So far, 2020 has not turned out so well. We started the year with a pandemic that arose from a seafood and meat market in a small province in China and reached our country as early as late January. That grew by leaps and bounds until our country shut the borders, then cities, then states as the numbers grew, eventually reaching over 100,000 deaths. Our leaders blamed China, each other, health experts and anyone else they could, even calling it a hoax and an election ploy. Once the grim reality set in and quarantines were put in place, everyone realized it was a very real threat to our economy, our nation and our very way of life. Then, people started pushing to reopen and get the economy back on track.
That happened.
Then came the unthinkable: a black man in Minnesota is taken into custody by police for trying to pass a counterfeit $20 bill and loses his life. Riots start, shutting down many of the same businesses that had just reopened after the pandemic and general pandemonium ensued as people took to the streets in protest. The issues have many names: Black Lives Matter; Hatred; Bigotry; Police Brutality; etc. President Trump would rather blame a left-wing radical group of home-grown terrorists - while threatening to shoot them all by calling in the military - while he marches to an historic church ravaged by rioters and holds up a Bible for all those willing to rally around the flag that he claims to protect and defend while his city and country burn around him.
But, in the issue of fair and unbiased journalism, which is what I stand for and protect with every fiber of my First Amendment right, here is the real issue: the killing of a person, regardless of race, by an officer who is sworn to protect and serve and is devoted to public safety, is not right and is totally illegal. The taking of human life without cause is a problem that has gone on far too long in this country. Looking at the rioters, there is no color involved. They are Asians, blacks, whites and Hispanics. This issue crosses race lines and race tensions that have gone on in this country since the 18th century. We need to wake up and realize that it is not about race, it is about respect, which we all deserve as Americans and humans. Our taxes pay for these people, so they work for us, just like our politicians. We are the boss. We call the shots. They are hired to enforce the laws not make up their own to suit their needs.
Is rioting, looting, and destruction of property okay? No. Not on any level, and it should not be tolerated in this country. There are peaceful ways to make a point. We proved that in the early days of this republic, when we dumped tea in the harbor at the edge of the fledgling town of Boston to protest taxation without representation. Although the current issue has nothing to do with taxation, it still has to do with representation. It is time our elected officials step up to the plate and stop the violence in the name of the law in this country. Do we really want to live in a police state under a leader who has declared himself a law-and-order president and threatens us with military action because we dare to defend our right to assemble under the Constitution? That is really not the America I love.
Yes, argue for racial inequality as long as possible, because blacks and Native Americans in this country have arguably been treated differently for centuries. But do not - and I repeat - do not misunderstand my point in all this. We, as Americans, should not have to fear the police, wondering if a minor traffic violation or some other small infraction, like passing a counterfeit bill will make us face what could become the last day we ever draw breath again. That is what the issue is all about. It is about justice, not racism. Martin Luther King Jr, said, "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." In the same vein, Abraham Lincoln said, "Whoever denies freedom to others deserves it not for themselves." That is the crux of the matter.
I know I have family members and even some friends who will disagree with me and say we should back this party or that party. Some will argue that Trump stood up for churches, praised God and encouraged us to pray in the midst of all this, rallying Christians to his cause. I am sorry, but even those in his own administration will admit how insincere all that is, and some have even resigned over that. Others will argue that Obama was a black man voted in to office, turning the tide of race relations in this country forever. Again, my apologies, but he did little to change the opinions of Americans regarding race relations. Others will argue that the police officers involved were not all white, so it is not about race. Bingo. It has nothing to do with race, but everything to do with out-of-control police doing whatever they want in the name of "Justice," especially after they were encouraged to increase the use of force by President Trump himself in 2017.
In the origin myth of post-1960s liberalism, all the defeats that the Democratic Party suffered in the years of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan were owed to the party’s heroic support for civil rights, which rectified a great injustice, but opened the way for the Republicans to build majorities on racial backlash.
Like most myths, this story contains pieces of the truth. The battle over civil rights did accelerate the regional realignment of the parties; racial backlash did help the G.O.P. make gains in the once-Democratic South. But what ultimately doomed the old liberal majority was not just support for civil rights; that was on the ballot in 1964, when Barry Goldwater won the heart of the old Confederacy, but Lyndon Johnson won everywhere else. Rather, liberalism unraveled amid the subsequent nationwide wave of crime, unrest and disorder, which liberal mandarins and liberal machine politicians alike were unable to successfully manage or contain.
In the 2016 election cycle, the Republican party's issue of civil rights, reform for our justice system and less police control was tabled and people stopped talking about civil libertarians in general, when they nominated a figure for president who sounded like Nixon on a good day and George Wallace on the rest. Which meant that 18 months after the Baltimore riot of 2016 following a stream of police-involved shootings, the violence’s major legacy was a still-wounded city - and the presidency of Donald Trump.
You can not take this as proof that rioting never works, that it never succeeds in calling attention to an injustice that a more peaceful protest might incline the comfortable to downplay or ignore. But the political history of both the 1960s and the 2010s suggests a strong presumption against the political effectiveness of looting, vandalism, or arson, to go along with the direct costs for the communities where riots are most likely to take place.
For radicals, this presumption does not require shedding tears for the insurers of, say, a ransacked Minneapolis Target. It just requires recognizing that most spasms of robbery or arson are not the revolution but often a ritual reaffirmation of the status quo - a period of misrule that does not try to establish an alternative order or permanently change any hierarchies, as a true revolution would, but instead leaves the lower orders poorer and the well-insured upper classes more or less restored.
For liberals, meanwhile - or anyone committed to reform without revolution - recognizing how the politics of riots usually play out, imposes a special burden to forestall and contain them - and, when that is not possible, to clearly distinguish the higher cause from the chaos trailing in its wake.
My suspicion is that this will be more easily accomplished in 2020 than it was in 2016 or 1968. Across his presidency Trump has been more a Wallace than a Nixon, less “law and order“ than “the law for thee but not for me,” and his obvious disregard for civic peace makes it hard for him to campaign as its custodian. At the same time, the manifest injustice of George Floyd’s treatment by the Minneapolis police has imposed a limit on Trump’s demagoguery; even the president claimed to be honoring Floyd’s memory in the same breath that he attacked the rioters. And, unlike four years ago, in 2020, Trump’s waning re-election hopes probably depend on winning a higher-than-usual number of black and Latino men, which means that the politics of racial backlash are more fraught for his strategists than one might usually expect.
Meanwhile Joe Biden, as a moderate Democrat with a law-and-order past, who won his party’s nomination with strong African-American support, is arguably better positioned than some Democratic politicians to balance outrage over racial injustice with a message of peace, nonviolence and calm. Biden probably will not go to war with the parts of his coalition that are inclined to portray riots as necessary uprisings or cathartic wealth redistribution, but he has a primary season’s worth of experience ignoring them. So, if Minneapolis is the beginning of a season of protest, he may find it much easier to balance moral outrage with reassurance than a nominee more beholden to the left.
And, in striking that balance he would carry on, rather than betray, the legacy of the most successful civil rights activists. Martin Luther King Jr. became more politically radical in his last years, but his opposition to rioting was a constant. “Every time a riot develops, it helps George Wallace," he warned just months before his death.
If we are headed for a long, hot, virus-shadowed summer, those are words that a liberalism that does not want to help Donald Trump would do well to keep in mind.
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