Nothing is slowing down. No curfews are being respected. This senseless, arrogant murder and the tepid official response to it has revealed itself to be a final straw. Not only is the authority of the police no longer respected, the elected officials calling for people to stand down, respect curfew, protest without property damage have lost their credibility as well.
A desperate plea went out from the Governor of Minnesota Tim Walz to the protesters that had put his city under siege. Stay home. From many sources there is evidence that there are people creating the rioting damage that are not local people, not really a part of the protest but people determined to use the mayhem as a means to instigate. There may be more than one group that is bent on making this dangerous for very different reasons.
The Governor suggested that only 20% of the people on the streets are locals, the others coming from out of state to agitate the situation. He implored people to go home at curfew so they could take action against the ones who are causing violence and property damage. The percentages were overstated but the presence of outsiders was real.
Up until now police presence on the streets has been negligible. National Guard is there, but have not been seen. Police have largely maintained defensive positions, not making mass arrests or really venturing into the crowd. The Governor was not so much issuing a warning, but giving those who would not participate in violence the heads up. Stay home, because violence is coming.
This was going to be the night.
It has started as I write this. Unprovoked in immediate terms, they started to expand their defensive line, pushing out with a barrage of tear gas to push the crowd back, and moving up to retake the turf. This is an operation. Those on the street need to be aware. They will not be outnumbered, but they will be outgunned, and they’re coming.
The Attorney General of the United States today agreed that many are coming into the various states to take advantage of the mass protests to pursue their own agendas. He fleshed it out a bit, though, by making sure you identified any violent behaviors as left-wing, describing “Antifa-like” tactics seen in the bad player’s behavior. He ignored the reporting that the Boogaloo Boys had also been seen among some of the crowds.
Don’t know them? Let me introduce you. Boogaloo is a term that describes the upcoming civil war between the independent Americans and the sheep. They want to tear down a government that they see as oppressive and contrary to their understanding of the Constitution, which essentially is “I can do whatever the fuck I want”. There are enormous bonus points within the movement if the civil war can be fomented on racial grounds. They see these protests as the perfect cover to create an “us/them” dynamic, and brown is the “them” team. If they can cast PoC as a demon force, an uncontrollable mob that has to be moved on, put down, controlled, what a great day that will be in Boogaloo land.
The problem is, a lot of people are going to grab on to the narrative like a lifeline. To truly empathize with the protests implies something to the white community. Responsibility. This becomes about the defense of the privilege that whiteness has maintained for our entire history. Will it be an accepted truth, or can it be relinquished? Can we let go, acknowledge our complicity in the act of living our lives normally, never noticing the myriad and grand advantages that we have, and actively try to level the field?
Trump has let us know that the number of people that will answer that question in the negative is far higher than we ever imagined. It is shockingly high. He may not have increased them, but he has made them willing to be highly visible.
Will there be enough? Will racial fear stoke his chances? Can the conversation be changed from the crime that started this explosion to the explosion itself, and trying to lay blame for it? AG Barr began the process today. The effort to politicize something that should be a universal outrage is at the very core of how Trump got elected. Divide and conquer.
It may not work again.
Trump’s response to this has been matched in its total lack of empathy or understanding of the situation only by his approach to the coronavirus. It’s cartoon-like in its extremity. The main thrust of his tweets has been to warn people who would protest of the awesome firepower that awaits them if they push it too far. His boys are just itching for a fight, he told his followers. Got the young ones up front, they can’t wait. This is like the great Wallace/Kennedy clash, except this time Wallace is President. He has balanced this by promising justice during official pronouncements, publicly rarely leaving his teleprompters. Public declarations that wink to the real Administrative agenda were left to the Attorney General. But in the protective arms of Twitter, who has not yet decided whether to be crusaders or safe harbor, he will privately tell you what he really thinks.
It is an increasingly horrific vision, and it feels like that is true for an increasing number of people.
When Trump was exonerated by the Senate in his impeachment trial, The Beast was released. There were no more landmines to watch for, no threats now. Easy road to November. He felt an unlimited power now. Maybe when they told him about the virus he felt so powerful he just decided he could kill it by force of will. He thought he could bully his way through it, just blame it on enemies, or just unprepared bystanders. It had always worked! The whole party was so afraid of him they couldn’t wipe their asses without permission! He owned everything!
