What national media need to understand is that what happened in Minneapolis last night seems to be different from what happened in previous nights, and different from normal riots in other places. Stop trying to analyze it as rhetoric by the governor. Something new is happening.

Also, the national conversation is continuing to focus on George Floyd and racial injustice. Let me be clear: that’s important but it isn’t what Minnesotans are talking about right now. They’re wondering why white men with Wisconsin plates are setting fires in residential areas.

This isn’t “infiltration.” It’s invasion. Unlike previous nights, there are virtually no reports at all of locals involved in violence last night. I mean almost nothing. But hundreds of reports of out-of-staters.

Remember that the Twin Cities are a progressive and diverse place surrounded by a vast white hinterland stretching hundreds of miles in one direction and thousands of miles in the other. It’s an outpost.

What’s happening in Minneapolis at this moment doesn’t seem to be Ferguson 2 or Baltimore 2.

It’s Charlottesville 2.