Morning Reflections on Consequences, True Intelligence, and the Fight to Reclaim Minnesota
By Phillip C. Parrish
Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota
Lindell-Parrish Ticket
Forgive them, Father, for they know not what they do.
Jesus spoke those words from the cross while the crowd cheered, mocked, and celebrated His suffering. Some were caught up in the mob. Others had calculated the political gain. A few just wanted to keep their positions and perks. The question has echoed for two thousand years: Did they really know? At what level of understanding did the evil register in their minds?
I have wrestled with that same question since my earliest memories. As a boy, I did something wrong—I won’t bore you with the details because the specifics don’t matter. What matters is the moment my father didn’t lecture or yell. He simply let the consequence of my actions land. I stood there in shock, the reality of what I had caused hitting me like a gut punch. Then he turned and walked away with one line: “Maybe next time you will use your head.”
That was the day I learned the difference between acting without understanding and truly grasping the harm you cause.
Here is my definition of intelligence: the ability to act and interact with your environment—your ecosystem—in a positive, productive way that brings about the healthy wellbeing of yourself and those around you. Those who only generate positives for themselves and their own narrow purposes are not intelligent. They may be clever. They may be cunning. They may even be ruthless. But they are not intelligent. They are parasites feeding on the host until the whole thing collapses.
Now apply that lens to Minnesota in 2026.
Do they know what they do?
The political machine, the nonprofit grifters, the connected contractors, the union bosses who rig the game, the bureaucrats who look the other way while billions disappear—the ones who have turned our state into a looting operation dressed up as compassion and governance. Do they know the damage?
Some claim ignorance. They were just “following the process,” “serving the community,” “protecting vulnerable populations.” Others know exactly what they are doing. They have spent decades perfecting the art of siphoning public money through layered nonprofits, inflated contracts, ghost programs, and election machinery that protects the syndicate while shutting out the people. They are clever enough to keep the game running. They are not intelligent enough to see—or care—that they are destroying the ecosystem that sustains real Minnesotans: the families trying to raise kids without the state indoctrinating them, the farmers working the land without being regulated into ruin, the veterans who served and now watch their benefits and communities get looted by the same networks that betrayed them overseas, the working people who pay the taxes and get the shaft.
My father’s lesson still stands. Consequences are coming. Maybe next time they will use their heads. But we are not waiting around for them to have an epiphany. We are bringing the consequences—through forensic audits, RICO prosecutions, asset seizures, and the ballot box in this constitutional republic.
Jesus forgave from the cross. He also overturned tables in the temple when the house of God was turned into a marketplace of thieves. Mercy and justice are not opposites. As a lifelong Catholic who believes in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior, I hold both. We pray for the souls of those who have harmed Minnesota. We also demand they stop. Immediately.
True intelligence would look like this: leaders who strengthen the whole ecosystem instead of cannibalizing it. Farmers who can pass land to the next generation without fear of regulatory strangulation or land-grab schemes. Parents who actually control what their children are taught. Churches and schools that can operate in freedom without the state trying to turn them into arms of the machine. Veterans and the disabled treated with the dignity they earned instead of being used as props while their communities are flooded with the fallout of failed policies. Working families who keep more of what they earn instead of watching it disappear into the pockets of the connected.
That is the Minnesota we are fighting to restore. Not some abstract utopia—real towns, real farms, real parishes, real people who still believe in faith, family, and freedom under the Constitution of this republic.
The syndicate counts on exhaustion and despair. They count on good people staying silent or praying only in private while the looting continues in public. They count on us forgetting that consequences are real and that “maybe next time” is not a strategy—it is an invitation to keep getting played.
I am done with that invitation.
Every morning I pray the same thing that has carried me through Navy intelligence work, whistleblowing on daycare fraud and COVID relief theft, turning around organizations that had been financially struggling, and now this campaign: Lord, give me the courage to speak the truth, the wisdom to see the networks clearly, and the strength to keep fighting until Minnesota is no longer a target for organized criminal enterprise wearing the mask of government and charity.
Then I get up and go to work.
Do they know what they do? Some do. Some don’t. It no longer matters. The time for pretending is over. The time for using our heads—and our ballots, our audits, our prosecutions, and our unapologetic faith—is now.
Minnesota is waking up. The ecosystem is fighting back.
Join us. Pray with us. Stand with us.
The consequences have already begun.
Phillip C. Parrish
Candidate for Lieutenant Governor of Minnesota
Lindell-Parrish Ticket
Email: phillip@parrish4mn.com
Campaign Manager Heidi Wanty: heidi@parrish4mn.com
Phone: (612) 460-171
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