With Minnesota under siege by brutal and murderous agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this is an appropriate time to read John Steinbeck’s 1942 novel, The Moon Is Down.
Written to inspire resistance movements in occupied countries, it has appeared in at least 92 editions across the world.
It tells the story of a Norwegian village occupied by Germans in World War II.
At first the invasion goes swiftly. Wehrmacht Colonel Lanser establishes his headquarters in the house of the democratically-elected Mayor Orden.
Lanser, a veteran of World War I, considers himself a man of civility and law. But in his heart he knows that “there are no peaceful people” when their freedom has been forcibly violated.
After an alderman named Alex Morden is executed for killing a German officer, the townspeople settle into “a slow, silent waiting revenge.”
Between the winter cold and the hostility of the townspeople, the Germans become fearful and disillusioned. One night, a frightened Lieutenant Tonder asks: “Captain, is this place conquered?”
“Of course.”
“Conquered and we’re afraid; conquered and we’re surrounded,” replies Tonder, hysterically. “Flies conquer the flypaper. Flies capture two hundred miles of new flypaper!”
Several nights later, Tonder knocks at the door of Molly Morden. He doesn’t realize that she nurses a deep hatred of Germans for the execution of her husband, Alex. Tonder desperately wants to escape the fury and loneliness of war. Molly agrees to talk with him, but insists that he leave and return another time.
When he returns the next evening, Molly invites him in—and then kills him with a pair of scissors.
John Steinbeck
A British plane flies over the town and drops packages of dynamite, which the townspeople hurriedly collect.
When the Germans learn about the droppings, Colonel Lanser arrests Mayor Orden and Doctor Albert Winter. As the two await their uncertain future, Orden tries to remember the speech Socrates delivered before he was put to death:
“Do you remember in school, in the Apology? Socrates says, ‘Someone will say, ‘And are you not ashamed, Socrates, of a course of life which is likely to bring you to an untimely end?’ To him I may fairly answer, ‘There you are mistaken: a man who is good for anything ought not to calculate the chance of living or dying; he ought only to consider whether he is doing right or wrong.’”
Colonel Lanser enters the room and warns Orden: “If you don’t urge your people to not use the dynamite, you will be executed.”
And Orden replies: “Nothing can change it. You will be destroyed and driven out. The people don’t like to be conquered, sir, and so they will not be. Free men cannot start a war, but once it is started, they can fight on in defeat.
“Herd men, followers of a leader, cannot do that, and so it is always the herd men who win battles and the free men who win wars. You will find that it is so, sir.”
Explosions begin erupting throughout the town.
As Orden is led outside—to his execution—he tells Winter, quoting Socrates: “’Crito, I owe a cock to Asclepius. Will you remember to pay the debt?’”
“The debt shall be paid,” replies Winter—meaning that resistance will continue.
On January 6-7, 2026, President Donald Trump flooded Minneapolis and St. Paul Minnesota with about 2,000 thuggish ICE agents.
During his 2024 campaign for President, Trump had promised—warned—that he would pursue “retribution” against those he believed had wronged him.
One of those was Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, who had dared to run against him as Kamala Harris’ vice presidential pick. Making Minnesota an even more attractive target for him was the state’s large Somali population, whom he had publicly labeled “garbage.”
ICE agents
Chad Davis, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
But then the unexpected happened: Minnesota residents began a wholesale resistance to ICE efforts to arrest—and often brutalize—their immigrant friends and neighbors.
Minnesotans used whistles and encrypted chats to follow and document ICE activity. Starting in December, 2025, hundreds of people signed up for ICE observation training at a church in Uptown. Such trainings are now common.
The ICE killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti steeled Minnesotans to turn out in even greater numbers to protest their occupiers. At great personal risk, motorists followed ICE agents’ vehicles and photographed their assaults on illegal aliens—and American citizens.
“In one city—in one city we have this outrage and this powder keg happening,” Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Fox News. “And it’s not right. And it doesn’t happen anywhere else.”
Gregory Bovino, commanding “Operation Metro Surge,” noted: “They’ve got some excellent communications.”
In turn, Trump ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to launch criminal investigations into Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey. They are accused of impeding federal immigration enforcement through public criticisms of ICE.
Trump-–like Adolf Hitler-–believes that power flows from the top down. He believes that if he “takes out” leaders like Walz and Frey, opposition to his rule will collapse.
He can’t understand—and cope with—a bottom-up movement driven by constituents, who—like the citizens in The Moon Is Down—have emboldened their leaders to stand their ground.
