minneapolis – Martin Simpson

Fatal Empathy (posted 2/2/26)

I talked to an old friend of mine the other day. Regular readers have heard of him, because he’s one of a couple of lefties I’ve been close to for years.

Many readers from the CO site – which I’m still hoping to be able to revive with CO, so please be patient – have commented to the effect of, “How can you be friends with a leftist, after everything they’ve done and everything you’ve said about what they’ve done?”

Which is a rational question to ask. Though an even better question might be how can he be friends with me, after everything he thinks conservatives have done? Especially since lefties are usually pretty quick to cut off and cancel anyone on the other political side, IMHO.

The answer is that even though I think his politics are wildly wrong, and he thinks the same about mine, deep down we both know that there are some things more important than politics. I’ve known him for 40 years, and he’s got a good heart. I was godfather to one of his kids, and he introduced me to my smokeshow wife, and for that I will forever be in his debt.

I love him like a brother. A lovable but addled and confused brother. 😊

The reason I mention all that is that since our conversation, I’ve been thinking about the chaos in Minneapolis, and I’ve come to the conclusion that good lefties are wrong about immigration and ICE for two main reasons: they’ve misunderstood the law, and they’ve misunderstood and/or misapplied empathy.

Empathy first. The first time I heard the term “toxic empathy” was not very long ago, but it has become a hotly debated topic since then. At first glance, the concept would appear to be oxymoronic – how could “empathy” ever be “toxic?” But you don’t have to think very long to come up with tons of examples to prove that it often is.

Anyone who has been in or observed human relationships – watching one spouse enable another by making excuses for abuse; loaning money to somebody with a gambling problem; giving $20 to a homeless guy who uses it to buy the fentanyl that kills him; parents spoiling a child until he’s a 30-something basement-dweller – recognizes that reality.

The same negative results ensue on a political level, when government programs that are meant to help people actually incentivize bad behaviors that gravely damage the recipients. Giving women welfare benefits only if there is no man in the house produces sky-high fatherlessness, and traps them in dysfunctional dependence, which is an unmitigated disaster. Guaranteeing college loans to people to get worthless grievance studies degrees produces bitter 30-somethings with $200K in debt and a minimum wage job. Etc.

But aside from the toxicity issue, empathy is very often only selective, on both the right and the left. Some on our side empathized with the nonviolent people among the J6 protestors way more than we empathize with the non-violent among leftist protestors, because we basically agree with the former and disagree with the latter.

But the lefties in Minneapolis and around the country have taken that to an extreme, IMHO. I haven’t heard any lefties express empathy for Jocelyn Nungaray, Laken Riley, or any of the thousands of Americans who did nothing wrong, but were attacked or murdered by unvetted illegals. But they have been gnashing their teeth and rending their garments over illegals who broke our laws (including wife-beating human smuggler Kilmar), and legal immigrant citizens who were briefly detained to confirm their legal status before being released.

The elite leftists have used a cloak of lies to try to turn the five-year-old boy with the cute backpack into a tiny, photogenic victim of cruel ICE, claiming that ICE “arrested” him. The truth, of course is that ICE took care of the kid after they tried to take his criminal dad into custody, and the creepy POS fled, leaving the boy behind in freezing weather.

Yet the leftists condemn the ICE agents who cared for him, rather than the criminal dad who abandoned him. Unexpectedly!

Speaking of kids, it’s been widely reported that around 300,000 illegal children have been snuck in and given into the custody of others – some probably relatives or friends of their parents, but many fraudsters posing as their parents to improve their chances of getting in, and many others either cartel-associated or cartel-coerced people who facilitate the sexual and other abuse of those children.

Anyone who actually cares about kids has to be horrified by the prospect of a third of a million small, powerless victims of the left’s pitiless policy of opening the border to unvetted waves of uncontrolled immigration and human smuggling. And yet the elite left has been utterly silent about this massive crime.

And when Homan announced last week that this administration has located and rescued around 145,000 of those victimized kids, the silence of those who can’t stop virtue signaling about, “Won’t somebody please think of the children?!” has been deafening.

Not one word of celebration or relief. Not even a grudging “good job” from the armies of those who claim to be the champions of “undocumented” children.

Compare that to the tsunami of grief for Robin Good and Alex Pretti. I know that many good lefties actually do grieve for those two, just as I and many other conservatives feel some sympathy for the tragic ending that their own disordered ideology led them to. But I also know that many in the leftist elite are more than happy to exploit the deaths of those two for their own propagandistic political gain.

