Gotta tell you something that bugs the bejeebers out of me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Governor Walz’s campaign motto in both elections has been “One Minnesota”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now, if you’ve studied History *and* German, that slogan sounds all too close to “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein F\u00fchrer” – “One People, One Empire, One Leader”. It was the motto of…uh, a regime 80 years ago that left behind some apocalyptic historical, social and political baggage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 2018, the slogan was merely annoying – one of those things the kids today refer to as “Microagressions”, which is another way of saying “something that people normally suck it up and chalk up to the cognitive dissonance of human communication”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But after four years featuring the most incredible peacetime seizure of government power in history, and a long spate of politicized violence, not to mention a campaign of “othering” dissenters from the current ruling party as “Fascists” – the same, morally and personally, as the Godwins Law convicts in the second paragraph up above – it’s not hard to wonder if “One Minnesota” is a warm, fuzzy inclusive thing, or a warning that you’re either *with* “One Minnesota” or you’re against it; an invitation, as Elvis Costello put it, “shut up or get cut up”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The President’s speech in September, referring to half the country as “Facists”, is exactly what regimes do when they want to draw a wide, exclusive “with us or against us” line through society.<\/p>\n\n\n\n