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MACHIAVELLI: HOW TYRANTS ESCAPE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THEIR CRIMES
In Bureaucracy, History, Law Enforcement, Politics, Social commentary on February 11, 2026 at 12:10 amOn January 24, 2026, Alex Jeffrey Pretti, a 37-year-old American intensive care nurse for the United States Department of Veterans Affairs, was shot multiple times and killed by agents of United States Customs and Border Protection (CBP) in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Pretti was filming law enforcement agents with his phone attacking Minnesota residents. At one point, he stood between an agent and a woman whom the agent had pushed to the ground, putting his arm around her.
Pretti reached to wrap his arms around the fallen woman, apparently trying to help her up.
Alex Pretti
An agent shoved Pretti, and Pretti and the woman fell, still embracing. He was then pepper-sprayed and wrestled to the ground by several federal agents. Both of his arms were pinned down by his head. The agent that pepper-sprayed Pretti hit him with the pepper spray canister multiple times.
Pretti was legally licensed to carry a handgun, and was wearing one in a holster on his hip. An agent removed Pretti’s firearm. Another agent heard someone yell “Gun!” He drew his pistol and shot Pretti at close range.
The shooter was standing behind Pretti and not under direct threat, but fired three more shots into Pretti’s back, as he lay on the pavement with one hand still holding his phone and his other hand holding his glasses.
The agent who pepper-sprayed Pretti took out his gun and, together with the first shooter, fired six more shots at Pretti as he lay motionless on the ground.
The two agents fired a total of 10 shots in five seconds.
The killing of Alex Pretti ignited a firestorm of anger and horror throughout the country against the Trump administration. Protests were held in Seattle, Washington; Portland, Oregon, Durham, North Carolina, Oak Park, Illinois, Los Angeles and Boston.
Arousing even greater fury were inflammatory and slanderous accusations made against Pretti by Trump administration officials.
“He was there to perpetuate violence, and he was asked to show up and to continue to resist by a governor who’s irresponsible and has a long history of corruption and lying, and we won’t stand for it anymore,” said Secretary of Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.
Noem did not offer any evidence to back up her slander.
Kristi Noem
And White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller called Pretti “a domestic terrorist who tried to assassinate law enforcement.”
Like Noem, Miller did not offer any evidence to support his slander.
Bystander video verified and reviewed by Reuters, the BBC, The Wall Street Journal and the Associated Press gave the lie to the Trump administration’s attacks on Pretti.
Faced with overwhelming—and video—evidence that Pretti had been shot while helplessly pinned to the ground, Trump officials started backpeddling.
“I don’t think anybody thinks that they were comparing what happened on Saturday to the legal definition of domestic terrorism,” said Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on Fox News.
“I have not heard the president characterize Mr Pretti in that way [as a domestic terrorist]” said White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
The ultimate pullback (so far) by the Trump administration was the demotion of Gregory Bovino, commander-at-large of the Border Control in Minneapolis.
Bovino had become the face of ICE brutality—ICE agents using tear gas against peaceful protesters, battering down a door to enter a house, smashing car windows and dragging people from vehicles.
Bovino had stated that Pretti intended to inflict “maximum damage and massacre law enforcement.”
On January 26, two days after Pretti’s death, Bovino was dismissed as commander-at-large and returned to El Centro, California.
More than 500 years ago, Niccolo Machiavelli, the father of modern political science, outlined how tyrants try to deflect public anger against the agents they appointed.
In Chapter Seven of The Prince, he writes:
“When the duke [Cesare Borgia] occupied the Romagna he found it under the rule of weak masters, who rather plundered their subjects than ruled them, and gave them more cause for disunion than for union.
“The country was full of robbery, quarrels, and every kind of violence; and so, wishing to bring back peace and obedience to authority, he considered it necessary to give it a good governor. Thereupon he promoted Messer Ramiro d’Orco [de Lorqua], a swift and cruel man, to whom he gave the fullest power.
“This man in a short time restored peace and unity with the greatest success. Afterwards the duke considered that it was not advisable to confer such excessive authority, for he had no doubt but that he would become odious.
“And because he knew that the past severity had caused some hatred against himself….he desired to show that, if any cruelty had been practiced, it had not originated with him, but in the natural sternness of the minister.
“Under this pretense he took Ramiro, and one morning caused him to be executed and left on the piazza at Cesena with the block and a bloody knife at his side. The barbarity of this spectacle caused the people to be at once satisfied and dismayed.”
The Trump administration’s pullback proves that what Machiavelli wrote 500 years ago remains entirely relevant today.
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