From Ken White at the Popehat Report comes a long inquiry into the morality of political violence, ending with this concluding paragraph:
I think I have been perfectly clear. However, for the benefit of people easily offended by implication over bluntness, I think there is a plausible argument that it is morally permissible, and even morally necessary, to use political violence against the Trump Administration and its agents and supporters under the current circumstances in America. The arguments in favor are likely to grow.
Here is my response, edited to correct the name of the of the Border Patrol “commander at large” apparently in charge of ICE operations in Minneapolis:
I’m afraid I feel compelled to offer a different answer than Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King Junior gave their lives to defend. No community is morally obligated to suffer what Gregory Bovino and his murderous thugs have done in Minneapolis to Renee Nicole Goode, Geraldo Lunas Campos, and Alex Pretti. Any community attacked the way ICE has attacked Minneapolis is morally justified in taking up arms against their attackers and driving them back to the sewer that spawned them. Our Declaration of Independence, as well as our own right to defend ourselves, says as much.
Practically speaking, of course, an armed response by a community under siege in the circumstances that Minneapolis finds itself in today would simply result in ending the lives of a few depraved assholes in exchange for the lives of hundreds, perhaps thousands of innocents. Abstaining from violence in these circustances has nothing to do with morality, but it does have everything to do with a resistance that is prudent as well as courageous. That’s why I agree, for the moment at least, that Governor Walz has the right strategy, if not the right tactics, to respond to the Federal Government’s atrocities. If we’re serious about our resistance, more consistent and more effective tactics will come to us eventually. In the meantime, sadly, we can count on continuing news of blood and cruelty that a genuinely moral person will find extremely hard to endure without striking back.
All of this has been so horrendous. I’d watched the videos of all the other shootings – I think it important to bear witness, to see exactly, with my own eyes, what is happening – and I’d managed, barely, the grief and anger, until Alex Pretti. I was totally unprepared for the avalanche of trauma it released in me.
Years ago my brother-in-law was purposely shot and killed in his own home by a local swat team raid based on lies told and left unexplored by them in their eagerness to try out the new war toys our government had been giving them. Suffice it to say, circumstances did not rise to the level of execution in that situation either. I’d been my family’s liaison to the civil rights attorneys and, in that capacity, had far too many opportunities to look the fuckers that shot him in the face. They literally followed my vehicle every time I came to town during the months afterward.
Things that might have been unbearable in the moment if not for righteous anger and focused grief become … much less so after the years have ebbed those structural emotions away. It wasn’t the first video that emerged that struck me down, but rather the one that begins with him holding his camera at his chest, bearing witness, and trying to help the women who’d been attacked. When he went down and the gun came out my ability to breathe ceased. When it was fired, my legs dissolved.
It’s been nearly 20 years since my BIL was executed, but every bit of distance, every shred of healing however ragged, was ripped away as if it had never happened in the moment I witnessed Alex Pretti die.
Words fail me. Those of us who haven’t been where you’ve been, except in sympathy with those who have, really have no idea, have we? We say “we’re sorry for your loss,” and we mean it, but it’s never enough. It’s just never enough. The Catholics say Kýrie eléison, Christe eléison,. They have the right idea, but even religion has no real comfort to offer us—as I see it, anyway—no genuine understanding of the forces at work in the universe, which are, for the moment, if not forever, beyond our understanding. We have each other, though, which, rightly understood, and rightly honored, will have to be enough.