Hey y’all, welcome back to Unfit to Print.
A relatively short one today because I am in snowy Hillsdale, Michigan, preparing to give a speech on “New Media.”
Here we go…
ARE NURSES OKAY?
When Alex Pretti was shot and killed during a scuffle with ICE agents, anti-ICE activists raced to lionize him.
He was a NURSE!
He was protecting a woman who was pushed!
He was merely doing what his training said to do!
HE SAVED LIVES!
Never mind the AI-doctored images of him that circulated after the shooting giving him a fresh tan, bigger muscles, whiter teeth, a sharper jawline, a smaller nose. It was like catnip for liberal women, something straight out of BookTok: a handsome alpha male with a gun in his waistband — usually ick — but decidedly progressive sensibilities — okay, yes.
Enough has been said about his actions on that day. I want to talk about the invocation of Pretti’s nursing career.
Much like Renee Good was a MOTHER and how could you kill a MOTHER, Pretti was a NURSE. He was THE BEST OF US.
I call bullshit.
Like in every profession, there are a lot of great nurses who work really hard and care about their patients. But we also cannot pretend that being a nurse is irrefutable evidence that someone is a good person.
You’ve probably heard the stereotypes.
One is that every “mean girl” from your high school becomes a nurse. Redditors theorize that mean girls are attracted to nursing because it gives them a sense of importance without having to spend the time or money to become a doctor. Others say that nursing is a position of power that rarely gets criticized, attracting narcissists. People who notice that a lot of mean girls go into nursing aren’t just making random observations: data shows that twice as many nurses as Americans in other professions have encountered bullying in the workplace.
Another common stereotype is that nurses are notorious cheaters. Well, the notorious website for extramarital affairs, Ashley Madison, found in a survey of female users that their most common profession was medicine. 23% of female users were doctors or nurses. A UK-based cheating site reported similar findings. To be fair, men in the healthcare profession were found to be far more likely to cheat than their female counterparts. But the data is clear: doctors and nurses are an unfaithful bunch.
We could get into a psychological debate as to whether the profession attracts bullies and cheaters or the stress of the job leads them to engage in bad behavior. It’s kind of irrelevant to the larger point here, which is that putting on a pair of scrubs doesn’t necessarily make you a hero.
A recent slate of disturbing online behavior from nurses should underscore what I am trying to say.
A Chicago-area male nurse recorded himself giving advice to people on how to make sure ICE agents “bleed out” and urging hospitals to fire healthcare workers who support President Trump.
A female nurse in Virginia was fired after she posted TikToks telling people to put Ex-Lax in ICE agents’ drinks to “incapacitate” them, “make their lives fucking miserable,” squirt them in the face with poison ivy water, and hit them with syringes of muscle relaxants.
Another was arrested for trespassing on federal property and holding up a sign that said, “I hope you die.”
Going back a little further, one male nurse who I went to high school with shared a TikTok after the assassination of Charlie Kirk stating that he “does not have empathy for those who do not have empathy for others.” A second male nurse from my high school shared the infamous The Nation article calling Charlie “vile” and arguing that his death deserved “no mourning.”
Then there are the nurses who constantly complain about how difficult their jobs are while using them to get TikTok famous. Like this one who made sure to set up her camera before having a very authentic mental breakdown in the hallway after Pretti’s death. Or the endless groups of nurses who choreographed happy dances while watching people die from Covid.
And let’s not forget how many nurses and doctors crowed that they didn’t want to treat patients who didn’t get vaccinated for Covid.
People can feel however they want about the Pretti shooting. But don’t pretend like he was above reproach because he was a nurse, especially when they didn’t give two shits when a nursing student was raped and murdered by exactly the type of illegal alien Pretti and his friends have been protecting in Minneapolis.
That’s it for the free portion of today’s Unfit to Print.
The full subscriber edition continues below with expanded analysis and additional context.