Darkness Visible

“Suddenly, the tense scene dissolved into slapstick. The federal officer slipped on a patch of ice and tumbled to the ground. A raucous roar of laughter and jeers erupted from the protesters surrounding him. He scrambled to his feet and marched on. But a few seconds later one of the protesters shouted, ‘He dropped his magazine!’ And sure enough, lying on the patch of ice was a fully loaded magazine from his automatic weapon. Dan Engelhart, one of the city’s parks commissioners, was standing nearby. He grabbed the magazine and turned it over in his hands. Well, we’re fucking close to civil war,’ he told me.” Lydia Polgreen in the NYT (Gift Article): In Minneapolis, I Glimpsed a Civil War. “From afar, this tragic and possibly criminal act of violence could plausibly be seen as incidental to President Trump’s mission to deport undocumented people from the country. But when I landed in Minneapolis on Monday and saw the size, scope and lawlessness of the federal onslaught unfolding here, I understood that Good’s killing was emblematic of its true mission: to stage a spectacle of cruelty upon a city that stands in stark defiance against Trump’s dark vision of America.”

+ A headline that captures our moment: Volunteers in Minnesota Deliver Groceries So Immigrants Can Hide at Home.