Luigi and ICE taught me two very important things. One, a single man CAN make a difference for good. Whether or not it was seen, it was felt. They shivered. And two. When you have masked men killing people in your own country, no one actually wants to kill someone and face the punishment of doing so. The fact that no ICE agent was killed following Alex Pretti's murder astounded me. It taught me something - this doesn't apply to all of them and it is conspiratorial - but a lot of the death in the political avenues are not done by 'normal' people. That there is a high likely-hood of something else going on behind the scenes. (It sounds obvious reading it but you're made to feel like you're doing something wrong by even considering the possibility of it.)

What I mean is - After Pretti, I thought the country would move in solidarity together. And while parts of it did and had the biggest cause and effect at the time. It didn't spark more than that, it wounded me to be honest.

A person, an ICU nurse shot dead with a mag-dump by multiple men masked in broad daylight given the authority to do so by their own government. It fucking shocked me to my core... I expected retaliation and yet, there was none. What it meant to me was people are not interested in a revolution until it is directly brought to their doorstep. We are interested in total self preservation.

Not only did an ICU nurse helping a woman I might add, was shot dead in the street, his killers were protected and hidden away. A go-fund-me surpassed 1.7 million dollars for the murder of an innocent man... it taught me something valuable. Human beings are a failed species or minimum extremely flawed and adaptive to many types of pain.

How can someone witness that and pay them for the murder and execution of their fellow man so callously, and you can say it wasn't the many but the few that did that. Yet violence never befallen any ICE agent therein after.

It doesn't make sense to me. Yet, at the same time I understood it. I also don't want to risk life and limb for an ideal especially when you already believe the ideal is dead... I don't even why I'm typing anymore. Searching for a solution to a problem long overdue. If anyone has the answers please let me know. I wish I did. I think the best I can do now is actually protest and put these words on more than a forum but out there for like-minded people and stand united. But that feels so idealistic it makes me sickly sweet. But it's better than the alternative.

I can't figure out formatting on here so this doesn't turn into a blob of words.

Yeah, exactly. It's why places like New York or LA can have these amazing and powerful protests vs where I live, cannot (deep red). It's like a different country between state lines and I mean vastly different from one place to another.

Realistically what I see happening is our nation fracturing. I don't think it'll happen in the next ten years but thirty or even fifty, I believe we'll see states secede from the states. If things continue this way then the American experiment has failed. We had a good run but we're on the way out the door which might be a good thing.

I don't know. I just know I wish I could change it. Wish I had more power to stop this. It's like I'm watching the world as I knew it literally decay but only for us down in the 80% of the K-shaped economy - which I am. When you elect a man like Trump, expect a man like Trump. He only cares for himself and the rich - and it's not cause he likes them of course. It's business. Why people thought a business man would be good politics is beyond me.

Who knows might just be in an echo chamber but it certainly seems like we're going backwards globally not just in America either and people keep trying to admonish the fact their politicians are also in the cabal of this evil.

That sounds like a reasonable solution. However, I’m still worried about competence and mental capability. There’s a pretty good chance that a drunken conspiracy nut would eventually hold an important office. Some sort of basic filtering should be in place. Maybe we could give everyone a chance, but incompatible people would need to be kicked out and replaced by more capable people. This system would obviously get abused, just like you pointed out.

What then? Should we just tolerate the fact that a certain fraction of the population, and the governing body, is more or less dysfunctional? Everyone else who has been trusted with power would need to carry them. If the town mayor is too drunk to wake up in the morning, too deranged to have a sensible conversation, or too hostile to be around other people, some secretary would need to participate in all the meetings and take care of the important decisions.

That implies a certain level on integrity, honesty and humility, which are a bit tricky to test. Would love to see more of that though.

Totally true. People vote based on the weirdest criteria.

“Oh, I’m not going to vote for her because she’s a woman…” Like, do these people even check what the candidate is aiming to accomplish?

Yeah, there’s the problem. It needs to be properly audited and independent. Sounds good on paper, but how do we actually implement it IRL.

Well said and fully agreed. When the means to have discussion are taken away that too is a tool used against the people. That's why they're turning to surveillance as much as they have. It has been a wonderful weapon to cull this exact type of talk.

I think it'll just have to get a whole lot worse before we'll be worrying about this stage of things. It's just odd, watching it and seeing news like this become just background noise for so many people.

Almost like it doesn't even matter that rights are being stripped away, right in front of people and seemingly so few care... but maybe that's not fully right either. So few people don't have the time to care whether by design or not. And like you say, it feels like you're stuck, watching. A prison, oddly enough. I mean I'm not starving to death or something like that, but it feels awful with seemingly no light at the end of the long narrow tunnel. Waiting for a cave-in to breathe gasps of different air into the stale damp hole we call home.

I don't know, maybe I'm just complaining too much.