The first is pretty clear cut, a teenager crossed state lines and paraded around the streets with an assault rifle until a protester tried to stop him. The kid opened fire, killing two persons and wounding another, claiming he did so in self-defense. For whatever reason, Kenosha police let the Illinois teen go so that Wisconsin is now seeking extradition to prosecute him. He's become a hero, trumpeted by Tucker Carlson and other leading conservative pundits as someone who was trying to "maintain order."
Now we see groups descending on cities in the name of maintaining order, emboldened by the rhetoric coming out of the White House and conservative media. However, the situation in Portland is less clear as the police have yet to determine whether the shooting death was related to the protests that have stretched well into their third month.
There seems no end in sight because every week there is a new shooting or act of brutality at the hands of the police. The most recent was in Kenosha, where an unarmed black man was shot seven times in the back in what appeared to be a domestic dispute. Jacob Blake was lucky to have survived. Not so for the two young men that Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly shot in self-defense, both of whom were white.
What sets these massive BLM protests apart from those in 2016 is that they have broad public support. Whites, Asians and Hispanics have joined Blacks in these protests demanding that police brutality end. Protesters are calling for the defunding of city police departments across the country, and in many cases the city councils have obliged. However, it's not as easy as that. Most states require referendums, meaning that such defunding efforts need to be put to a statewide vote. Police unions have staunchly defended the cops who face trial over these shooting and brutality incidents, with some unions staging walkouts, as we saw in Buffalo back in June when two cops were suspended for brutally pushing a 75-year-old man to the ground during a protest.
Trump used the Republican National Convention to call an end to these protests, saying that if the cities won't do it, he will. Earlier this year, his administration sent federal officers into Portland, ostensibly to protect federal buildings, but they soon overstretched their authority, resulting in even more violent protests. Frustrated, he eventually pulled back but not without throwing a great number of insults at state and local officials in the process. Now, we see vigilantes cruising cities in yet another blatant effort to intimidate protesters.
Granted, it does get a bit tiresome after three months, but it never would have happened if police officers learned to keep their guns in their holsters and not kneel on the throats of detainees for eight minutes and 46 seconds. For the last two decades, police departments across the nation have been arming themselves with surplus military equipment and being trained in urban combat techniques, essentially militarizing the officers. It is public outreach that they need to learn, but most cities don't budget for this. They've perpetuated the myth of a city as an urban battleground, made popular in movies like the recent Purge franchise.
The violent crime rate has actually gone down in most cities across the country, but you would never know it to hear Trump and his supporters at the Republican National Convention. In their minds, violent crime is rampant thanks to ineffective Democratic mayors who have allowed these once great cities to become rat holes.
The irony is that violent crime is hardly any less prevalent in rural areas than it is in urban centers. We've all read of how meth has ravaged small towns, with no end in sight. It's just that much of this goes under the radar as the mainstream media tends to focus on urban violence. I suppose you could blame Breaking Bad for the recent uptick in meth use, but this is a long-standing drug problem that the popular television series chose to present.
Facing a tough election year, where Trump and Republicans find themselves trailing bad in state polls across the country, they are trying to make the protests and subsequent riots the result of failed Democratic leadership in the cities and states most often shown on the news. They are hoping that this demagoguery will swing the suburban vote in Republican states back to their side. It wouldn't surprise me at all if these vigilante car pools were being arranged by RNC operatives as a way of instigating even more violence in the lead up to the general election in November. Nothing turns voters off more than civil unrest.
The only problem with this strategy is that the protests are all happening under Trump's watch, and the range of these protests is far and wide, the vast majority of which have been non-violent. Virtually every medium to large city in America has had a protest of one sort or another, largely in support of Black Lives Matter. Not only that but professional athletes, Hollywood actors and other famous persons of all race, creed and color have spoken out in favor of BLM, including iconic conservative institutions like NASCAR. Recently, NBA players staged a boycott of the playoffs in response to the shooting of Jacob Blake in Kenosha. They were joined by athletes across the spectrum of professional sports. This is huge! and is doing more to mobilize forces against Trump and his Republican cronies than it is to stir up their base.
It would have made much more sense for Trump to show his support for the BLM protests and call for police reform, rather than play to his small-minded base. But, the Donald doesn't work that way. What he lacks in intelligence, he makes up for in audacity, staging a virtual convention where he is simultaneously for and against everything, leaving it up to voters to decide where he stands on the issues. But, again, his never-ending tweets speak for themselves.
He may be able to get a handful of Blacks to show support for him at his convention, but we all know that he is an unrepentant misanthrope, who has a particular scorn for people of color. Even Dennis Rodman seems to have finally figured that out.
So, call of your dogs, Donald, and for once in your miserable life own up to your mistakes. You haven't made America great again, you have sunk us into an abyss by playing into all this country's worst fears as you would a reality show, or in this case a mindless horror movie.
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