Shock. Dismay. Rage.

Kent State: May 4, 1970. Four college students about like me were shot and killed. Nine more were injured.

I felt shock. This isn't abstract. This is real. So this is where the country is. Oh.

It seemed very personal.

Americans are experiencing another "Kent State" event. Shock. Dismay. Realization that agents of our government might turn deadly force on us.

Joe Yetter sent me his reaction to the shooting death of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Joe is a retired U.S. Army physician who trained in military and VA hospitals. He worked with people like Alex Pretti.

Joe was a pathologist and a family physician here and abroad, taught in multiple residency and fellowship programs, and continues to care deeply about public health and democracy. He was a Democratic candidate for Congress in 2022.

Guest Post by Joe Yetter

I’m enraged. But I’ll not be entrapped.

I’m not proud of my rage, but it’s in me, all the same. The rage burns in others, too, and I tremble for my country. Our rage is what Trump wants and would use it against us. Do not let him.

Joe Yetter

I felt real sorrow for the millions of strangers who will die because Trump killed USAID. I was angered by the gutting of science and biomedicine that will extinguish many thousands of American lives. I grieved for Renee Good and for her family in a way that was far more personal, because she was an individual, identifiable American.

But this murder—the murder of Alex Pretti by federal agents—was different. Was different for me, at least. I have some ties to nurses, to intensive care units, and to the VA.

Nurses taught me a lot of what I needed to be a good physician. I’ve loved a few of them. A few others likely saved my life, and a few others definitely saved my career.

Alex Pretti was a nurse. More than that, he was an ICU nurse in a VA hospital. I never met Alex, but I know him. He was loved by his family and his colleagues, and if I—an Army veteran and VA patient—if I ever had rolled into his ICU in desperate straits, I’d have wanted him there.

I wish Alex could be right there, right now, working in his ICU, saving lives, mentoring students, sharing that life-saving profession.

I can imagine Alex there on the slab, stiff and cold and pale, drained of blood by multiple gunshot wounds. Flip him face down, I can see neat little entry wounds, each with a ring of dark grease where the bullet shed gun oil, smoke, and metal debris. Flip him over, I can see ragged exit wounds.

Last week began with the mourning of Renee Good, shot and killed by ICE; Renee dying while ICE prevented a physician coming to her aid. Last week ended with federal agents killing Alex Pretti—shooting him in the back as he was on the ground, unarmed and brutally restrained by multiple federal agents. Agents delayed yet another physician from rendering aid, aid that would have been useless, as multiple agents had fired multiple shots into Alex’s dying body. 

Border Patrol, ICE, and Trump’s other goons quickly made up lies about Alex Pretti, just as they had sullied Renee Good. They quickly removed evidence, instead of preserving the scene.

Alex Pretti had gone to the aid of a victim of brutality, and was attempting to defend her. He was, after all, a person who made a career of healing and protecting others.

I struggled to watch the videos. I managed to watch enough to know that Border Patrol lies, ICE lies, Bovino lies, Noem lies. Alex Pretti was murdered. A caring, loving, protective nurse was murdered for the crime of protecting another human being.

So, yeah, I’m enraged. I’m not proud of this rage, but it’s in me. I worry that others may act on a similar rage—and act violently. I try to be cerebral about this, to say of course, this is exactly what Tim Snyder wrote about in On Tyranny, this is one more step, and this is how we resist, and columnists Michelle Goldberg and M. Gessen are right. 

It’s not a stretch to think that other people, like me, enraged and anguished, will engage in lethal violence toward federal agents. For all I know, right-wing agents and provocateurs might. Either way, I believe that Trump, along with Stephen Miller and many of Trump’s goons actively want this. It is the plan. They will escalate until violence triggers more violence. Then comes repression and a police state.

So I’m going to embrace my rage and grieve privately.  Resist, but don’t fall into the trap of escalating violence. Do rally, do march, do participate in local and national strikes and every peaceful anti-fascist action. Do call your congressional representatives, every time you can. Do vote down tyranny and violence. We are better than they are.

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