A note to readers:
This piece is written from my perspective as a nurse and public health advocate. It is grounded in publicly available reporting, video evidence, and professional ethics related to care, safety, and accountability. I write because silence has consequences. Disagreement is part of public discourse; incivility is not.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this quote from George Orwell’s 1984
The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.
That Orwell quote has taken on a different weight since the killing of ICU nurse Alex Pretti and everything that has unfolded since.
Many of us spent the weekend watching the videos. Reading the accounts. Trying to make sense of what happened. We watched footage showing a nurse holding a phone, recording federal agents during a protest against immigration enforcement operations. We watched him move toward a woman who had been shoved to the ground. The footage shows federal agents pepper-spraying him, wrestling him to the ground, and positioning themselves around him. Moments later, he was shot multiple times. And then we listened as official statements, issued very soon afterward, insisted that what many of us were seeing in the recordings was not what happened.
That gap—between what is visible and what we’re told—matters.
Pretti’s killing followed the earlier death of Renée Good, a legal observer who was also killed during federal immigration enforcement activity in Minneapolis.
Because this isn’t about isolated incidents. It is a pattern most of us recognize by now. It’s about what happens when people are asked, again and again, to doubt what they can plainly see and hear. When evidence is questioned not because it’s unclear, but because it’s inconvenient. When reality is treated like something flexible.
This kind of confusion doesn’t shout. It doesn’t always lie outright. It wears people down. It leaves them unsure of what is solid and what isn’t. And once that happens, people become exhausted and disengage.
We’ve seen this before.
We saw it with vaccines. Not because parents stopped caring about their children, but because clear, consistent information was replaced by disinformation. Science was treated like opinion. Expertise like bias. Guidance shifted without explanation. And confusion rushed in to fill the gaps.
What people say now isn’t, “I don’t care.”
It’s, “I don’t know who to trust.”
That’s what confusion does. It doesn’t force belief in a lie. It breaks trust in truth itself. And when that happens, preventable harm returns, quietly, predictably, and children are the ones who pay for it.
The same dynamic is at work when a killing is captured on video and then reframed by government officials in ways that contradict what people can plainly see. The message is clear: don’t trust your eyes, don’t trust your ears, don’t trust yourself.
That message is dangerous.
Is this what Orwell meant? Because this is the moment we are being asked to doubt what we can plainly see.
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Thank you so much for your post. I have been broken hearted by the events in our country and Minnesota specifically. To see what happened to Alex Pretti was shocking and horrifying. I saw the ANA’s comment and was disappointed. The statement from the National Nurses United was spot on!! Strong and clear! Then I read the comments from nurses and I was disgusted. So many of them link the idea of caring for patients equally to the head in the sand policy of staying out of politics. I was a hospital bedside nurse for most of my career but have been a community public health school nurse for the past 10 years. I am not sure where the problem is in nursing education and culture, but politics has always been part of what we do. The most revered nurses in history have used their education, practice and professional observations to identify and move to correct health inadequacies, inequities and injustice. Maybe this needs to be more strongly taught and represented in our nursing culture. We are part of a great heritage of professionals breaking down walls and boundaries to health for individuals and society at large. Thank you so much for your comments. I remain hopeful that nurses will find their way back to the roots that inspired their chosen profession, care. Respectfully,Mary Kostenblatt, MSN,BSN,RN
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Mary, Thank you for your message, and I agree with your thorough assessment. Nursing is and always has been “political.” We have a license to touch people, it really does not get any more political than that. We have an obligation to speak out. I appreciate you sharing your reflection and thank you for reaching out!
You are right, confusion is the point. It’s what has kept us feeling whiplashed, confused and honestly pretty vulnerable for a year. I’m heartened to hear so much talk over the past few days….that we know what we can see with our own eyes. Confusion be damned, trust our own eyes.
That’s exactly right…trust your own eyes.
This is powerful Robin! Thanks for your clear, direct voice, it frames exactly how I have been thinking! We all have to do our part at this critical moment in our nation’s history!