Minneapolis shows us the only way out

It's a good Friday to miss work.

Today, we will see the closest thing to a general strike in the United States since 1946. Much of Minnesota will simply say, "Hell, no," to the lawless, vicious, and absurdly unnecessary assault on their neighbors by the Trump regime's Department of Homeland Security. And we must be awed by the courage and humility, two of America's scarcest natural resources, fueling this sublime display of people power.

The only question today is how historic and overwhelming the state's response will be and how many others will heed the call. At least 200 solidarity actions are planned, and there may be one near you.

Let me say, as I write to you from Michigan, where school has been cancelled because it's too cold to go outside, any visible signs of resistance outside at all today will be impressive. That's why we all must look north on this late January Friday to the Twin Cities that sit at the halfway point between the Equator and the North Pole. Name a better place for a struggle that will define North America for the rest of this century to take place. We can't. And it doesn't matter.

The Trump regime picked this spot to make its case for breaking Blue America because, in many ways, it represents the best of this country. And rather than be content to be the human sacrifices the regime desired, the people united to take care of each other as much as possible. So look north, not just at who we see in the streets, but who gets that this is our only way forward.

“We will not save our country in a courtroom,” Keith Ellison, Minnesota's Attorney General, said Thursday. “We have to fight them in a courtroom. We absolutely have to. But ultimately, this country will be saved by the people of the United States. And so that — you protesting, you gathering evidence, you sharing it with us, you communicating with us — is action. It’s actually how we’re going to win.”

This is a battle only two men really wanted: Donald Trump and the devil on both of his shoulders, Stephen Miller. (Well, JD Vance, too, but mostly because he knows Miller has the keys to Trump and Trumpism right now.) I say it's a battle they picked poorly. But the suffering they've chosen cannot be wished away.

Greg Sargent—who has done some of the best reporting on Miller, the architect of this atrocity—summed up the vise that is crushing Minneapolitans:

The bad math in the fascist equation is that people always get a say.

Now that say may take months, years, or even decades. And our current overlords, like many before them, think their technological advantages, inherent genetic nobility, and massive resources mean they will outlast the people's will. And they make a good point. The people have soundly rejected this in every poll we've given them. And it has only increased their furor. And it will keep increasing until there's a real check on their empty, aimless power for power's sake.

The stock market remains the only poll Trump cares about. And his cooing supplicating speech to some of the richest CEOs alive at Davos, given right after he assaulted the free world in the speech most people watched, shows why he still thinks he is on top of the world. He's made them so much fucking richer.

Our job is to change the math. We cannot crash the stock market—and given the binds American capitalism places on us, we probably wouldn't want to.

But we can remind those Masters of the Universe in Davos that while Trump is dying, the people are only getting started. And what they do next, as Trump and Miller only get more desperate to inflict their will on the people who hate them, will follow them for the rest of their lives. And that's true for all of us.

In the latest episode of Next Comes What by Andrea Pitzer, Andrea draws on her history writing about concentration camp regimes around the globe to make the case that this year will be crucial in stopping America's full embrace of a concentration camp regime:

"It's my opinion that we have a limited window to act and that what happens this year will be critical in ways that will be hard to undo if we do not significantly dismantle the opportunity and capacity for building the extrajudicial camp network the US government is in the process of constructing this very minute."

Here's the snack-sized version of the whole podcast:

Minnesota has given us a window into the police state necessary to sustain a concentration camp system. And the revulsion of the people, where democracy's immune system is still somewhat intact, must be our reminder that this cannot go on. While Miller and Trump want us to sit down and take the onslaught of our neighbors, decency and morality, as that onslaught only gets worse.

Those are the two choices. Today, the world will see the choice Minnesota is making. And let their courage and humility bless all of us to do the same.

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