That much is clear from the way they’ve relentlessly lied about both cases. They claim that Robin Good was an innocent mother who stumbled into an ICE action, and died while trying to flee the murderous agents, through no fault of her own. (The truth was that she and her partner had trained at an organized anti-ICE boot camp, went there to illegally interfere with agents, and was killed in the process of committing multiple crimes, including driving her car toward an agent who had already been hit and dragged by one of her political co-religionists previously.)

They claim that Alex Pretti was a noble nurse, murdered by ICE agents for the “crime” of trying to help a woman they were victimizing. (The truth was that he was a repeated assaulter of ICE agents who went there to attack and interfere with their legal actions in a chaotic situation, and died in the process of committing multiple crimes.)

Ironically, misplaced and toxic empathy played significant roles in both of their deaths. Because one of the best examples of toxic empathy in government is the policy of going soft on crime, which both of the dead protestors had learned to expect.

Nationwide anti-ICE protests routinely violate a great many of our laws, and yet almost none of those in the mobs of protestors/agitators/rioters ever face legal consequences for their actions. They aren’t arrested, or if they are, they are quickly released with all charges either dropped, or reduced to the equivalent of a traffic ticket. (And that amounts to an actual reward, since they gain admiration and praise from their disordered companions for heroically “standing up to the fascists.”)

Thus the protestors – exhilarated by an intoxicating mix of political hatred and a sense of their own moral superiority and the righteousness of their cause – see some of their companions screaming at the LEOs, and throwing the first objects or fireworks at them. And nothing happens to them. So they join in, and things accelerate.

And soon, they end up believing that their opponents are basically powerless against them, and they will never face any consequences for their crimes, which they don’t even recognize or acknowledge ARE crimes.

That process ends with Robin Good dead, and her partner wailing, “Why are they using real bullets?!” (Anyone not drunk on an ideological fervor involving delusions of invulnerability can clearly see the obvious answer: When you attack armed LEOs and try to run over them with a real car, you can expect to catch a lot of real bullets.)

That process also ends with Alex Pretti’s death. If law enforcement had arrested him shortly before, when he committed multiple crimes at a previous protest (interfering with an arrest, spitting at cops and damaging one of their vehicles, then fighting with one of them), he would still be alive today.

But because he didn’t face an arrest 10 days earlier, he was emboldened to escalate his criminal behavior until he faced the end of his life 10 days later.

And ironically, the actions of his comrades also played a huge role in his death. One of their tactics has been to constantly blow whistles at an ear-splitting volume, which is obviously disorienting and extremely aggravating and even painful to the LEOs carrying out their legal tasks, as it is intended to be.

Because Pretti was carrying a gun – which he could legally do – to a legitimate law enforcement action where he intended to commit crimes – which he could NOT legally do – he had already put his life at great risk. In the ensuing confusion, when one of the cops saw his weapon and called out, “Gun!” things instantly escalated, as they must.

Tragically, one cop had already gotten Pretti’s gun away from him when other cops – because he was struggling with them (which one cannot legally do), and because they were almost certainly not aware that he no longer had his gun on him – shot him.

Typically, in that situation a cop will let the other cops know when he has removed and secured the weapon from the criminal. And it is very likely –to say the least – that the cop in this case tried to do that.

But because a mob of insurrectionist a-holes surrounded the cops and Pretti, blowing their deafening whistles, no one could have heard the information that would almost certainly have saved Pretti’s life.

And so Alex Pretti – just like Robin Good, and (as sad as this is to say) Ashli Babbitt – died, almost entirely because of his own reckless actions.

Next up: I’ve researched and will try to summarize the main legal issues underlying the anti-ICE and pro-illegal immigration wave that is sweeping the country.

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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Renee Good is Dead Because of Elite Leftist Liars (posted 1/12/26)

The Minneapolis ICE shooting has been on my mind this weekend, as I imagine it has been on many of yours. I was already doing some research on crime and punishment in red vs. blue areas last week, when Renee Good ended up getting shot.

And yes, there is an understood (herself) in between “getting” and “shot.”

And I know what some of you are thinking, and yes, I actually do some research and write about serious topics once in a while. It’s not all “Pelosi is a mummy” and “Wow, is Liz Warren ever translucently white!” jokes around here. (#wemustneverstopmockingher)

I’m going to return to some more general “why can’t leftists make sense about crime” ruminations in future columns, but for now, I’d like to throw out some thoughts on what has gone so aggravatingly wrong in Minneapolis.

