A Moment to Reflect on Minneapolis

Rejecting moral purity even driven by righteous anger

As of the writing of this essay, there have been 3 murders in Minneapolis so far in 2026. Two of these were committed by government agents acting in their official capacity as part of an ICE “immigration crackdown”.

The anger felt in Minneapolis, in Minnesota, in the US, and across the world is valid.

The anger is righteous.

The anger is justified.

And though it is all of those things, let us not forget that anger is something else.

It is dangerous.

I do not condone the actions of ICE. I do not condone the immigration decisions of the Trump administration. I would vote immediately for the defunding and dissolution of ICE and the greater “Homeland Security” apparatus that it is a part of.

What is the point of “Homeland Security” if its performance destroys the very rights that define us as a nation?

That said, the growing backlash against ICE should be handled with caution.

At its core, the resistance to ICE and its tactics is a result of the belief in the American concepts of justice and freedom. Not that justice and freedom are American concepts. What I mean is the American ideals of those concepts.

We hold as a nation that everyone is “created equal” and endowed with “certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Watching masked agents of the government grab people, ship them off to prisons or other countries with seemingly little to no due process or recourse, violates these ideas.

The empathy we share tells us we would not want to be treated like ICE is treating people.

Based on these ideas, the anger so many of us feel is what I said it was.

Valid.

Righteous.

Justified.

It can be other things too.

Corrosive.

Empowering.

A replacement for morality.

The fuel of revenge.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions. It is signposted with righteousness.

In this moment we stand at a precipice of potential change. An opportunity to push back against the growing fascism eroding America as a nation of enlightenment ideals. But backlash can lead to overreach if not handled with care.

Let us not forget, the current actions of ICE are not the result of an outside evil come to attack our nation. They were spelled out in advance and chosen by people. Your neighbors. Your friends. And statistically speaking, possibly even you.

Plenty of people did not consider the effect of the cruelty of this choice on other people. They did not see them as people. They were portrayed as an “invasion of illegals”. Terrifying language designed to play upon all too real fears.

The fear that America is changing. That fear is real in a way that the “invasion of illegals” is not.

Change is the only constant in life. Despite that, people have an inborn aversion to it. We feel most at ease in a world that we understand and can make logical predictions about.

In the past fifty years though, America has changed rapidly. Within the span of a human life, the roles of women have changed. Women have fought for and attained nearly equal social standing with men. While the gender pay gap and workforce metrics in certain industries show that there is still ground to gain, few can deny that there has been sweeping change.

Economics have changed too. In that same lifetime a college degree went from affordable and a near guarantee of a comfortable single-income middle-class life that could support a family to the source of crushing debt with little promise of the rewards enjoyed by prior generations. Americans have never been more productive or educated, yet the slice of the pie going to working Americans has shrunk over the same period, breeding anxiety and blame.

A blame that will be directed somewhere. It is no secret that those empowered by the state of the nation today want to maintain the status quo that gave them power and wealth. Yet the anxiety and fear produced in that system must be directed somewhere.

Complicated solutions that curb the wealth and power of those most responsible for the erosion of the American dream are difficult to communicate.

“Build The Wall” and “Mass Deportations” fit easily on signs and within chants.

The blame has been directed at the most vulnerable, those who can affect the status quo the least.

The blame has been sold to those who believed in a status quo that afforded them certain privileges and benefits, even if they do not consciously admit that. And those who appear different from the “promised” status quo are the easiest to blame when people feel their status, even unadmitted, slipping away.

When you think you are safely above others, that safety feels like protection. I disagree with the idea that others standing below instead of equal is actually safe. But I understand why people feel that way. And the insecurity it creates can curdle into what looks the same as hate.

And whether it is hate, or simply hate shaped, does it matter? It creates the same outcomes. But accepting this as a hate merely born of some moral defect is self-defeating.

Be angry at the crimes of ICE. You have every right to be. But when that anger needs to be aimed, be cautious with aiming it at those who support ICE and its agenda. Sure, some are people who harbor hate within for anyone they deem to be “other”.

But the vast majority are not driven by inherent malice. They are driven by fear. And that fear has been manipulated.

A reckoning will come. Will it be driven by vengeance and malice? Or reason and empathy?

To get to a world where the atrocities of ICE are not only stopped, but where the environment does not allow them to happen at all, we cannot rely on anger, righteous though it may be.

The wrongs of ICE, and the wrongs that enabled it, cannot be erased. Nor can the fear and anxiety that enabled them. Anger tells us that we should visit retribution on those responsible. It feels good. It feels proper.

Those who committed crimes should be held accountable. Not only the ones who pulled triggers. But those who gave them the impunity to do so, those who decided that cruelty towards others was valid even when it was against the laws of our nation.

More importantly, the support that enabled the crimes of ICE feels like it should be punished as well. But that feeling only entrenches those that supported the “immigration crackdown”. It will make them feel their own righteous anger. It will plant the seeds more firmly, grow the roots deeper. The growth may not be visible on the surface, but it will remain strong beneath, and when conditions are right it will burst forth in this violent growth again.

To create a more moral society we must meet people where they are. People did not support the actions of ICE because they are hateful monsters. They did it because they are fearful of a rapidly changing world that feels worse off than what they were promised, because they are right that the world has changed. The world is changing. Where they are wrong is that the change is “taking” from them. Where we can do better is show them the changing world can be better if we work together with the changing world instead of fighting change that cannot be stopped.

Change is like a river. A stone thrown in a river does nothing. A levee built of many stones together can stop it… until the levee breaks and the flood is even more destructive.

We cannot stop the river. But we can stop building walls against it and start building mills to harness its power.

We must meet this fear and anxiety where it is. Because we all feel it. We can overcome it not by punching back at those we disagree with and getting a “win”, but by working together to build the mills that will power the world we thought we were promised.

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