Abolish ICE 
Several days ago, ICE agents murdered Alex Pretti in Minneapolis.
As is now customary, Stephen Miller interrupted his usual torrent of racist anti-immigrant abuse on Twitter to call Pretti an "assassin" and a "domestic terrorist" in an attempt to frame his killing as a justified police action.
These lies are as transparent as they are ridiculous, and that's the point. Plausible lies don't reinforce fealty to the regime. The lies must be preposterous, both as a show of power and domination, and to ensure that belief in the lie filters out anyone who is willing or capable of rejecting it when exposed to contradictory information.
I need to add my tiny voice to the chorus of those calling to abolish ICE. It's important enough for me to state this that I've made it the title of this post, even if my main focus isn't about ICE itself or about documenting their crimes. They are beyond reform.
ICE is not an immigration enforcement agency, they are a secret paramilitary force under the direct control of an autocratic leader whose primary objective is ethnic cleansing. This might sound shocking to the senses, but this is a straightforward description of their activities.
The machinery of fascism is an area of interest of mine, and one of increasing relevance, but not an area of expertise. I've still got a lot of reading to do on that subject, but thankfully we still have access to the voices of experts like M. Gessen.
What I really want to discuss is a detail in the killing of Alex Pretti that has become a major part of the narrative. Pretti was carrying a gun.
Conservatives have latched onto this as a provocative act. Because they've said this within the framework of their preposterous lies, their claim lacks credibility. Border Patrol commander Greg Bovino was quick to claim without evidence or investigation:
This looks like a situation where an individual wanted to do maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.
Kash Patel claimed, incredibly, that:
You cannot bring a firearm, loaded, with multiple magazines to any sort of protest that you want. It’s that simple. You don’t have that right to break the law and incite violence.
Conservatives have argued for decades that Americans do, in fact, have that right. The NRA's reading of the 2nd Amendment is not about well regulated militias, it's about the private right to gun ownership.
But even this was posture. It was the old kind of lie; a Goldwater lie, a plausible lie. When the Black Panthers armed themselves and started patrolling the streets of Oakland to monitor police brutality, Ronald Reagan himself signed a gun control measure into law in California immediately to put a stop to it.
As Adam Serwer paraphrases, the true conservative interpretation is:
The second amendment is when conservatives can carry guns everywhere, but if anyone else has a gun we can kill him on sight.
Liberal commentators have been quick to point out this hypocrisy. Conservatives have spent years booking appearances after mass shootings to remind everyone that we can't punish poor gun owners with draconian restrictions like magazine size restrictions or bans on bump stocks, and now here they are claiming that Pretti's gun was proof of intent to harm. We delight in pointing out these contradictions because we still believe in hypocrisy as a moral failing, unaware that Mitch McConnell killed it in 2020 in exchange for Amy Coney Barrett.
The establishment media thinks this is some kind of novel flip-flop on gun rights. As the dried out husk of the Washington Post published in a post originally titled "Minneapolis shooting Scrambles America's Gun Debate":
Some gun rights backers cite Alex Pretti’s firearm as a justification for his killing, while gun-control supporters dismiss its relevance.
I wish there was a more charitable read on this article, but I really think you need to be an imbecile to write this or think it represents any kind of change in posture on the gun debate. "You have claimed that legal gun ownership doesn't imply intent and now you are saying the opposite" isn't some kind of moral backpedalling that warrants shallow "what kind of topsy turvy world are we living in?" takes.
The more interesting question to ask yourself is under what framework could the Right consider Pretti's firearm justification for his killing while lionizing Kyle Rittenhouse, who open carried a long gun into a counter-protest and ended up killing two people? How can Pretti be a domestic terrorist while the militia that stormed the Michigan State Capitol to prevent pandemic lockdowns are "liberators"?
The only frameworks that make any sense reveal the interpretation of the 2nd Amendment as a general protection from government tyranny to be a laughable farce, as these rights only seem to apply when the weapon is used against the left.
Alas, in their desperate attempt to provide cover for this event, conservatives have fumbled upon a core truth:
Carrying a gun is a provocative act. It is a credible threat of violence.
Everyone knows this on some level. It's baked into our culture. Our art, our films all know this, and can speak the language of this threat fluently, from modern gangster noirs to old fashioned westerns.
Pretti carried in exactly the way that conservatives have said responsible legal gun owners should. He had his hands raised, a universal signal that he had no intent to resist. Once they discovered his gun and disarmed him, they shot him. After he stopped moving, they shot him some more. Despite being textbook, being a literal boy scout and a nurse at a VA hospital, conservatives suddenly seem to understand that a weapon in the hands of an adversary represents a threat.
This isn't a mystery. I agree with them.
When the BLM movement erupted, white nationalist militias started showing up to confront protesters armed with guns. When protesters passed by the house of Patricia and Mark McCloskey, they came out wielding guns in response.
These were threats.
Everyone knows that carrying around a gun is not equivalent to carrying around a banana. That's why there is handwringing around the term brandish, which is a legal term that describes using a weapon in an intimidating way. For a gun, this could mean as little as bringing the fact that you are carrying a gun to someone's attention.
But conservatives believe that only favored peoples should have access to the right to this kind of threat of violence. That's why Rittenhouse is a hero. That's why the McCloskey's went to the RNC in 2020. That's why Reagan passed the Mulford Act in California.
In order to preserve this right for themselves, they've had to couch it in the abstract language of rights and tyranny. They've had to use the considerable leverage of the constitution, and most of all, they've had to lie about what it really means to carry a firearm. Pretti assumed with good reason that the terms of this fiction meant he could safely carry a firearm if he acted reasonably, but he didn't know the fine print.
The midst of a fascist reign of terror probably seems like a stupid time to note my opposition to the 2nd Amendment, but I don't think we defeat fascism from within through the use of violence. Like Batman said, guns are the tool of the enemy.
Maybe I'm being naive, but I break with the extremes of the left on this matter, who think fascism's defeat in WWII is a blue print instead of a cautionary tale, who think the only way to eradicate fascism is by shooting it and hanging it upside down at an Esso. This thirst for righteous violence feels to me too similar to the ghoulish fantasies of online right wing chuds conditioned by Hearts of Iron to think anti-ICE protesters are somehow a part of the comintern.
Broad gun ownership continues only through the acceptance of a lie we all know is false. It is persisted through concerted efforts that have for decades impeded any attempt at interpreting gun violence in any way that might promote gun control, that might make the costs of widespread gun ownership better understood.
But the 2nd amendment is a stranger in a strange land. In 1789, the year George Washington started his first term, fewer people lived in the United States than now live in Brooklyn + Queens.
If the 2nd amendment is about preventing tyranny, it's transparent nonsense. What do we get in return for this fantasy? 50,000 gun deaths a year and hundreds of school shootings?
If it's about private gun ownership, it is pathetically anachronistic and not fit for purpose. It needs to be repealed and replaced with a heavily restricted permitting structure that allows for limited use in specific environments.
In our modern cities and suburbs, guns don't protect you. The person most likely to be shot with your gun is yourself. There is no way to carry a gun without presenting as a threat, and other people with guns will respond to that threat.
To bring this back around to ICE, Renée Good was unarmed, and that didn't save her. Pretti didn't deserve to be killed just for having a gun. That's not the way the contract is supposed to work. But that contract is based on lies, and if we can all admit it, we might someday make some progress on the carnage we live with every day.