To do so, I’m going to draw some connections to the Sovereign Citizens (SC) movement. If you don’t know anything about SCs, you can search that topic, and find tons of videos of them having aggravating but hilarious run-ins with cops. But I’ve got to warn you: the videos are addictive, and it’s easy to slide down the rabbit hole and end up watching several hours of them before you know it.

To summarize, sovereign citizens believe – often at the urging of scammers selling kits and documents that push the SC delusion – that by declaring themselves SCs, they can exempt themselves from any state or federal laws which they find inconvenient or objectionable.

The most common such laws are traffic and driving laws, which is why the vast majority of SC videos capture the entertaining lunacy that ensues when police pull over an SC, usually because a sovereign doesn’t believe he needs to register or insure his car, or have valid license plates or a driver’s license.

A typical confrontation involves a sovereign citing a skewed take on an obscure or misunderstood law – they refer to Black’s Law Dictionary a lot, along with maritime law, English common law, international law, and every law but the law of unintended consequences. (I.e., you don’t intend to get yanked out of your car, tased and cuffed, but – spoiler alert – that’s exactly where your psychotic blathering is going to take you.)

When a cop asks for license and registration, a sovereign will explain that the cop has no jurisdiction over him, and that he’s not driving, he’s “traveling,” and thus doesn’t need silly things like a license, plates or registration. He asks for the cop’s name and badge number, but won’t identify himself, and always asks for him to call a supervisor.

The process starts with, “I’m Officer X, and the reason I pulled you over is that you’ve got a homemade cardboard ‘plate’ instead of an official state license plate on your car.” Depending on the cop’s patience and toleration for nonsense, the process ends anywhere from 4 minutes to a half-hour later, with the cop having to break the dope’s window, pull him out and arrest him.

In many cases, pepper spray or a taser is involved, and in my favorite cases, a cop will allow his K-9 to apply some dental persuasion – after endless warnings that the perp is going to get bit – to get the jerk to comply.

But he never complies!

Until after a Good Boy or Girl latches on and engages in a spirited bout of “yank the moron back and forth,” at which point the sovereign screams, “What are you doing?! He’s biting me! What’s going on? Why are you doing this?!”

Good times.

I bring this up because until Trump got re-elected and millions of leftists started systematically resisting and attacking ICE and other LEOs who are enforcing our immigration laws, I’d thought of sovereign citizens as a tiny, fringe group of dysfunctional humans with no effect on society, other than providing some entertaining YouTube videos.

But over the last year it has dawned on me that many people on the unhinged yet mainstream left have a lot in common with sovereign citizen nutjobs. Specifically, sovereigns demonstrate four behaviors that leftists also display:

1. Sovereigns are great purveyors of self-serving double-standards. They demand that a cop comply with every demand they have – identify yourself and your badge number; call a supervisor; prove your jurisdiction – while refusing to comply with any request from a cop (license, registration and insurance, step out of the car, etc.).

Similarly, leftists demand that cops show them warrants, or stop detaining an illegal to explain to every leftist bystander exactly what the legal basis for their action is, even as they continually refuse to follow legal commands of cops to back off, stop interfering, etc. They demand that all LEOs be unmasked, while they insist that they themselves be allowed to commit crimes while masked.

2. Sovereigns have a simple-minded, delusional kind of magical thinking about language that is weirdly fascinating to watch. They act as if they can prevent a cop from doing his job just by reciting incantations. If they say that they are “traveling, not driving” or that their car is actually “a ‘conveyance’ under maritime law,” or that they are not engaging in “commerce,” all traffic laws cease to apply. If they repeat “I do not consent” to any order a cop gives them, the cop must let them go.

Similarly, leftists think that a man calling himself a woman makes him a woman, and that calling a baby in the womb “a woman’s body” makes it so. They think that calling illegals “undocumented citizens” makes them legal, and citizens. They think that slapping a sign on their own backs that say “PRESS” or “MEDIC” gives them unhindered access and control over any crime scene.

3. Sovereigns fancy themselves as experts on the law and their rights…and then proceed to demonstrate that they are Crockett-level stupid. They insist that a cop has to call a supervisor if they request one. (He doesn’t.) That a cop can’t make them get out of their car. (He can.) That impeding an investigation or resisting arrest aren’t crimes they can be charged with. (They are.) That identifying as a “sovereign citizen” means something. (It doesn’t.)

