For those who might be curious, I’m safe.
The neighborhood that has been my home for most of the last 33 years? Not so much. More on that later.
The cities that have been my home, and the place that I raised my family, for the last 35 years?
We are in the worst possible hands.
Yesterday afternoon, I almost wrote that Mayor Frey’s press conference was the worst train wreck I have ever seen in public.
I would’ve spoken too soon.
The mayors 1:30 AM press conference last night…
… Well, words fail me. I come up with words for a living, and a hobby, and I’ve got nothing.
There is literally not the faintest shred of leadership under that perfectly coiffed hairdo of his.
Asked why he ordered the third precinct evacuated, he prattled something about the building being just a symbol – human lives are the important part. Why no reporter thought to follow up by asking “what about the lives that are being put in direct jeopardy by the complete turnover of the streets to the mob? What about the symbol you’re sending – that the police protection that is one of the few legitimate reasons to have a government, is being pulled out at the height of the crisis? Do you want to talk symbols, let’s talk symbols!”
Naturally, nobody asked that.
But a reporter actually DID ask an incisive question, something the mayor clearly isn’t used to ever getting. “What’s the plan?“. The mayor responded, initially, with five seconds of deer in the headlights silence, before asking the reporter “plan for what?” like a junior high kid who’d forgotten this week was midterms, before starting “there’s a lot of pain out there…“ and another couple minutes of gibberish that didn’t even address, much less answer, the question.
Forget about the facts on the ground – if you are a resident of Minneapolis, that press conference should have you howling with anger. The feelings of the mob – not people demonstrating against police brutality, but the roving mass of thieves and provocateurs – are more important than your livelihoods, your lives.
Call it the tyranny of low expectations, but when I saw St. Paul police chief Todd Axtel‘s press conference I found myself almost happy to see a police chief saying “we’re not abandoning our city“. In normal times, I would say, dumbfounded, “what, do you want a cookie? That’s your job!“ We’ve seen today that you can’t take that for granted.
Part of me wants to apologize for former New Orleans Ray Nagin for calling him the worst mayor in the history of America in the wake of hurricane Katrina.
Anyway – curfew in effect.
“One Minnesota“ my ass.
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If you think this would be an opportune time to slip some virtue signaling about the justification for the rioters into the comments, think again.
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