Tolkkinen: I’m sure glad rural Minnesota isn’t like the Twin Cities

Rural Minnesota isn’t like Minneapolis.

Thank goodness.

That’s not a slam against you guys down there.

But it’s what ran through my head while reading what some in greater Minnesota recently told the Star Tribune. They said they didn’t want to be like the Twin Cities, where protesters are loudly confronting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and where Mayor Jacob Frey profanely demanded that ICE leave.

They think that protesters are aggravating ICE and making the situation worse. If ICE didn’t have a track record of abuse in other states, they could be right.

People in rural Minnesota generally support law and order. It’s not uncommon for people in this conservative part of the state to approach law enforcement officers, reaching out a hand.

“Thank you for your service,” they’ll say.

Plus, it feels good to be aligned with law enforcement. It feels moral and upright to know that you aren’t causing problems like those troublemakers down in the cities blowing whistles and screaming that ICE is coming and that people need to lock their doors. As if this were 1930s Germany.

Well, I’m glad we’re not the Twin Cities, too, but not because of the protesters. (Shh, but the protesters are kinda ballsy, no? If more Germans in the 1930s had taken to the streets … But humanity has learned its lesson from that era and would surely never repeat it, especially not in the land of the free and the home of the brave. Right? Right??)

Nor is it because I share the fear of people near me who think the Twin Cities is a cesspool of crime and violence. It’s easy for those of us who live in rural Minnesota to get a distorted view of the Twin Cities because it is home to more people and more people means more crime, and crime and violence always grabs your attention more than art crawls or block parties. Peaceful streets don’t make the news. Yet peaceful streets are what I’ve seen in the handful of times I’ve visited Minneapolis and St. Paul in recent years.

To be sure, the tent villages I encountered were a shame. I did once pass someone sleeping on the floor of a bus shelter who looked like they could use a nice pillow, and you don’t see that in Fergus Falls. And one time I was part of a gaggle of onlookers watching a guy trying to break into cars in a parking lot. Never saw that in Fergus Falls, either. (But then we don’t have a Northrop Auditorium or Target Field in Fergus Falls, so there’s that.)

But that’s not why I’m glad greater Minnesota isn’t the Twin Cities.

No, the reason I’m happy that rural Minnesota isn’t the Twin Cities is for all the reasons we used to talk about. Fewer traffic lights to eat up your day. Less light pollution to keep you up at night. Fewer sirens and horns and traffic jams. Greater visibility of stars and planets to inspire wonder. The crunch of gravel roads beneath your boots. A greeting whickered from the pasture.

That’s not to say that greater Minnesota doesn’t have its own problems.

We douse our fields with chemicals that pollute our waterways and that they now are finding may be linked to Parkinson’s disease. We elect people willing to expose the gem of our state, the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, to toxic waste from a new copper nickel mine. We allow the development of pristine shorelines to the detriment of wildlife and lake quality.

Worse, we don’t like to talk candidly about these things because they bring so much money into our rural areas. So the trade-off continues. As long as the money keeps rolling in, nobody wants to speak too loudly about why more kids are getting cancer or what might have caused Farmer Jim to get so shaky.

Most importantly, many here in rural Minnesota back the blue, as well as ICE, whatever color ICE might be. Maybe white? That would make sense, given the accusations by metro-area police chiefs on Tuesday that ICE has been racially profiling and pulling over their off-duty police officers who aren’t white.