Who are We?

The United States is in the midst of committing national suicide. There may still be time to save it.

A mix of economically illiterate trade policy and aimless geopolitical chest-thumping has precipitated a slide in the value of dollar-denominated assets. Donald Trump, a man with shamanic powers to bend social reality to his will, has summoned the specter of an end to America’s “exorbitant privilege.”

He has also begun liquifying America’s network of alliances, as well as its manufacturing capacity, a feat achieved in the latter case by simply declaring his desire to do the opposite, at which point the administration’s savviest economic minds proceeded to ask a chatbot how to revive early 20^th century protectionism. The resulting “Liberation Day” tariffs, announced via a large piece of cardboard, shook many on the right out of their polarized stupor, at which point it dawned that the November ballot they’d cast was akin to slipping on a giant banana peel in slow motion, the floor having finally greeted them with a piercing crack to the spine.

Unsatisfied to rest on its laurels, the Trump administration has now sicced an army of masked, gun-toting illiterates on the people of Minnesota. While it did so on the pretense of combating fraud and rounding up violent illegals, it has also given ICE agents de-facto permission to murder American citizens. ICE’s second victim—Alex Pretti—was shot to death yesterday morning.

As violent clashes kick off in the streets of Minneapolis, framed by history-echoing tensions between local and federal law enforcement, it might seem beside-the-point to wax philosophical about American national identity—especially as the very concept is still anathema to much of the left.

But if the murders of Renée Good and Alex Pretti end up a turning point, it will be because they blast through a thick crust of culture-war detritus to reveal longstanding cultural and institutional pillars that, decrepit as they are, were never really toppled, and so can still support the to-us obvious conclusion that it is wrong for agents of the state to gun down innocent civilians in broad daylight.

Those who claim “the moment has come” for a person, or a group to make some history-shaping decision are often proven incorrect. Real-world politics is less dramatic than this, at least most of the time. More often, it is a slow-rolling war of position, even and especially when glossed in climactic terms. Probably, Trump will continue to suffer in the polls as Americans consume large volumes of video evidence depicting blatant abuses by ICE. But memories are short—and shortening—and so, not unlike the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the killings of Good and Pretti may soon stream backward into the digital ether, their memories preserved by little besides gruesome AI slop generated en masse from their likenesses.

I want to believe that this time is different. Every person with eyes and a conscience can see that the killings of Good and Pretti are unacceptable. Evidence is mounting that they will have real political consequences. Americans’ moral intuitions are aligning.

Sometimes, it takes the awfulness of their violation to reveal that we do still have shared values in this country. One of the lessons I predict we will learn from the current period in American politics is that we can neither deny that this is case, nor try to resurrect those values by force on whatever are our social group’s preferred, probably revisionary terms. But that does not in turn mean we must embrace some preexisting set of ideals, lying dormant, to be unearthed a static whole. Whatever remains of American national identity will have, in some sense, to be rebuilt.

Masked thugs, acting at the behest of the state, are carrying out lawless executions in our streets. The Trump administration has mounted a multi-front war against nearly every spring of American prosperity. They are not us, and this is not who we are.

But in that case, who are we? Over the last decade, we have forgotten. But Minnesota is reminding us. Who are we? It may be that the moment to decide has finally, again, arrived.