex Pretti’s execution at the hands of federal shock troops. You can hear the gears grind, observe the legacy media drop the false equivalences, see Republicans scramble to find separation from the widely loathed Trump regime (independent investigation, that’s the ticket!), and watch congressional Democrats garner up their courage to refuse to fund the murderous, rogue Department of Homeland Security — and even to impeach DHS Secretary and compulsive liar Kristi Noem. (As of this writing, the regime seems poised to push her aside and send immigration czar Tom Homan to Minneapolis, a token measure that still leaves in place the architect of the fascist assault on America, Stephen Miller.)

(Photo credit: Fibonacci Blue from Minnesota, USA)

Why only now is the status quo teetering?

There are both benign and not-so-benign reasons.

As to the former, the multiplicity of murders (followed by the same old lies and transparent efforts to cover up misconduct) have eroded what remains of the regime’s credibility. The repeated images of callous killings in broad daylight and the appalling excuses that ensued have broken through the media noise. Donald Trump’s disastrous drop in polls has encouraged nervous Republicans to tiptoe away from him; while the noble, courageous response of Minneapolis residents has inspired otherwise apolitical Americans.

But why now? Why did the nation not uniformly recoil when the U.S. government engaged in appalling extrajudicial killings on the high seas? Why not when Kimar Abrego Garcia and others were shipped off to CECOT? Frankly, the dam did not even break when a mother was killed in her car less than three weeks before Pretti’s assassination.

Sadly, a larger swath of Americans — white men and gun-owners, for example — might only have been stirred when the victim turned out to be someone who closely resembled themselves and people they know.

Abene Clayton, the lead reporter for the “Guns and Lies in America” series at The Guardian, explained on NPR after Renee Good’s killing that “the fact that we’re shocked that this happened to a white lady now means she gets this sort of treatment that Black women honestly have had to create for ourselves.” She continued, “Renee Good is getting a treatment that even in death, even other people who have been shot by ICE and police do not get, and I’m sure a part of it has to do with race.” And yet even her killing was not enough to break the MAGA trance. Renee Good wasn’t quite the “right” victim to enrage too many Americans.

We know that rising misogyny on the right aimed specifically at white, educated women is real. The New York Times’ Clyde McGrady explained:

Beyond labels and name-calling, the death of Ms. Good and the protests and anger in its wake have sparked a response from many on the right that is particularly targeted at white women in the streets, even though men have been just as involved . . .

But for the broader core of Mr. Trump’s followers, the description of white, urban women as violent radicals obstructing mass deportations seems to reflect older anxieties around race, gender and immigration among the white, non-college-educated men who make up the core of Mr. Trump’s movement and perceive their place in society slipping.

The term AWFUL (Affluent White Female Urban Liberal) became a commonplace slur long before Renee Good’s death, and misogyny has long been nearly as key a motivator for white Christian nationalists as racism. In the minds of a great many Americans, horribly, even a white mother of three may not have been sympathetic enough to rouse their fury.

The notion that only some victims are truly deserving, or can be relatable to many Americans, is the unsettling but undeniable conclusion after years of ignoring Black victims of police abuse or of disregarding the cruel, violent deportation of Hispanics. Enumerable studies have provided evidence that a victim’s race significantly affects the level of coverage and public reaction to the tragedy. It is “about who we see as born innocent and worthy of protection and who we see as guilty and fundamentally suspicious,” wrote Naomi Ishisaka of the Seattle Times, when covering the 2022 National Association of Black Journalists and National Association of Hispanic Journalists convention’s presentation on disparate coverage and treatment of missing persons. Even white killers receive more public sympathy than do non-white killers.

Then along comes Alex Pretti: white, a VA ICU nurse, a young man of unassailable character — and a responsible gun owner to boot! His unprovoked death and his baseless smearing jarred a great many people not previously disturbed by violence against Hispanics, Blacks, Asians, or women. For seemingly the first time, many Americans could not look away and say, “Well, that would never happen to me.”

It should not matter, of course, that Good and Pretti were white, or that they were admirable, socially responsible people. The government has no right to take any life in contravention of constitutional rights and simple decency. But that abstract principle has seemingly not packed a sufficient punch to generate an emotional tidal wave and national revolt against despotism.

We do not discount that factors other than race, as I noted, may have brought so many Americans to this breaking point. And we certainly should not underplay the heroic character and ethic of public service that both Good and Pretti indeed possessed — nor, frankly, should we turn a cold shoulder to people or institutions that, however belatedly and self-interestedly, have now concluded that the Trump regime is an evil menace to them.

What we should hope to learn from this cataclysmic descent into state-sponsored terror, demonization of non-whites, and dehumanization of Trump’s opponents is that no person deserves to be abused, mistreated, maimed, or killed at the hands of a tyrannical police state. If the entire country had reacted more angrily when they saw undocumented Hispanics torn from their families, or when Vice President JD Vance demonized Haitian immigrants with absurd, unfounded claims, perhaps Trump’s murderous regime and police state would have been stymied long before Good’s and Pretti’s murders.

The point of the famous Martin Niemöller poem (often mistakenly attributed to Reinhold Niebuhr), “First they came for the Communists/And I did not speak out/
Because I was not a Communist…” is widely misunderstood. The moral folly is not the failure to anticipate that horrors befalling others may eventually happen to us. The moral disgrace comes from refusing to recognize that those bearing little or no similarity to us deserve respect, care, and defense simply because they are human — regardless of whether we might suffer the same fate.

We certainly should not look askance at sympathy for these white victims nor minimize the political firestorm that their murders have unleashed. Rather, we should see our shared humanity in any victim of fascism, whatever the person’s race, gender, or politics. If Americans internalize that, then we might really advance the cause of justice and the quest for a more perfect nation.