This is Evil

Time is spinning fast, too fast. I keep coming back to the moments when a Border Patrol agent pushed a woman on a Minneapolis street, and an ICU nurse stepped in to help her. Stepping in to help is what people do, especially nurses, especially someone who works for the local VA, especially someone who spends their life reaching out to help. I heard an expert on the news a few days ago, being asked if he’d seen Alex Pretti attacking the agent in the videos. The expert said in essence, no, but Pretti did step forward, and people shouldn’t do that. But I say, if you’ve been trained to help and have practiced helping for eight, ten, or twelve hours a day for years, when you see someone about to fall, you’re not thinking, you’re reaching.

And then time is moving, spinning, whirring so fast you can hardly see it, because the next thing you know, Alex Pretti is being pepper-sprayed and three Border Patrol agents are tackling him. The on-air expert says, Well, he struggled. And I ask you, as a reasonable human being, who wouldn’t struggle? Who wouldn’t try to wipe the pepper spray from their burning eyes or try to get the men off? More agents come, and Alex is pinned to the ground.

Again, time speeds up. Border Patrol agents, ostensibly hired to protect our borders, are in Minneapolis--and let us pause here for a moment to consider that fact. The last time I looked, Minneapolis was nowhere near the border. In fact, according to Google, it’s 314 miles south of Canada and nowhere near either coast. But here we are with Border Patrol agents armed to the hilt, far from US borders, pinning a man who tried to help a woman an agent had pushed, and is now pepper-sprayed on the ground.

Time speeds up, and Alex Pretti, the man on the ground, an American citizen, an ICU nurse who works for a local Veterans hospital, who helps people in their worst hours, is executed by not one but two men wearing the badge of the Federal government.

Time hurries on as this same government rushes to microphones, and social media platforms, and friendly news outlets, to proclaim their version of the events, to get ahead of the story, i.e., the truth, like an obnoxious child yelling it’s not my fault, that the fault was with the 37-year-old ICU nurse helping a woman in need. And as the messaging, not the truth but the messaging, spreads over the airwaves, my heart breaks knowing there will be many people who’ll believe the false stories. Many people who’ll shake their heads at the terrorist ICU nurse, like they did at the terrorist poet. You know who I mean, the mother of three who was shot trying to back her car out of a mess, the poet Renee Good. Speed up time, and you’ll hear the bullets.

The bully in the White House said he felt “terrible” about the murder of Alex Pretti but “even worse” about the death of Renee Good because her parents were “big Trump fans.”

Time stops dead. It freezes. This is evil.

A friend of mine once said they weren’t sure what evil was. I say, this is it.

Sadly, as tragic as these murders are, we’ve witnessed them before, most frequently against People of Color. We have an ugly history of violence in this country, one that’s often hidden without actually ever being stopped. However, pretending that violence inflicted on one part of the population doesn’t affect the whole is myopic. The harm spreads like measles; there’s no such thing as ‘other’.

Time is moving fast, too fast. It took 250 years to build this country, imperfect and troubled as it is, but it’s taken only 370 days to bring it to its knees. Yes, we’ve been in crisis, torn apart, and spun out of control before now. Yes, over and over we’ve patched ourselves together. But there’s no guarantee we’ll swing back to sanity before our democracy can be saved. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.

And yet, despite everything, Earth never stops creating beauty. A morning sky is streaked with pink, a heron waits still as held-breath, a magnolia tree’s blossoms sweeten the air. You’d think so much beauty would stop us humans from harming each other. That it would keep Russia from bombing Ukraine, or Israel from starving Gaza, or the bullies in the White House from sending guns against the people of their own country. But it doesn’t, which makes me wonder what will, and then I see them.

Thousands of people standing in the cold, holding signs, raising voices for justice. People offering rides and shelter to immigrant families, blowing whistles to warn of danger, donating time, money, food, and energy to help make things better. We cannot wait for the leaders, who’ve abandoned their oath to protect the Constitution, to do their jobs. It’s up to us, the ordinary, to do as much as we can, because the evil is real and will not fade on its own.