The protests sparked by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on Memorial Day continue. This people’s uprising against police brutality and social injustice have spread far beyond Minnesota Minneapolis to all 50 states and around the world.
Donald Trump is a destroyer, not a healer. Given his tendencies toward authoritarianism, even fascism, Trump is only capable of sowing more division in a nation convulsing in pain and anger over the murder of George Floyd, the resulting explosion of police violence and what that reveals about our extreme levels of social inequality and broader culture of cruelty.
Enraged by the protesters in Washington, Donald Trump has now retreated into the White House, literally surrounding it with National Guard troops law enforcement agents (some with no badges or insignias), and an improvised wall of fences and barriers.
Trump has threatened to unleash the U.S. military against Americans exercising their constitutionally-guaranteed right to free speech and protest. Senior military officials have — to this point — blunted or rejected Trump’s demands that the country’s armed forces be turned against the American people. It is unclear how this crisis will resolve.
In a new essay at the Atlantic, George Packer describes this ominous and pitiful moment in which America under Donald Trump appears more like a failed state than a great nation. He draws a specific comparison with the aftermath of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968:
The difference between 1968 and 2020 is the difference between a society that failed to solve its biggest problem and a society that no longer has the means to try. A year before his death, King, still insisting on nonviolent resistance, called riots “the language of the unheard.” The phrase implies that someone could be made to hear, and possibly answer.
What’s happening today doesn’t feel the same. The protesters aren’t speaking to leaders who might listen, or to a power structure that might yield, except perhaps the structure of white power, which is too vast and diffuse to respond. Congress isn’t preparing a bill to address root causes; Congress no longer even tries to solve problems.
No president, least of all this one, could assemble a commission of respected figures from different sectors and parties to study the problem of police brutality and produce a best-selling report with a consensus for fundamental change. A responsible establishment doesn’t exist. Our president is one of the rioters.