What we’re watching in Minneapolis is the forces of a federal government ruled by a fundamentally anti-social ideology running into a wall of operationalized neighborliness. And neighborliness is winning.
It might not feel like that, and I get it. There’s violence, and deaths, and at least one of them is a clear case of an assassination carried out by the regime’s lawless goon squad. But that regime is also flailing, its actions galvanizing opposition, its popularity falling, its tactics aimed less at competently consolidating power and more at producing social media content for the absolute dregs of its very online base.
What’s happening, too, though, is a clear demonstration of the actual political divide in America right now. It’s not about policy, unless you zoom policy so far out that it’s just “pro-democracy” versus “pro-autocracy.” And it’s not even really ideological, except insofar as ideology is, right now, downstream of psychology.
The divide right now is between those living with a cramped, walled-off consciousness, fearful of anything outside their transaction, and those operating with a boundless sense of concern.
Watching what’s happening in Minneapolis, it’s clear that what separates Americans who are living up to the best that label represents, and those who are intent on destroying it, is character. Who has it, who doesn’t.
For all our faults, and there are plenty, Americans possess—in greater numbers and depth than the regime, empty as it is of humanity, predicted or imagined or can understand—a character, including a character of neighborliness and compassion, that is powerful, courageous, and winning.
"They say they're coming to save us from some evil? They're talking about our neighbors who take care of us ... Alex was murdered while he was helping. Mr Rogers said look for the helpers, & right now the helpers have a target on our forehead ... Mr Rogers would be here right now too, so I'm here."
You listen to JD Vance or Greg Bovino or Kristi Noem, and what stands out, alongside the evil of their words and worldview, is that these are people who have no conception of what it’s like to care about others. It’s all hatred and domination. In the case of Trump himself, it’s those and a perspective where every relationship is exclusively transactional. I do something for you if and only if I get something more out of it than I give up. And if hurting you will benefit me, I’ll do it.
The benefit they look for is the feeling of being an oppressor. It’s a fleeting relief from their own internal void. It’s a hunger that thinks it can be sated by consuming the dignity of others. It is a frantic attempt to construct a self by diminishing others—a zero-sum delusion where they believe they can only grow taller by cutting off the legs of those standing next to them. It is a feverish, cramped existence. It is, in other words, the opposite of neighborliness.
And those guys are up against an American Midwest culture that centers neighborliness. There’s a lot more in the character of Minnesotans that’s giving them the strength to win, but if there’s a core, it’s that. It’s caring about others, and standing up for them, and taking risks for them, not because they’re of your tribe, or your skin color, or your religion, but because you have empathy and a sense of decency, an understanding that to be a good neighbor is to help and know that your neighbors will do the same. And it’s speaking out, not staying silent, not hiding away from helping, because with neighborliness comes an obligation to neighborhood. It’s not just one-to-one care and decency, but the realization that this mutual web of support is the whole of the moral life. We do not become fully human in isolation, we become human through the quality of our proximity to one another.
The other side are the ones who reject that. And Americans have sorted into those sides. When this moment is behind us, and we move on to rebuilding, and governing again, our ideological divides will reemerge. Our policy disagreements will reemerge. But right now, as we look at Minneapolis, and its heroism and strength and sacrifice, we can see that there are neighbors and there are those who hate their neighbors, and it’s only the former who are strong, because hatred is exhausting and fragile, while the expansive heart has no boundaries it needs to violently defend.