The recent ICE shooting in Minneapolis and Donald Trump's response to the killing of Renee Good has turned the city into a "laboratory of destruction," according to an economist.
Nobel Prize winner Paul Krugman believes the president, his administration, and the Immigration and Customs Enforcement team are dismantling democracy in the city. In a post to his Substack, the economist warned there were failures in both institutions and the elite, ruling class which made the situation in Minneapolis untenable.
He wrote, "So now we have Minneapolis, America’s laboratory of democratic destruction, where ICE agents have gone full Sturmabteilung, terrorizing and even killing not only people with brown skin, but anyone who protests or gets in their way. And the irony is that this may be for the better."
"For a gradual destruction of democracy would have been hard to resist. After all, who wants to rock the boat when there’s money to be made, jobs to keep, perks to be had, convenient bothsideism to be upheld, if you will just be silent and keep your head down?"
Krugman went on to praise those protesting ICE agents and the government as outrage continued over the death of Good. The 37-year-old mother was shot and killed by an ICE agent earlier this month.
The Nobel Prize winner added, "Instead, however, the assault on freedom and civil liberties is open, lurid, and impossible to deny. While our institutions and our elites have failed us, ordinary Americans are rising to the occasion."
"If Minneapolis is a laboratory of democratic destruction, it has also become a laboratory of civil resistance — organized civil resistance, of a kind we haven’t seen since the civil rights movement. When ICE is on the rampage, crowds of brave Americans, summoned by texts and whistles, quickly gather to stand against the masked men with guns."
"As the outrage grows, people of common decency — like the federal prosecutors in Minnesota who chose to resign rather than pervert justice by going after Renee Nicole Good’s wife — are taking a stand."
Krugman went on to suggest those protesting would be responsible for a democracy "forged anew" against Trump and his cabinet.