January 25, 2026
This post is not about the execution of Alex Pretti yesterday in Minneapolis. Like all of you, I too am heartbroken and angry and frustrated. There will be enough posts about the details of what happened, why it is wrong, and why ICE should leave Minnesota.
These are necessary and important posts. They establish the truth of what is happening. But knowing what happened and why it is wrong doesn’t seem sufficient. The question I keep coming back to is what can we do to stop the invasion and occupation of Minneapolis by death squads and secret police?
Of course, there are things we can do like join those in the streets, strike, and plead with politicians. We can point to constitution and hope. Most actions help and the momentum of the resistance is building.
But our reliance on argument, facts, and details isn’t always as helpful as we think. It’s not they are not important, it’s that they are insufficient by themselves. It’s not how humans make decisions about what is right or wrong. While the left believes in the enlightenment and facts, the oppressors have no such compunction. If you think this is harsh just look at vaccines. Facts, reasons, and arguments have had little sway in our health policy. The same extends to immigration, voting, climate, and all the other issues facing us.
In my small niche, I focus on the use of language and framing. Any thought, any moral position, any prayer, any communication, or action, starts with language. Language helps determine the right and wrong of any event. While the conflict is way past political, “All politics is moral,” and about who is right and wrong.
Framing is the process of using language to connect two ideas or concepts in the brain. Frames are actual physical structures or connected neural paths, that link these ideas. Through repetition, neurons that fire together wire together. When a frame is repeated it makes these neural connections stronger. That’s why repeating authoritarian frames, even to point out why they are wrong, only reinforces them. For example, when we say immigrants are not illegal aliens, we only reinforce that they might be or are. We feed what we fight.
As examples of frames, I have italicized some above. I’ve been intentionally over the top to create an emotional connection to the words and what is happening. Framing is just what it sounds like. Putting a frame around one idea, rather than another, using language.
Words have meaning beyond their dictionary definitions and outside the sentences in which they are used.
For example, if you hear the word knife, it activates a certain neural circuit in the brain. Knives are sharp, not soft. Being sharp, they can be dangerous. As young children, we are warned against sharp objects. Or we may have cut ourselves, and that hurts. Knives can be used as weapons. This language and experience are hardwired into the neural circuits in our brains with respect to the word knife. We rely on them unconsciously as shortcuts because we don’t have time to reason . . . there is a knife, knives are sharp, sharp things are dangerous, move away from the knife.
So, if the words knife and homeless person are combined, you might feel a visceral a sense of danger with respect to that person. The word knife and its association with homeless people becomes a frame. On the other hand, if the words “Spoon and homeless person” are combined, you might get a feeling of hunger. Spoons are not dangerous. They are round and metaphorically soft. They are a tool of nourishment. So, your perception of homeless people can be influenced with words at a very deep or unconscious level.
In politics, it used to be that we divided ourselves into left and right, or Democrats and Republicans. Our frames were green new deal or tax relief. This is no longer the case. America is now divided into all of us and our authoritarian oppressors. Our oppressors are helped by their Republican collaborators who stand silently by and let people be murdered and children separated from their families.
To overcome our oppressors, to save our country, to attract others, we need to understand the language and frames that are being used against us, and we need to use both negative and positive frames to help others understand, at a gut level, what our facts and reasons can’t.
Lies aside, listen to the words the oppressors are using.
Criminal illegal aliens
Murderers, drug addicts, and rapists
Garbage
Domestic terrorists
Armed suspects
Preventing a massacre
Defensive shots
Rioters obstructing and assaulting law enforcement officers
Bringing safety to the public
Learned your lesson
Fuckin’ bitch
Very bad people… dangerous people.
It’s important that we understand when we are be manipulated by their words and why they use the words they do. Their words are designed deliberately to create fear, create division among us, to make us obey and in advance.
We also have the power of words, both the negative, as I’ve shown in the first two paragraphs, as well as positive frames. Positive frames are anything that lifts or elevates our values and our humanity. One example is all of us, as Americans, and it is based on our values of inclusion.
Regardless of where we’re from, what we do for a living, and the color of our skin, as Americans, all of us want to walk our streets without being randomly kidnapped, attacked, or gassed.
As Americans, all of us feel a duty to look out for our brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, and friends and neighbors. We help others when they are in need. It’s what we do.
As Americans, we value the freedoms others have fought and died for. We cherish our rights protected by our constitution. We stand together against those that trample on our rights.
As Americans we believe in the truth and the rule-of-law. We stand together against a rabid minority trying to take away our rights.
To attract others, we must create an identity that they can aspire to. Whether we are politically right or left, northern or southern, rural or urban, black or white, Christian, Jewish, or Islamic, all of us are Americans. This is only one frame, but it supports the idea of unity and it’s an identity that all of us can aspire to. When paired with our values and ideals, and contrasted with the fascists in power, it helps attract others and builds unity. It helps build inevitability.
One last thing about frames. They can be visual as well as verbal. When we see Bovino cosplaying in a gold buttoned Nazi uniform it is intentional. When we see ICE agents in unearned military garb it is designed as a visual frame to project unlimited power and create fear. They are invaders.
The movement against fascism and ICE needs to be non-violent and peaceful. But our words and images can attract and be fierce. The image for this post is one. It doesn’t matter what the law is, as Americans, we protect our children. All children. No exceptions.
Thanks for all you do. See you in the streets.
We Are All Connected!
– Hobie,
L. Hobart Stocking