I hope that Pretti's death can be a "Scales falling from the eyes" moment for folks. Maybe his whiteness will reach folks that couldn't get past Castile's blackness, and they can start on a better path. Good path to pull some folks down if you can, good as time as any to reach out to people.

So it's 'inconvenient' for them that Pretti was shot while advocating against white supremacy, for his neighbors, in the same area Philando Castile once lived. So they stay quiet and hope that their propaganda stays effective and the donor dollars keep rolling in and the regime stays in power.

This time around the NRA has been tepid instead of silent. Pretti, after all, looks like their donors and members, not the people they want them scared of. But they still aren't full throated calling for justice, because they don't care about 2A rights. They care about maintaining white supremacy.

If the NRA was actually a 2A advocacy group, his murder would have been an NRA rallying cry, instead they were silent. Silent, Because they aren't a 2A org, they're a white supremacist org, and Castile looked like the people their propaganda said you need guns to protect you from.

Also I think one of the biggest frustration an artist can have now is when you know and admire an artist for a while that inspired you for your art but they never seen what you did all those years, for them to go insta-follow an account clearly made with AI.

It hurts hard in a weird way.

I suspect some of these replies are just wrecker shit, but some genuinely seem to be real people spiraling. It is a scary time. That makes it all the more important to reflect on how it really can’t be made better by introducing *more* violence into it.