Opinion | Minnesota Nice, American evil

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“It can’t happen here.” So wrote Minnesota’s Sinclair Lewis in his 1935 novel of the same name, warning about authoritarianism. Yet it does happen here. Minnesota has once again been shaken, this time by the tragedy at Annunciation Catholic Church, where Robin Westman stands accused of killing and wounding several, including children. This horror comes only months after the assassination of a state legislator, her husband and their dog, and the attempted murder of another lawmaker and his wife by alleged killer Vance Boelter. And, of course, the conviction of Derek Chauvin for the murder of George Floyd lingers as a wound still open. Three faces of evil.

The shock is not only that these crimes occurred but that they happened in Minnesota. This is the state of Lake Wobegon, the state once featured on the cover of Time magazine for its good life, the state of “Minnesota Nice.” Yet the phrase now feels like an epitaph. Something deeper is unraveling.

At one level, these tragedies may reflect what sociologists call the “normalization of violence.” Minneapolis may simply be no different from other American cities. We are not exceptional. But perhaps something else is at work, a convergence of psychological, cultural and structural forces that make Minnesota a case study in how American innocence shatters.

The psychology of evil is rarely sudden. It is cumulative, hidden in plain sight. Chauvin’s history of excessive force, Boelter’s extremist rhetoric, Westman’s obsessions with weapons and manifestos — each carried warning signs. Families, colleagues or neighbors noticed but did not act. This silence goes beyond the famous “bystander effect” memorialized in the Kitty Genovese case. It speaks to cultural habits of denial.

Part of that denial is woven into Minnesota Nice. Outsiders imagine it as warmth and openness. Insiders know it can be cold politeness masking judgment and distance. For people of color, it has often meant smiling faces paired with discrimination. For others, it manifests as a reluctance to intervene: “I was so mad I almost said something.” In this way, Minnesota Nice becomes less about kindness than avoidance, a Scandinavian reserve hardened into moral aloofness.

Moreover, simply arguing we need more laws and penalties also hides the reality that most crimes, including those with guns, are not the product of rational deliberation. Often violence is about anger and rage. There is little evidence that perpetrators of violence are deterred by penalties.

The scale of daily and ignored violence is staggering. Mother Jones Magazine has tracked mass shootings since 1982, recording roughly 3,000 deaths or injuries. Not insignificant but in 2024 alone, more than 49,000 Americans died by suicide, most with guns. And about 1 million women alive today report having been shot or shot at by an intimate partner. Evil here is not exotic. It wears familiar faces, lives next door and buys weapons at the same stores as everyone else. Yet we comfort ourselves with denial, focusing only on the mass killers, labeling them insane while ignoring the violence in our family and neighbors.

This brings us back to the trinity of evil haunting Minnesota: Chauvin, Boelter, Westman. Each represents a dimension of violence — state-sanctioned brutality, political extremism and mass shooting nihilism. Each was enabled by silence, by cultural habits of looking away and by a nation unwilling to confront its gun obsession.

Minnesota is not unique, but it is emblematic. The mythology of Minnesota Nice collapses when tested against reality. Evil festers not only because of individual pathology but because communities fail to confront it. The U.S. suffers from a cultural refusal to intervene until it is too late.

The lesson is sobering. Evil does not arrive with fanfare. It arrives with a smile, with a shrug, with a neighbor who “almost said something.” Until Minnesota and America find the courage to speak, act and legislate against the forces enabling violence, we will remain trapped in this cycle. And the tragedies will continue to unfold — here and everywhere.