Can anyone doubt now that Donald Trump and Stephen Miller want chaos in American streets? I submit to you that at this point, there is no other conclusion that may reasonably be drawn. Consider: It was less than three weeks ago that their thuggish agents executed a woman, a U.S. citizen, in cold blood. If for no other reason than the fact that it sparked international controversy, a normal democratically elected government that felt the normal degree of humility toward public and world opinion would have sent out a memo telling their armed agents to go easy for a little while until things cool down. The elected leader would issue the usual calls for calm.

Yet 17 days after the execution of Renee Nicole Good at the hands of an ICE agent, border patrol officers carried out another execution of an American citizen a mere two miles away. Trumpers can carry on all they want about Alex Pretti’s gun—which he was allowed to carry legally because the state’s Republicans decided back in 2003 that passing such a law was a grand idea—but the different videos make it obvious that at the time of his death, Pretti was on the ground, had been disarmed, and posed no mortal threat to anyone. That’s when they put 10 holes in him. With Good, I noted at the time, we could, maybe, bend over backward and grant a smidgen of ambiguity around the first bullet. But there was nothing ambiguous about the second and third ones, fired from point-blank range through an open car window. Likewise, about 10 shots, there is nothing ambiguous. This too was an execution.

These people are very clearly under orders, of at least the nudge and wink variety, to shoot first and ask questions later. Besides, when they watch their leaders smear the people they just executed with their itchy fingers, what lesson do we suppose they take away?........

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