The American government’s terror campaign against brown people and the murder of white American protesters in Minneapolis are as terrifying as they are wholly wrong and morally indefensible.

No matter your political stripe, there’s no longer any way to deny that cruelty, the expression of raw power as violence, and dehumanization have been revealed as key elements of the MAGA platform and ethos.

And watching the horrific, tragic events unfold in Minneapolis, there’s no doubt that the seeds of a (soon to be hot) civil war are taking root.

I’m reminded of Pasolini’s letter to student protesters after the 1968 Battle of Valle Giulia (wiki it) where Italy’s paramilitary police (the Carabinieri) and protesters clashed violently.

And then, look at them, Pasolini wrote, referring to the Carabinieri with their black and red uniforms:

And then, look at them: dressed like clowns,
with the rough fabric with rancid stench
Worst of all, naturally, the psychological state
to which they are reduced
for about forty liras a month:
without a smile,
with no more friendship with the world,
separated, excluded (in an exclusion that has no equal)
humiliated by the loss of human qualities
in exchange for those of a policeman
(being hated makes you hate).
They are twenty, dear young men and women, your age.

(Translation from primolevicenter.org.)

Reading the letter (a poem published at the time as opinion piece), it occurred to me how ICE agents are also victims of our government’s awful policy — not unlike the way U.S. soldiers were victims of U.S. policy in Vietnam (or Afghanistan or Iraq).

But then you look at the agents’ abject violence against U.S. citizens and rightful residents: it’s hard not to see MAGA’s hateful, emotionally-driven cruelty in the heart of their actions.

I pray for them just as I pray for the victims of MAGA’s sadism. I pray for us all.

Image via the us_icegov Flickr (public domain).