DL Open Thread: May 31, 2020
Everything Falls Apart, Police Brutality Edition. This is the late-’60’s all over again. Which demonstrates how little has really changed. My youngest daughter was part of a peaceful protest in Portland yesterday, which was nevertheless tear-gassed by the police. Trump sees this as his ticket to reelection. He may be right. Or, maybe he really wants that race war. I think Paul Butler put it best:
In the end, this is not about law enforcement. It’s about enforcing white supremacy. There’s no tinkering with that, what with white supremacy being the foundation on which the country was built. The consistent big question in the quest for racial justice has been how much white supremacy is central to the identity of the US. This is what Barack Obama and Ta-Nehisi Coates argued about. If we had something approaching equal justice, would we still even be the United States? In order to accomplish that we’d have to change the constitution, which authorizes much of the police violence that communities of color complain about, and the politics which exploits white anxiety about black and brown men.
The real problem, ultimately, is not bad apple cops, even though these four officers are rotten to the core. The real problem is demonstrated in what a bystander told the officers as they restrained him to death. “He’s human, bro.” But Floyd was not human to these officers. Enforcing the dehumanization of people of color has become, in the United States, what you call police work.
‘MAGA Loves The Black People’. His words speak for themselves. More Trump words: ‘Vicious dogs’ and ‘ominous weapons’.
Everything Falls Apart, Pandemic Edition, Ctd. The latest carnage: 1,770,384 confirmed cases and 103,781 deaths in the United States.
Trump Killed Police Reforms That Might Have Helped In Minneapolis. Of course he did. BTW, Barr is channeling John Mitchell now. Even brings up Antifa. Did I mention it’s the late ’60’s all over again.
Looks Like Klobs Is Out Of The Running For Veep. And for good reason. She was the typical AG who let the cops do whatever they wanted. BTW, Jill Biden did an appearance with Val Demings FWIW.
What do you want to talk about?
I’m wary of my own feelings whenever I feel like “a turning point has been reached” and I’m wary of my feelings now. But I’ve never felt such a uniform national solidarity with protestors. It was a solidarity that has survived protests morphing into riots.
I remember the riots of the sixties well, as noted nothing has changed as virulent racism continues unabated. The police remain out of control and act like an invading army determined to crush all dissent. Not happy about the looting either, but like Jason I feel solidarity with the protestors and yearn to join them. This will not end here.