Civil Unrest in Minneapolis.  Trump Chooses Violence to Deal With Protestors.

Civil Unrest in Minneapolis.  Trump Chooses Violence to Deal With Protestors.

Well by now everybody  has seen the videos of another death by police in Minneapolis, by individuals connected to the state.   The footage by cellphone shows the man, Alex Pretti, approached officers beating a man, and tried to record it on his cell phone.  The police response was swift, firing 10 shots at Pretti, who was caught up in the chaos, leaving him dead.

The first fibs from the Trump administration was he approached  the officers with a gun drawn.  Well after seeing peoples footage who were watching and filming, it became clear Pretti, although armed with a gun, had it holstered.  Rather he had his cell phone out when he was beaten and shot by riot police. 

It is legal to carry a gun in Minneapolis to a demonstration, WIsconsin has similar laws. We saw this with Kyle Rittenhouse,when it was legal for him to not only carry a gun in Kenosha, but to kill 2 people in the demonstration, and cripple a third. 

Regardless of what  one may think is proper, with some Republican bourgeois trying to say it is illegal to come to the demonstration armed, the right to join a militia in the second amendment of the constitution should lay waste to this concern.

They made their bed now they can sleep in it.  All those years of arguments for less gun control, only to suggest it was illegal for Pertti to have a gun on him. If you can’t take it, don’t dish it out. 

If Trump wanted to help local law enforcement, he could have just increased spending on Milwaukee PD.  You would think this would be the first thing he would do; logically to stop a crime problem use the police.

Instead Don has called out the National Guard, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), DHS (department of homeland security), etc,  supposedly to help police in lawless cities.

Instead we see films of ICE killing our countrymen, and it is a worry people will just get hardened to seeing this and soon it will soon not bother them so much.   

It is still a mystery who constitutes the federal government, who trains them, and where they came from to Minneapolis.  What is clear is these are Trump’s men, and are loyal to him.  He is responsible for  his troops like any other commander in the Army.  The buck stops there.

Trump seems to have no guilty conscience, and it would be a surprise if he was to call and talk to Pretti’s  family, and apologize.  Don is not the apology type. He still stubbornly refuses to let  even the local police investigate the shooting of Pretti.

Minneapolis is a day trip by car from Milwaukee.  Chicago is closer to Milwaukee, but Minneapolis is basically the next stop after Milwaukee on the train.  All we can do is hope Trump will not start calling Milwaukee “woke” and send in ICE next.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

1 26 2026

Demonstrations in Minneapolis.

The epitome of the situation regarding the latest example of a worker getting killed who was innocent is this:

“WASHINGTON, Jan 19 (Reuters) – The Trump administration said on Saturday it was appealing a ruling by a federal judge that put limits on tactics employed by U.S. immigration agents operating in Minneapolis.”

“In a brief filing, lawyers for the Department of Justice told the court they were appealing an order issued by the judge on Friday that barred federal officers from arresting or tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators and observers.”

Reuters 1 19 2026

The judge put “limits on tactics employed by US Immigration agents operating in Minneapolis”.  This sounds like soft language from the judge, yet the reaction was what almost seems humorous.

The Department of Justice was “appealing an order issued by the judge on Friday that barred federal officers from arresting or tear-gassing peaceful demonstrators and observers.”

Wow.  What does that say to you?  I suppose Donald Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize. 

It is sort of like a moment like his first term., when he had the streets cleared of Black Lives Matter protestors, and brandished a bible upside down in front of the local DC church.  The memories of the leader of the Army in the group striding forth into the tear gassed remains of the demonstration, Trump by his side. What a spectacle!

There has yet to be riots of the scale Wisconsin saw in the last presidential term of Trump.  Remember Kyle Rittenhouse, the northern Illinois man who came to the demonstration with a loaded assault weapon?  Then after shooting it he ran from the other demonstrators running after him, slipping and falling on his long gun, and then fearing the protestors, killed two and crippled another?

And what did he get for this?  No jail time, the north Illinois man had high powered lawyers who got the case completely dropped.  

Well Don has the Nobel Peace Prize now, given to him by the woman who won a primary election in Venezuela against Nicholas Maduro, currently a political prisoner in New York.  

When it happens in Wisconsin we expect it.  The court ruling Trump is appealing, that attempts to suggest it is wrong to use violence against protestors, will probably be overturned.  In the meantime, the demonstrations continue.  