He got cocky. He has become so cruel, he is too cruel for cruel people. Well, some of them, and it may be enough. Whatever political capital he once held seems spent. Covid-19 exposed him for the incompetent ignoramus that he most clearly is. This new crisis is exposing him for the fascist he wants us all to become.
There is an additive effect to all this. When the offenses to the soul are this egregious, it is cumulative and corrosive. His confidence of his invincibility will expose the lack of it. His arrogance has made him even more stupid than he has always been. He is misreading the signs, blaming pollsters for numbers they have little influence over. It’s like watching Survivor. The guy you rooted for finally is revealed for the unconscionable asshole that he really is, stopping at nothing for the victory. Protagonist becomes antagonist in a flash.
When this blog began it was mostly focused on the campaign. I did a post showing how fickle the public was in their allegiances and how the dynamic could turn suddenly. At the time it was widely assumed that Bernie Sanders had wrapped up the primary, that Biden had no money and no chance. I talked about how things could change on a dime, and they did.
That is a warning. As things seem to be turning against the President, do not get complacent about it if you see it as a good thing. Forces are aligned as we speak to change the narrative, to once again make PoC the bad guys, the danger, the threat. There are organizations out there that want this to escalate, want the confrontation, want the war. On Friday night to Saturday morning, 20% of the people arrested in Minnesota during the uprising were from out of state. These are the real numbers supplied by Minnesota law enforcement. Agitators looking to take advantage of a situation that was out of control. They are activists, motivated and engaged. They want the war. It is the goal.
The country is divided like I haven’t seen since my youth. How big the division really is will be revealed in November. Will the voice of hate win?
The only way I see this as healing in a dramatic way is by an overwhelming victory at the polls. If the politics of hate are resoundingly defeated we have a prayer of a chance of survival, and then revival. I mean a big victory, a blowout. President Trump humiliated, Senate reversed, House solidified. It will take a loud and unmistakable rejection of the divisive rhetoric that has passed for political discourse for over 11 years. The McConnells, the Grahams, the Nunes, the Gaetzs and many more must be rejected as simply too hate-filled to represent the people.
Healing will require that kind of tsunami of the rejection of hate. Nothing else will be a powerful enough voice to quiet the hate that walks among us. A squeaking victory does not accomplish the task. If anything, it exacerbates it, leaving the impression that cruelty, hatred and violence still has a near majority, they just need to win a few more converts and they can take it all back, and the efforts to win hearts and minds will continue with even more urgency.
But humiliation will do it. Having a nation look at you and say “No!” and mean it, in numbers that are big enough to have unmistakable influence on the direction we have chosen to take this country would be powerful. The unleashed voices unashamedly being videoed in their ignorance and hatred today who have been encouraged by a President and a Party that have sold their souls for power would suddenly be anathema to a society that just doesn’t see itself that way. Might does not make right. Might is a tool that serves what it is turned toward, and the nation must show that what is right is independent of the force that can make anything seem that way. That power can kneel on a man’s neck, but can’t make it right.
There is movement in the vote. There is disgust growing over a President who’s response to this emergency is either silence and avoidance or threat of carnage. The Orange Erection over deadly force is grotesque to more and more people. Make the Boogaloo Boys realize that a civil war would simply be a suicide mission, that the ideology of hatred and division, the building blocks of actualized fascism, have been rejected in the United States, and not only rejected but actively demonized. The cancer of white supremacy will be surgically removed wherever it is found, ridiculed where it is even suggested. Continuing to hold such beliefs will become untenable in a society that simply won’t accept the existence of them as viable, either ethically or economically. Work will become scarce for those that hold on to an antiquated vision of humanity. Such an unmistakable unification of the voices of reason, of caring and unity could be hugely healing, sending the trajectory of the nation in a new direction, one only suggested by lip service in a historical context but now embraced as what can be, must be.
Anything less than a crushing defeat of these people will be their victory. Hatred in many forms is on the ballot this year. It doesn’t have to win to win. If it is at all close, the righteousness of the position remains a conversation, an unsettled question.
Crush these people with something even more powerful than guns. Crush them with a consolidated voice of reason.
This can not stand.