This weekend, in Minneapolis, an American citizen was killed in broad daylight by federal agents. It was the second such killing this month.
Saturday’s murder claimed the life of 37 year-old Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked at the city’s VA medical center. Pretti was on the street documenting ICE agents with his cell phone camera, following them as they continued their weeks-long mission to capture and deport undocumented immigrants.
By now, you have no doubt heard the same details I have, facts that make the atrocious murder of 19 children and their two teachers somehow much worse. That the police did not realize there were children still alive and trapped in the classroom with the shooter while they waited. That those children called 911, begging operators to send help. That one child smeared another child’s blood on herself and played dead. That at least one frantic mother ran into the school to find her child.
Like every parent in America, I grappled with that last thought–of the parents, assembled at the little elementary school, despairing, separated from their children while the scene remained active.
Like every parent in America, I saw the photos of the children online, saw the little boy with his tie on–it was awards day–running, terrified, and transposed my own son’s face upon his.
Like every parent in America, I kissed my children goodbye, sending them off for their last week of school, taking extra time to deeply inhale the scent at the crowns of their heads, my nose pressed warmly against their hair.
Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine this week brings with it a chilling, global sensation. There is no longer peace across Europe, and from our wealthy, ensconced villas in the States, there seems to be very little we can do about it beyond lobbing sanctions or offering a milquetoast saber rattle.
This new war–a term I’m still wrapping my head around–offers up another curious generational fold for we baby X-ers (or, conversely, geriatric millennials, another term demanding grave pause). Russia as warmongering adversary–sounds familiar, right?
I am old enough to remember the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union. I knew Mikhail Gorbachev’s name as a kid, and Boris Yeltsin’s. I studied in schools that had window shade-style maps with “U.S.S.R.” printed broadly across their northeastern quadrants. In my memory, the country was a deep shade of red.
Generationally speaking, I occupy a sweet spot in this story. If you’re much older than I am, you probably practiced “Duck and Cover” type school drills and lived with a low-level humming anxiety, waiting for the bright flash from Moscow. If you’re a decade younger than me, you’ve lived your life in a post-Cold War channel, one defined by the wealthy confidence portrayed by a strong America guiding another defeated nation into the democratic herd. That small span of time in the middle, my group, has a foot on both sides.
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