Nicholas Jay Boyes

MIlwaukee Wisconsin 

American Democratic Republic

1 19 2026

Material Conditions and the Bourgeois Press

The capitalist movement in Europe and America reached a crescendo in the late 20th century, and is still with us.  The mechanism of capitalism consolidates ownership of the land, and industry,  increasingly in the hands of a small aristocracy that own everything.

The group in control of the means of production are the modern bourgeoisie.  Cable television, and other outdated mediums such as regular radio fed television broadcasting,  paper newspapers, etc. have been used for propaganda purposes by this aristocracy.  

It is easily accessible, and paid for by capitalist advertising, a form of propaganda that if nothing else portrays a smiling face in the marketplace, the privately owned reality forced upon the ignorant worker.  Its political bent, due to the presence of the people who pay for the broadcasts, the ownership of the companies attempting to sell commodities by advertising, who are all capitalists, and support the more extreme form of them, the Republican bourgeoisie, as this is encouraged by the economic system of modern capitalism. 

Often the industry promoted is not metric, like gasoline powered automobiles from Detroit, a product of an industry intact still in a 20th century condition. The bourgeois press directly uses propaganda when it is time for suffrage, and the broadcast is not in the metric system.  The local political leader is on in 30 second attack ads when the worker wants to see local television news when limited suffrage occurs.

This system uses ignorance to promote a vision of capitalism that is not in tune with reality.  In Europe, the concession  of suffrage to the workers is used to justify expropriating employee owned shops.  Once political leadership can overcome the pressure of its workers, who for one reason or another have slipped back to capitalism, through the mechanism of ignorance and cable television, employee ownership is targeted and removed  by the Republican bourgeoisie. 

Without employee ownership, democracy doesn’t really mean much.  Given the factory is where the worker finds himself most of the time, democracy would seem to be in order there. But where is the suffrage for the manager?  Or the owner? It is no longer present after employee ownership is removed. 

The European Union is best at this expropriation process, all the while suggesting they are expanding democracy.  

The ignorant worker, who tunes into the cable television broadcast, (the station is also owned by the bourgeoisie), receives his social conditioning through this medium.  The internet is gradually removing this old system, corroding the cable television monopoly; ad block technology, and paying for the news rather than the free enterprise method of advertising paying for news is becoming the dominant model. 

The internet is a revolution.  The tech giants are trying to control the system, but can only do so much.  The Washington Post costs 10$  a month, you pay for it.  It is owned by Jeff Bezos, not the journalists.  The New York Times and Reuters are similar, you pay them directly.  Youtube is another one worth paying for, the purpose of this is so there are no advertisements.  

Society is materially changing, the main mechanism of control is ignorance. People are being told to believe things about subjects they need to find out about for themselves, by reading books.  Philosophy and political economy in particular; many people have feelings about what  socialism represents, yet have never read Marx’s Capital, even just volume One.  Or have feelings about the ancient world and have never been exposed to Aristotle or Plato.

The internet again is coming to the rescue; Amazon Prime delivers new and used books we had a hard time getting before, like works by Marx and Engels now accessible by internet for low prices.

Giving up the cable subscription for the internet saves money.  People are paying a hundred dollars a month for cable, and at best we can say it includes the internet., an internet connection costs about 50$,

As the material conditions change, outdated ideas resort to outdated technology to transmit their messages.  Cable television, radio broadcast television, AM radio, are all examples of outdated industry dominated by the Republican bourgeoisie.  Control of cable television consumes these people.   It is their main prerogative, and they control the companies advertising, and even have their political leaders on the station when suffrage occurs,to give us their bourgeois  propaganda.

It is a little harder to control the internet.  It is more advanced, and cheaper to use and produce than the outdated mediums. You have to be able to read and write to use it. 

Thew change in communications, the new medium of he web, is new millennium technology. The old methods of AM Radio and Cable are slowly dying out, but it maybe sometime before the Republican bourgeoisie concedes defeat. Furthermore dumbing down of the internet, connected to Artificial intelligence, attempts to make the internet more personal, more like a humanoid android, has consumed tech capital for years now. Perhaps their followers require a more personalized experience getting the news or shopping. What they encounter online will still be quite a bit of a different experience than going to the mall in the 20th century.

Nicholas Jay Boyes

Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic

12 31 2025      

The Legacy of Colonialism.  Life on the Reservation. 