Similarly, ICE resisters believe that legally detaining a suspected illegal is “kidnapping. (It isn’t.) That taking them to a detention center where their identity and legal status can be confirmed is “disappearing” them. (It isn’t.) That a mayor or governor can defy federal law and prevent federal law enforcers from doing their jobs, and can arrest them if they do. (Aw hell no!) That calling yourself a “legal observer” means that you can disregard legal commands and hinder ICE actions. (Nope!)

4. Finally, sovereigns’ special brand of idiocy usually results in some great FAFO moments, which is what initially drew me into watching way too many SC videos. Over and over again, a cocky sovereign starts out recording himself while he lectures the police about how he doesn’t have to obey any laws, and ends up in cuffs, coughing on pepper spray and crying like a little beeyotch about how he doesn’t understand what’s going on.

And before last week, radical leftists have provided many examples of schadenfreude-tastic entertainment. I remember watching a guy screaming at the cops, only to catch a bean-bag shotgun load in the groin, not to mention the idiot dancing around in an inflated dinosaur costume, until a cop squirted some pepper spray into the air vent in the costume, and he started staggering and flopping around like Joe Biden trying to step over a sandbag.

But Renee Good’s case demonstrates the tragic side of the predictable results when mobs of imbeciles attack and harass law enforcement doing their jobs. She was apparently as delusional as the most addled sovereign citizen, imagining herself as a brave iconoclast, resisting the false authority of an illegitimate legal system.

In reality, she was a brainwashed AWFL, steeped in hatred of authority, and cosplaying as a resister of fascism. She had gone through some half-assed training and identified herself as a “legal observer” — which carries as much weight as “sovereign citizen” – and she and her “partner” inserted themselves into a legitimate law enforcement action, intending to impede it.

A second wave of bystander videos show that she used her car to block the street, while her partner got out to record what I imagine they both thought was going to be some self-dramatizing social-justice-warrior street theatre. She was there, obstructing for at least 3-6 minutes, at one point rhythmically honking her horn and dancing in her seat, narcissistically flouting the law and goading the cops.

And she ended up orchestrating her own tragic death.

For a great overview of the legal issues involved, check out a veteran prosecutor’s RedState article titled, “Minneapolis Is Not Even a Close Call.”

I wish the elite leftists who have been egging on their foot soldiers would read that, and stop adding fuel to the fire, because I think they’re clearly responsible for the growing conflicts that resulted in Renee Good’s self-destructive foolishness. By preaching that ICE are fascists and that fighting them is a moral good, they delude them, and shield them from a healthy sense of guilt and shame – or at least a basic sense of self-preservation! – that might otherwise have dissuaded them from the illegal path they took.

Because threatening that ICE agent’s life by driving a 4000-pound vehicle toward him was not the first crime Renee Good committed that day. When she drove to the scene of a legal law enforcement action, blocked the road and began a series of actions intended to draw more protestors/resisters, she interfered with law enforcement, a felony when accompanied by other illegal actions.

Actions such as disobeying lawful orders and resisting arrest, which she did when she refused to comply with cop’s orders to get out of her car. (The SCOTUS case that said you must get out of your vehicle when a cop tells you to is called Pennsylvania vs. Mimms…which I first learned about while watching sovereign citizen videos.)

Uninformed leftists who defend Renee Good driving toward the cop say that she wasn’t trying to hit him, but only to get away, which does not help her case. First, because the law says that her intention is irrelevant, if her actions caused a cop to reasonably believe that she was going to hit him (which he did, because she did). Second because “trying to get away” is fleeing/eluding, another felony.

If the leftist politicians and media figures who claim to care about the leftist ICE resisters weren’t manipulating them for their own political purposes, they’d tell them the obvious truth: Our immigration laws were democratically and legitimately passed, and they state that anybody who came here illegally has committed a crime and is subject to deportation. Any agency or personnel who are enforcing those laws are behaving legally, and it’s a crime to try to impede, harass, interfere with or stop them. So don’t do it!

Because the best way to stop being stupid is for stupid to hurt.

Good parents know this; slapping a toddler’s hand when she reaches for the stove is better than letting her touch it. Good governments know it too. An early arrest and some time in the county jail, or picking up garbage on the side of the highway is better than a slap on the wrist and then years in the state pen after you graduate to major felonies.

I’m thrilled that the administration is flooding Minnesota with 1000 more LEOs, because this kind of ongoing, slow-motion insurrection can’t be allowed to stand.

And because we’re way past the “play stupid games, win stupid prizes” phase.

We’re now at “play illegal games, win an early grave.”

Hamas (and Trantifa) delenda est!

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