From McHenry County Board member John Collins in reply to Richard Rostron’s opinion piece.
Manufactured Villains and Manufactured Blame
Mr. Rostron’s piece about the deaths of Good and Pretti isn’t serious analysis. It’s a narrative
construction designed to inflame.
It opens with a vivid fictional scene: a reckless father urging his daughter into the streets, handing her a firearm, telling her to block ICE vehicles. The imagery is emotional and provocative.
It’s also entirely made up.
The author admits there is no evidence that either Good’s or Pretti’s parents encouraged anything of the sort. Yet that fabricated scene becomes the emotional scaffolding for the entire argument. This is a classic straw man tactic, invent an extreme caricature, provoke outrage toward it, and then subtly transfer that outrage onto real people and real political opponents.
That’s not argument. It’s manipulation.
From there, the article pivots to accusing elected officials, Governor Walz, Mayor Frey, Rep. Omar, Sen. Klobuchar, and “the Left’s lapdog media” of having “blood on their hands.” The claim is that rhetoric encouraging people to “stand up for their neighbors” amounts to incitement and that these leaders effectively turned supporters into “cannon fodder.”
That is textbook collective guilt rhetoric.
There is no evidence that any of those officials instructed anyone to ram a vehicle, resist arrest, or brandish a weapon. Political speech supporting protest, even protests against federal enforcement, is protected speech. If we are going to argue that broad rhetorical support for protest equals legal or moral responsibility for every individual’s independent action, that standard would need to apply across the political spectrum. It never does. It is selectively applied.
The piece also leans heavily on false causation, the post hoc fallacy. Because political leaders criticized ICE or encouraged protest before these events occurred, the article implies their rhetoric caused the outcome. That is not how responsibility works. Adults make independent decisions. Volatile environments carry inherent risks. Consequences, tragic or otherwise, do not automatically convert political speech into direct causation.
Another tell is the reliance on loaded language over evidence. “Leftists.” “Lapdog media.” “Rabid.” “Paid agitators.” “Cannon fodder.” When adjectives do the heavy lifting, it’s usually because facts alone aren’t sufficient to carry the argument.
There is also a critical omission that shapes perception. The article frames Pretti bringing a firearm as inherently reckless. What it leaves out is that he held a valid concealed carry license. That means he passed the background checks and met the legal standards required by the state.
That fact does not determine the outcome of the encounter. It does not excuse behavior. It does not condemn it. But omitting it changes the psychological framing from “licensed citizen exercising a legal right in a chaotic situation” to “armed agitator looking for trouble.” That is narrative shaping through omission.
It is entirely fair to say that protests around active law enforcement operations are dangerous. It
is fair to say escalation can happen quickly. It is fair to say bringing a firearm into a volatile
environment increases risk. It is fair to say disobeying lawful orders can have severe consequences.
What is not fair, or responsible, is to leap from those realities to declaring that political opponents have “blood on their hands” because they supported protest or criticized immigration enforcement policy.
If rhetoric is going to be treated as incitement whenever someone makes a bad decision in a charged environment, that rule must be universal. Otherwise, it’s not principle, it’s partisanship.
What this piece ultimately does is use two deaths to advance a broader political indictment. It invents a fictional villain, applies collective blame, substitutes loaded language for proof, and presents moral certainty without evidentiary rigor.
That isn’t accountability.
It’s propaganda dressed as commentary.
We can debate immigration enforcement. We can debate the role of protest. We can debate where political speech crosses the line into incitement. Those are legitimate and necessary discussions.
But turning the dead into partisan instruments and accusing entire groups of having “blood on their hands” without evidence, does not elevate public discourse: It corrodes it.
If the goal is to reduce violence, escalating rhetoric and assigning collective guilt is precisely the wrong approach. Serious issues deserve serious analysis, not manufactured villains and manufactured blame.
