Minneapolis burning

Minnesota, home of flat rolling plains, irate senators (on one side of the aisle at least), realignment, independence, riots, real Americans, the list goes on. One might be forgiven for thinking that the state is a microcosm of everything that makes America, well, America. It's also one of those states people tend to forget about - like Montana, Idado, maybe the Dakotas. One might be forgiven for thinking not much happens there, but peer closely and you might see a barometer for things present and future.

In 2016, the state went blue, but barely. Donald Trump came closer to winning the state than any Republican since Reagan. He pulled off a tight margin thanks to a curious little shift: those rural counties surrounding Minnesota's cities suddenly went red. It was the urbanite-suburbanite coalition that had to come to her rescue. But things are changing. In the midterm elections, Republicans held onto those new gains in and around the state's prized Iron Range. This is puzzling, if only because Minnesota has long been the site of radical ferment in its party politics. During the Depression, it was the site of one of America's few third-party takeovers in history. The Farmer-Labor Party, heir to the old midwestern populist tradition, found itself dominating state politics and sending its representatives to Congress. This lasted until the Democrats finally got their act together (it would be rather embarrassing to have a populist third party remain in power with a progressive Roosevelt in office) and successfully ingratiated themselves into the party machinery. But the state's Democratic party retains "Farmer-Labor" in its name, an homage to the voters' independence, and perhaps a warning too: We can leave any time we'd like. Well, when it turns out that the party has left you, what choice do you have?

But how does that explain the sudden movement towards conservatism? Why are the margins so tight? It's no big mystery. The parties have indeed changed. To be a Republican is no longer identical with being a movement conservative, the innovation of Bill Buckley and Frank Meyer is no more, or at least in terminal decline. What does the new Republican Party stand for? Nation, protection, law, order. It's just too bad those last two seem to be under some strain at the moment.

What has set off this newest escapade in the name of Black Lives is the murder of one George Floyd at the hands of an out-of-control police officer who appears to have had quite a few disciplinary problems during his years of service. Those in the cities are not quite like those in the country. They are similarly aggrieved, but in different ways. Tonight, they're out for blood, and no Target, Dollar Store, or passing vehicular unit is going to stand in the way of justice. One is compelled to wonder, though, how easy it really is to draw a line between those crying out for restorative justice and those opportunists, of all races, who rush into broken retailers with glee at the prospect of a new flat screen tee-vee. Who is an ally? Does everyone who participate get to be an activist? Are we all working for the cause of righteous retribution, so long as we step across the broken glass to snag the latest vacuum cleaner off the shelf?

It is very easy to generalize from personal anecdote. That is how the tyranny of blue check-marks sustains itself. A few hundred people are making quite a scene in Minnesota's capital. But how reflective is that of the population at large? And if there is so much anger fermenting across the state, why do its political demographics continue to shift in ways antithetical to the designs of the protestors? Whose justice, indeed.

And whose anger, is what seems to be the pertinent question here. Because the means by which anger is expressed appears to differ according to demographics. In the country, the angry people are voting. In the cities, they are rioting. A few months ago, I attempted to get a progressive black woman elected to county legislature (not of my own accord, I assure you). My inner reluctance to embrace careerism and opportunism never seems to stop me, but the point here is that I spent quite a bit of time in areas that would not be unfamiliar to the rampaging protestors currently razing Minneapolis or to George Floyd. Impoverished, minority-majority regions. I even once happened to interrupt a social service visit. You can imagine my embarrassment. Let me tell you what I found.

I found a district that, in its worst areas, was run-down, broken, disinterested, wrapped up in its own misery, damaged socially, houses stand empty, or blasting music, marijuana smoke wafting, clumped together, the people listen politely, certainly (poor blacks have always treated me more respectfully than rich whites), but they do it always with an eye and ear to getting you off their porch. They can't be reached via normal politics. They simply don't care. And why should they? What is being done for them? Who deigns to speak for them? There is a cadre of politically active blacks, but they seem far more interested in maintaining their positions, monopolizing power, and playing shuffle-the-office, than actually mobilizing their constituents in service of change. I wouldn't expect any more from them in that regard. Change is bad for them. Change means the game stops working (for them).

It is rather ironic and sad to consider that many of these people aren't benefiting from a culture that has gone global. The hip, urban black has long since been overtaken by the demonic 21st-century equivalent of Norman Mailer's white negro: the "wigger". Only they have discovered that, as with the subcultures they can't understand (or wouldn't be caught dead trying), they are subject to the same hollowing out. The activists coming to their defense could only stare, aghast, as hundreds of thousands of their black "allies" proceeded to spurn Bernie Sanders in favor of the career politician. One side thinks it understands the other and is consistently surprised when the other veers off in its own direction. The most perturbing thing here is the suggestion that the avant-garde black activists themselves can't reach the masses they claim to represent, not even with the mobilizing potential of "left-populism".

Perhaps some would take that as revealing the bankruptcy of identity politics as opposed to class, but I think it says something else. After all, appeals to identity work very well when made to white populations. Rhodesia lasted a while in the face of global opposition, as did South Africa's apartheid regime. And when one politician dared to reach out to the alienated here at home, those Americans attuned to that kind of message responded with great enthusiasm. Of course, the great debate over whether it was style or substance that lifted the current incumbent to the White House rages on, and I myself discerned a substantial platform in his sometimes incoherent musings, but I question whether those who took the time to attend his rallies did as well. I figure what he left was an impression, a feeling. It just so happened that the right style was complemented by the right substance - it doesn't happen often. Tricksters abound.

There is no such impression for the blacks, and there is barely a medium to transmit it. They don't care because nobody has cared for them and they don't expect them to. They riot now but they don't vote when the time comes. Or perhaps the few hundred protestors do not quite match the sentiment of the rest of Minnesota's black population. Or maybe they do, but the sentiment is silent. Whatever the case, they have not used the organizing potential they have demonstrated here to elect their preferred leaders to office in quite a while. They can't, because the people egging them on from their computer screens do not really want what they want. They can't, because they are strung along by a narrative concocted in their name but bearing little relation to their situation on the ground. They can't, because their leaders are engaged in a phony war with other phony leaders, two sides firing water guns at each other, battling each other to a standstill over semantics and issues of marginal concern to their own lives, all with an eye towards notoriety, fame, fortune, etc. The ordinary black man on the street has nothing to show for all of this. If their political behavior is anything like it is here at home, local politics is left to the few with real skin in the game. National elections are consistently marred by low black turnout. The patronage continues to flow all the same.

Alienated communities, white and black, need a common message and a common cause. A mass movement that could draw in both would be nigh unstoppable. Indeed, that is how mass movements flourish. They offer something that others cannot or will not, they break boundaries, they break rules, they appeal directly to the people whose support they need, they eschew numbers games, they toss the models, they offer the world, they speak to anger, to rage, they channel it, all intermediate institutions are eliminated, anyone who is not with them is against them. they have one goal: homogenization and subsumption. This is a small price to pay for victory. The ideological battles of the day are meaningless to the people in their broken homes, who labor under the omnipresent forces of drugs, alcohol, poverty, and Social Services. The child home alone, watching forlornly out the big window of his big house, can't understand all this, but he can be made to. He can have everything at the expense of everyone, and then no one. That's a winning platform, damn the specifics.