Why MAGA will never understand Minnesota

On Memorial Day 2017, Donald Trump and his then-chief of staff John Kelly went to Arlington Cemetery. After visiting the grave of Kelly's son Robert, who was killed in Afghanistan, Trump said, "I don't get it. What was in it for them?" More than anything else he's ever said, that gives us a window into the perverted soul of the man who is currently the president.

Donald Trump and his MAGA administration literally don't have a clue about what it means to sacrifice for your neighbors or your country. That's precisely why they'll never understand Alex Pretti, Renee Good, or anyone else who is standing up against the tyranny we're witnessing. 

I am reminded of something Sun Tzu, wrote in The Art of War.

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

For years now it's been clear that the only play Donald Trump and Stephen Miller know is dominance. They spread fear and assume we'll cower in response to force. That isn't how things are playing out in Minnesota. The more they terrorize, the more the resistance grows.

One of the hallmarks of sociopaths like Trump and Miller is the inability to experience empathy - which is defined as the ability to perceive another person's perspective. Meanwhile, MAGA is being told that empathy is toxic, a sin, the feminization of our culture (as if that's a bad thing), and the fundamental weakness of Western civilization. That makes it impossible for them to incorporate Sun Tzu's advice about "knowing your enemy." 

What MAGA substitutes for empathy is projection - the mental process in which an individual attributes their own internal thoughts, beliefs, emotions, experiences, and personality traits to another person or group. So Renee Good and Alex Pretti become "domestic terrorists" and protesters become "paid agitators" while MAGA continues with its fantasy that increased fear and terror will result in compliance.

That's the cycle we're in now. It's the same one that we witnessed between Sheriff Bull Connor and civil rights protesters. The former assumed that fire hoses, dogs, and jails would subdue those fighting for their rights. It didn't work. Instead, too many white people got disgusted with the tactics of terror and supported the end of Jim Crow. 

I'm still wrestling with questions about why so much of this is playing out in my home state of Minnesota. Perhaps I'll write about that soon. But I DO know something about why it's not going as Stephen Miller planned. Here's something that showed up on my Facebook page about a week after Renee Good was murdered (emphasis mine):

Winter teaches you quickly that survival is collective. You pay attention. You intervene. You do not leave people stranded. Ever.

In Minnesota, ice is something you learn to negotiate together. You slow down. You help. You know how easily things can go wrong if you don’t.

That’s why this other ICE feels like such a violation of who we are.

In Minnesota, we don’t solve danger by making it worse. We don’t respond to fear by escalating it. We show up. We de-escalate. We get each other home.

So yes, we will keep saying Renee Good’s name. We will help our immigrant neighbors. We will bear witness.

Because this is how we survive here.

People who lack empathy will NEVER understand that. They'll never understand that Renee Good and Alex Pretti (along with the 50,000 who marched on Friday) simply wanted their neighbors to be treated humanely. Instead, Trump would wonder "what's in it for them?"