Hope to Hell

I almost got smoked at a four-way stop this morning. A woman in a white SUV blew through the stop sign. Her car came to a screeching halt in the middle of the street, in the place my car would have been if we were all obeying the law.

She made eye contact with me, and I did something I don’t do typically. I flipped her off. Both hands.

Shocked at my own meanness, I pulled my hands to my chest and mouthed “I’m sorry.”

I was sorry. She had made the mistake. And then I made another one.

In the moment between my middle fingers raising and my regret for doing it, a whole mental process occurred. She’s my neighbor. I noted her Minnesota license plate. I’m not mean to my neighbors as a rule, but the rage I felt was undeniable and required reflection.

She was distracted. All Minnesotans are currently distracted. The terror we have lived through in the last few months is messing with our synapses. We are generally kind people. But trauma changes cognition.

I’m reinvesting in my anger, and I think she is too. I need to not do that.

When I got home, I did what I have been doing a lot in 2026. I listened to my friends’ band, The Gated Community. Specifically, I listened to “Hope to Hell,” a song written in response to Operation Metro Surge. It’s weird to hear my friends sound so mad. They are nice people.

The lyrics include “I hope to hell that the temperature starts warming.” It’s kind of a tired metaphor that we’ve all been using. The paramilitary goons started showing up in December, they started murdering people in January, and they kept up their presence throughout February. Those are months of deep pride for Minnesotans. They are hard months.

Tens of thousands of Minnesotans marched in downtown Minneapolis in -20-degree temperatures the day after I heard an ICE agent complain about the weather in a dive bar in West Saint Paul. I rolled my eyes at the goon, and the next day my neighbors showed the monsters from Texas and Florida and Arkansas what Minnesotans are like.

Cold.

My friend sings, “so damn tired of being nice today,” and I know he’s singing about more than niceness. I hope the woman in the four-way stop intersection has a nice day today. She and I are neighbors. We are Minnesotans. And holy shit have I learned how valuable my neighbors are.