Alex Pretti was an ICU nurse at a Veterans’ hospital, a cyclist, and a kind person: his last words^[1] were,

Are you okay?

to a woman who had just been violently pushed to the ground.

For this act, as well as lawfully exercising his first and second amendment rights he was pepper sprayed, beaten to the ground, bashed in the head with a gun (i.e. ‘cold-cocked’) and shot. Ten times. By “government” agents ^[2] .

The idea for this cartoon came from a classic column featured in the Highlights for Children magazine which is the principal memory, along with the ribbed privacy windows, of my childhood dentists’ office, which is where I (seemingly) spent hours reading these. —The wizard, as soon as he spotted the two trapezoids, was also immediately taken back to his childhood, as his parents actually subscribed to this magazine.

AFICT, the current administration seems to have a lot of support amongst the boomer class for whom this mag was part of their childhoods, and the, er, contrast, between the classic Goofus’ sins and the this...well, I s'pose people who pull wings off flies also grow up to be thugs too, if they don't learn better.

The original art (by a woman!) was in that bland, somewhat fuzzy style that's since been replaced by the clean, single-outline even-weighted line look you now see in every illustrated manual ever, and I thought about replicating that; but it didn't fit my mood. I s'pose I'm not a very kind person, cuz who else would watch multiple videos of a man being shot dead with no more irritation at the sources cutting out the actual murder, cuz I wanted to get this right?

I drew it instead with the tip of a chopstick dipped in some old, half dried out ink, cuz that represented my mood better. (Technical note: India ink doesn't smear on karst, but technical pen ink surely does—I had to rewrite the caption after highlighting with the red ink, and I hardly need explain, I hope, why I chose red for the spot colour.)

This is not the land of the free and home of the brave I signed up to live in, that's fer shure...

references for this cartoon:

• Heather Cox's explainer
• CNN video of ICU nurse Alex Pretti
• WSJ video of VA veterans’ nurse Alex Pretti
• BBC "video" of Alex Pretti & the woman he attempted to assist
• NPR coverage of Alex Pretti loved outdoors & was a mountain biker
• https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5682344/south-minneapolis-comes-together-tragedy-after-tragedy

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.

Sylvus Tarn