Matthew Hoh – The Best Of Us And The Worst Of Us

And the uncomfortable and dangerous question of the sadists and nihilists in charge

Matthew Hoh is the Associate Director of the Eisenhower Media Network. A former Marine and State Department official who resigned in protest over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan

Cross-posted from Matt’s Substack

Photo: Screengrab Twitter

The sky is empty, the earth delivered into the hands of power without principles.

~ Albert Camus, The Rebel

These are the times for real choices and not false ones. We are at the moment when our lives must be placed on the line if our nation is to survive its own folly. Every man of humane convictions must decide on the protest that best suits his convictions, but we must all protest.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr., Beyond Vietnam

Last week on Judging Freedom, I asserted that events in Minnesota were establishing a line between the best of us and the worst of us. Renee Good, murdered by ICE agent Jonathan Ross, represented the best of us. Good was someone willing to put herself between the powerful and the vulnerable. Ross, undoubtedly someone who would murder again for those in power, and to satiate his own petty, hateful and venal needs, is the unmasked face of the worst among us.

As I said to Judge Napolitano:

That’s the sordid and terrible reality of human nature – that many of us will do as we are asked to do, as we’re ordered to do, as we’re told to do for a multitude of reasons: because we’re stupid, because we’re greedy, because we’re fearful.

I take heart in those who are standing up though, because that’s not everyone. ICE represents the very worst of us. ICE represents the thugs, the brutes, the hooligans in our society. They are the worst of us. And then you have those like Renee Good, and her widow, who represent the best of us.

And this is a defining time in American history. This is a time for all of us as Americans to determine which side of that line do we stand upon.

This articulation in Minneapolis of the line dividing the best of us from the worst of us was solidified on Saturday with the murder of Alex Pretti. Pretti, an ICU nurse at the Veterans Administration, i.e., someone who helps someone like me, was executed because he put himself between a woman and the ICE officer attacking her. This screen capture of Pretti’s killing may be this century’s Saigon Execution moment.

For those unsure of the circumstances of Pretti’s murder, Dropsite News details the video here, just as the New York Times did for Renee Good’s murder. If, after watching these analyses, you still believe the government, against your own (lying) eyes, I know which side of the line you are on.

There are metaphysical aspects occurring that we must acknowledge if we have any hope of understanding and defeating, not solely these modern-day black and tans who are terrorizing our communities and seeking subjugation, but, more importantly, the people in power that they serve.

Again, from my interview last week with Judge Napolitano:

And the aspect of these men and women who populate ICE and these other federal law enforcement agencies—the most dangerous thing about them is not that they’re thugs, not that they’re brutes, not that they are nothing more than common criminals themselves, but the fact that they have no principles, they have no ethics…

…These men and women don’t even have the decency, the ethics, the morals to conduct themselves in any type of manner that we would describe as decent. And they’re, of course, led by sadists and nihilists at the top level.

And I’m reminded of a quote from Albert Camus who described this type of danger: when the sky is empty, power resides in the hands of those without principle. This idea that when we don’t have principles, when we have no ethics, when there is no religion—this is where we go to. This is where we as a people, as a human race, go to. Tyranny, brutality, oppression comes hand in hand without principles.

And that’s what we’re seeing in Minnesota. That’s what we’re seeing throughout the Muslim world that we’ve been bombing for decades. That’s what the Europeans are now dealing with, with the United States about to take Greenland from them, and so on and so forth.

I’ve spoken about this danger before. Last spring, after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem couldn’t define habeas corpus, I had this to say:

You know, Judge, I went to law school for five days back in 1995, and I’m pretty certain we covered that within those five days. This is basic stuff.

But I was reminded the other day of an amazing Fyodor Dostoevsky quote that covers a lot of this. It’s from The House of the Dead, if people want to look it up. He talks about if anyone has ever enjoyed humiliating someone, the hypnotizing power of that, how tyranny is something that can be indulged in. And he concludes by saying blood and power are intoxicating. And that’s what you have here.

You have people who are intoxicated by their power, intoxicated by the ability to carry forward not just tyrannically, but sadistically. Kristi Noem, who has gone to that prison in El Salvador and taken TikTok videos there in the midst of that crime against humanity, she is not simply an ignoramus, but she is a sadist. She is someone who, as Dostoevsky would describe, is intoxicated by blood and power.

Here’s the Dostoevsky quote, thanks to Mark Taylor, who reminded me of it. Still, reading it again, I get cold as I understand who we are up against, both on our streets and in Washington, DC’s offices, and, as time goes on, and history tells us, our options for dealing with these people will become more and more limited.