Minnesota – Chris Cocca

When they told you it was okay to kill George Floyd over counterfeit 20s, or Eric Garner for selling loose cigarettes, did you really think they would condemn the murders of Renee Good or Alex Pretti?

As the regime falters, as the lies are exposed, two things are happening. The base is shrinking, but it’s getting more vocal. It’s getting mad at having to do the mental gymnastics, and it’s taking that anger out on everyone else. This is how systems work.

This isn’t about politics, per se, though we need political solutions.

Our system has always been tenuous, has often forced us into zero-sum, binary assumptions.

But our system has not always yielded such toxic fruit.

You can be skeptical about both major parties but also realize that the President and his closest allies are pushing specific buttons for illiberal, undemocratic reasons.

People in both major parties have always lied, cheated, and stolen. Most humans do. That doesn’t excuse us from saying other true things. That doesn’t mean the specter of actual fascism is something we just live with because both so-called sides are “equally bad.”

The truth is, they aren’t. And I’ll be nuanced: MAGA and Republican aren’t the same thing. At least, they didn’t used to be. George W. Bush created ICE, but he never weaponized it like this. Barack Obama, Democrat, deported more people than Trump could ever dream of, but he didn’t do it like this. I don’t recall suggestions from either of those administrations that ICE could or should operate with complete impunity. I don’t recall either administration begging federal judges to allow warrantless searches. I don’t remember either of those presidents suggesting that someone like Alex Pretti was probably a criminal because he was legally carrying a firearm while helping a woman who’d been assaulted by federal agents.

In a sane time, no one would need bother pointing this out. But, as Wendell Berry said:

To be sane in a mad time
is bad for the brain, worse
for the heart. The world
is a holy vision, had we clarity
to see it—a clarity that men
depend on men to make.

That’s frustrating. Heartbreaking. Maddening. Probably true.

I will have missed much in this short post. I’m white, straight, middle class. We now know those things won’t necessarily save me from ICE, but I also know they mean I’m already, by default, safer than many people I love. I may have been too gracious in parsing good-actor Republicans from the red-hatted polloi. Afterall, even many non-MAGA folks have repugnant views and vote in unconscionable ways. I’m also aware that saying we need a whole different system can present as expecting perfection from Democrats, and that’s not helpful, either.

As I write this, much of the country is covered in snow and under Cold Weather Advisory. Dangerous conditions, apt metaphors.

A month ago, I would have told you that opening federal land on the periphery of the Boundary Waters to mining was a terrible idea.

Since this article was published, I’ve been there. Some of me still is (not just the 5 lbs I lost rowing, portaging, and camping). I can’t put into words what this place is like. And the Big Beautiful Bill puts one of America’s most important and impressive natural resources at risk.

From the linked article, published by the Guardian and the Public Domain:

Earlier this month, conservationists cheered when Congress withdrew from the reconciliation bill several provisions that would have sold off hundreds of thousands of acres of federal land in Nevada and Utah. Those provisions had sparked fury among public land advocates and staunch opposition even from some Republicans, including the representative Ryan Zinke of Montana, who vowed to oppose the bill if the land sell-off provisions were retained.

Despite that fury, a lesser-known public lands giveaway remained in the reconciliation bill. If approved as currently written, the provision could lease in perpetuity land near Minnesota’s Boundary Waters wilderness, an enormous complex of pristine lakes and untrammeled forests, to Twin Metals Minnesota, a subsidiary of the Chilean mining giant Antofagasta PLC.

Becky Rom, the national chair of Save the Boundary Waters, a campaign to protect the wilderness area from mining, described the provision as “a giveaway of critical and sensitive federal public land forever to a single mining company”.

“It is a giveaway,” Rom added. “This is forever.”

The “Big Beautiful Bill” has been passed. The Boundary Waters might seem inconsequential in light of the real human damage cuts to Medicaid will cause. But we need to be doing more large-scale environmental protection, not less. It’s not about securing scenic vistas for would-be poets; it’s about the things that can happen when people and polities (in this case, the US, Canada, the Ojibwe, Minnesota, Ontario, Manitoba, and more) work together to preserve a natural heritage that’s every bit the right that life and liberty (and in some jurisdictions, healthcare), are.

Part of me wishes I were still on the water. All of me wishes there were a line item in the federal budget for every American to make the trip. You can’t really appreciate what’s at stake until you’ve been there.

We’ve gone to great lengths to remove ourselves from the severities of nature; I get it, that’s what humans do. We move, we learn, we grow. But we’re also inextricably connected to places far less hospitable than the houses, neighborhoods, or cities we call home. Spend a few hours in the ocean. On the lake. Do it wisely, but open yourself up to pristine settings, natural beauty, spend a week without plumbing or TV. Go someplace where you can really see the stars.

Take a hike. Grow a plant. Consider the supply chains and the net strain of most convenience.

This is what I was getting at with this poem, a relatively small example. There’s so much more at stake.

Tag: Minnesota

An Honest Question in a Mad Time

The Big Beautiful Bill Threatens Minnesota’s Boundary Waters