The Great Minnesota Get-Together: A Year in Review of Magical Thinking
Let’s not mince words here. 2025 was a hot mess, a genuine dumpster fire wrapped in a veneer of ‘Midwest Nice’ and smothered in cheese curds. When WCCO starts running headlines about ‘WCCO’s most-read stories of 2025, month by month’ and a significant portion of that content is just a list of tragedies, attacks on the vulnerable, and political infighting, it’s pretty clear the facade cracked. The input data, a collection of titles that read like a psychological case study—from “what does not break us makes us stronger” (Brooks) to a year in photos (MinnPost) and the most-read stories (WCCO)—paints a picture of a state desperately trying to convince itself that resilience is the same thing as denial. And if you ask me, denial’s a whole lot cheaper than actual solutions, which makes it incredibly popular in St. Paul. This isn’t just news; it’s a study in collective delusion where everyone’s trying to ignore the elephant in the room—or perhaps the entire herd of elephants—by focusing intently on the annual butter sculpture contest at the State Fair. It’s a performance art piece of epic proportions.
The Illusion of Resilience: ‘What Doesn’t Break Us Makes Us Stronger’
Let’s dissect that Brooks quote: “what does not break us makes us stronger.” It’s a great line for a motivational poster in a high school guidance counselor’s office, but in the context of real-world governance and societal decay, it’s just noise. When the input data mentions “tragedy” and “attacks on the vulnerable,” this isn’t some abstract philosophical debate about existential strength; it’s tangible failure. The vulnerable are attacked because something broke, not because it was strengthened. The idea that suffering through something without changing anything fundamentally makes you stronger is the most dangerous kind of self-help nonsense. It’s the political equivalent of putting a band-aid on a gunshot wound and then patting yourself on the back for being ‘resilient.’ The truth, as I see it from this vantage point, is that 2025 didn’t make Minnesota stronger; it revealed how incredibly fragile the entire operation truly is.
The State Fair, an event so central to Minnesota’s identity that it’s in the input data (“Every summer; most of the photographers I know take at least one day to focus on The Great Minnesota Get-Together”), serves as the perfect annual distraction. It’s where Minnesotans go to pretend for twelve days that everything is fine, eating deep-fried everything while carefully ignoring the systemic issues boiling just below the surface of Lake Calhoun (oh wait, Bde Maka Ska). The photos from MinnPost’s collection probably show smiling faces and agricultural prowess, completely divorced from the reality of the “tragedy” and “attacks” that fill WCCO’s most-read list for every other month of the year. It’s cognitive dissonance on a grand scale, a massive, collective effort to look away from the truth. And frankly, this level of coordination to ignore reality is almost impressive in its own right.
The Political Performance: Leadership in the Era of Denial
And then there’s Melissa Hortman. As Speaker of the House, she’s right in the middle of this political theater. The data suggests a difficult year, and when things get difficult in politics, the instinct is almost always to spin. To control the narrative. To tell people that the rough patch is actually a growth opportunity. But the job of leadership, especially in a time where “attacks on the vulnerable” are prevalent, isn’t just to be resilient; it’s to be effective. The question isn’t whether Hortman and her colleagues survived 2025—it’s whether the people they represent survived it. The satirical joker in me has to wonder if they’re looking at the same WCCO list of tragedies as everyone else, or if they just have a different version where the villains are vanquished in time for the legislative session to adjourn and everyone goes home feeling stronger. The reality, however, is that legislative sessions often end with compromises that leave everyone feeling slightly less strong and absolutely nothing actually fixed. The vulnerability persists, and the ‘resilience’ rhetoric becomes an excuse for inaction rather than a source of genuine strength.
The true cost of magical thinking is that it breeds complacency. When you tell yourself that you’re stronger because you survived, you stop asking why you had to survive in the first place. This cycle—tragedy, resilience, repeat—is baked into the Midwestern psyche, and 2025 was just another rotation of that same old carousel. The “attacks on the vulnerable” are not random acts of fate; they are symptoms of systemic failures that Minnesotans are just too polite (or too distracted by tater tot hotdish) to confront head-on. The State Fair photographs are a testament to the fact that people would rather celebrate the illusion of community than actually address the breakdown of community. It’s much easier to take a picture of a smiling child with a cotton candy cone than it is to address the fact that a significant portion of the population feels unsafe in their own neighborhoods. That’s the real story of 2025.
Looking Ahead: The Inevitable Reckoning
The input data points to a year full of difficulty and tragedy. So, what happens in 2026? The trajectory of a state that refuses to look at its underlying problems is predictable: more of the same. More “attacks on the vulnerable,” more political rhetoric about resilience, and another State Fair where everyone pretends that deep-fried pickles are the most important issue facing the state. The cycle is self-perpetuating. The high burstiness of the WCCO headlines—a new tragedy every month—is not a sign of random chaos; it’s a sign of predictability. The State of Minnesota is like a slow-moving train wreck where everyone knows what’s coming, but they just stand on the sidelines, commenting on the color of the train cars before impact. The input data gives us a window into a state that’s living in a state of arrested development, refusing to grow up and face the consequences of its choices.
The satirical joker persona must point out the obvious: the “strength” gained from surviving tragedy is not nearly as valuable as the wisdom gained from preventing it. But in Minnesota, preventing tragedy requires having difficult conversations, confronting uncomfortable truths, and maybe, just maybe, stopping the endless cycle of pretending that everything is fine. And frankly, I don’t see that happening anytime soon. The State Fair photographs will continue to be taken, the “tragedy” headlines will continue to be written, and Melissa Hortman will continue to lead a legislature that’s trying to manage the symptoms without addressing the disease. The real story here isn’t the tragedy itself; it’s the refusal to learn from it. 2025 wasn’t just difficult; it was a wake-up call that everyone hit snooze on snooze.