The Legacy of Colonialism.  Life on the Reservation. 

The pictures of Nicholas Maduro, prime minister of Venezuela being led around in handcuffs, blindfolded, was like a reminder of Saddam Hussein when he  was captured in Iraq.  Another Republican president, another war, just like George I and George II.  George I took Iraq, securing the oil.  Sounds familiar, right? Well he missed Hussein, it was George II, another Republican bourgeois, who finished the job.

Maduro may still be alive,  but he is in no condition to try to lead Venezuela anymore, even if he wants to lead from captivity.  Anything he says or does now is under duress; he is probably drugged and chained in New York where he is imprisoned.  He is no longer in a position to influence things.  The only real question is if they will ever let him out.

Another political prisoner, another open ended commitment to a country in the developing world with oil reserves nationalized.  Iraq had nationalized the oil wells in 1972, from the Iraq Petroleum Company.  This was done by the Baath socialist party, to put Iraq’s oil wealth in a more equitable arrangement, where the proceeds of the oil wealth were no longer making surplus value. 

George II, who got Hussein, expropriated the property of the Iraqis, returning private investment in the oil wells to American and European capitalists.  George II also cited terrorism as a reason to invade Iraq; in the light of when this occurred he tried to suggest Iraq was connected to the 9/11 incident.  

This could not be proved, and it never has been to this day.  Then there were the friends of George II, Labour leader Tony Blair, for instance, who got on the air telling Britons Hussein had an atomic weapon, and could hit Britain in 15 minutes if he launched it.  They also suggested Hussein was developing chemical weapons.   These were called the “weapons of mass destruction” arguments.

There were never any atomic weapons, or chemical weapons found in Iraq.  Considering the country was conquered, there is no reason to believe the weapons could have been hidden.  Instead, after removing Hussein, George II found a new enemy, Islamic State.  He was still trying to link Iraq with Afghanistan, which evidence has yet to be found for.  

Afghanistan ended in American retreat and exit from Afghanistan.  The images of the big airplanes and the hundreds of people running trying to get them is an icon of George II and his Republican war efforts.  Whether he won in Iraq is sort of a matter of opinion; they got the oil back.  But the country remains in shambles after decades of all out war.

Here we have another republican bourgeoisie, and the beginnings of another war, with a similar goal of gaining control of oil fields, and markets. Trump has already said he will be running Venezuela’s  oil wealth, and has committed the Army to war there, abducting the head of state of a neighboring country, and demanding its resources.

In a historical context, Trump looks a lot like a Conquistador, valiantly discovering native land, and conquering its residents.  Perhaps Venezuela will become a 51st state, with reservations for the natives.  How much different it would look from the ICE facilities, packed with Mexicans on the border? A vision of reservations on stolen land from Mexico gained in the Mexican American war that ended in 1848, with Mexico ‘s capitulation to the Americans of the Southwest.

Not really much new here.  The bourgeoisie has been conquering lands in the new world for more than 500 years.  The stain of bloody conquest of native American soil, and black slavery, is part of the history of the country.  Their descendants are still with us,  the Indians are still on the reservations, their fishing and hunting rights on land they ceded in treaties are still controversial.

At some point it is going to have to be left behind, like 20th century industry.  Trump’s only justification for abducting Maduro was drug dealing.  In a country with legal marijuana in half of it, legal alcohol and tobacco throughout it, if you are addicted to drugs, it is nobody’s fault but your own.  You  can’t  sue the alcohol company because you are a drunk.  We view this as a health problem, not a criminal one.  Cocaine is illegal, it is an expensive luxury item only the bourgeois and middle classes can afford.  Penalizing all Venezuelans for drug dealing does not lower demand for cocaine in America. If anything it will strengthen the cartels, who thrive on the lawless luxury trade.

Trump has made a decision to conquer Christianized Incas in their homelands. There is no separation from this and the presence of reservations in America.  For those who  live on the Res, this must come as no surprise.  In 1492, Columbus discovered America.  It’s been 533 years of repression of the native people he found in the Americas. This is part of Trump’s legacy, his hatred of Indians, much like the rural white settlers who still keep the Indians separate from their colonies, on reservations, where poverty  is a scourge.  Trump is no different, it’s been 533 long years, the song remains the same.

Nicholas Jay Boyes
Milwaukee Wisconsin

American Democratic Republic