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They Killed a Nurse. They Killed a Poet. -- JoJoFromJerz
https://jojofromjerz.substack.com/p/they-killed-a-nurse-they-killed-aTyranny in uniform. Trauma by design.
Alex Pretti died helping others.
He died helping women. He died for being gentle. He died for taking care. He died because he stepped forward instead of away, because he put himself between human beings and monsters who wanted to hurt them, because he did the thing we teach, the thing we praise, the thing we raise our children to believe still matters. And it has torn something open inside me that I cannot close.
I keep seeing his face. The kindness in it. The care. The softness that doesn't read as weakness but as presence, attentiveness, a way of being fully human in a world that rewards hardness. He looks like someone who noticed people, who paid attention, who listened, who made space. He looks like someone you would trust without thinking too hard about it, someone whose presence would make your body relax before your mind caught up. And to hold that image alongside what was done to him--to know that a man like that was shot in the back of the head and then riddled with bullets while still on the ground--feels like being asked to accept a world so inverted it makes me dizzy.
This is what's breaking me at the deepest level. These are the people we tell our children to be. These are the values we insist matter. Help the person who's hurt. Stand between the vulnerable and those who would harm them. Use your strength to protect. Use your voice to intervene. Care, even when it's inconvenient. Especially when it's inconvenient. And now we are watching people who lived those values be executed for them.
. . .
He died helping women. He died for being gentle. He died for taking care. He died because he stepped forward instead of away, because he put himself between human beings and monsters who wanted to hurt them, because he did the thing we teach, the thing we praise, the thing we raise our children to believe still matters. And it has torn something open inside me that I cannot close.
I keep seeing his face. The kindness in it. The care. The softness that doesn't read as weakness but as presence, attentiveness, a way of being fully human in a world that rewards hardness. He looks like someone who noticed people, who paid attention, who listened, who made space. He looks like someone you would trust without thinking too hard about it, someone whose presence would make your body relax before your mind caught up. And to hold that image alongside what was done to him--to know that a man like that was shot in the back of the head and then riddled with bullets while still on the ground--feels like being asked to accept a world so inverted it makes me dizzy.
This is what's breaking me at the deepest level. These are the people we tell our children to be. These are the values we insist matter. Help the person who's hurt. Stand between the vulnerable and those who would harm them. Use your strength to protect. Use your voice to intervene. Care, even when it's inconvenient. Especially when it's inconvenient. And now we are watching people who lived those values be executed for them.
. . .