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| Who Voted for This? |
Today, Trump supporters hype violent groups like Antifa or the more unruly segments of Black Lives Matter as evidence of the nihilism that they claim, rightly or wrongly, underlies spikes in left wing activism. While I hate to admit it, they're not entirely wrong. People have many good reasons for not liking rioting and looting. Among other reasons for being leary of the ongoing rampages on American streets today are the deaths of David Dorn, David McAtee, David Patrick Underwood and Chris Beaty. All of whom were black. Did their lives matter?
If the right can ride this conservative shift into power, we'll see nothing change as regards the underlying causes of unrest on the left. Conservatives do what they've always done: entrench corporate power under the auspices of protecting liberty and "American" values and traditions. Nixon did it. Reagan did it. Both Bushes did it. Trump is doing it. George W. Bush can "step into the right side of history" and condemn George Floyd's death and call for change all he wants. He had eight years as president to fix this. When he had the power to do it, he did absolutely nothing to aid the plight of poor and minority communities and in fact did much to exacerbate them.
Conservative governments cracking down, as Trump has vowed to do, bring to mind the oft quoted definition of insanity. If militarizing law enforcement was going to fix this, I think it would have by now. It's basic common sense that if militarized cops with a "warrior" mentality who view the citizenry as the enemy end up killing citizens, as the evidence suggests they'll do in greater numbers, then we can expect more riots and looting, not less.
And then, of course, more conservative governments leads to more crack downs, more erosion of civil liberties and a more adversarial relationship between the people and the state. If that's the tack we take, don't come crying to me the day self styled revolutionaries burn your neighborhood to the ground.
Conservatism is all about breaking down the relationship between the citizen and the state. Conservatives profess a deep distrust of the state, which is sustained by taxation, a form of transaction they view as innately corrupt. Government is the problem, not the solution, right? Well, witnessing police violence one can certainly sympathize, in principle. Conservatives, at least in theory, emphasize tradition and organic relationships among people, and don't believe that the relationship between the citizen and the state can be positive.
Except when it can be. With enough money, the correct donors and lobbyists can expect first class service from otherwise maligned big government. Electorates swinging right in response to leftist rioting is rooted in the belief that conservatives truly cherish social stability and rule of law. This is a belief that we should all know by now to be misguided, at least among prominent movers and shakers in US conservatism.
Stripped of all pretense, the conservative establishment in America cares about entrenching the power of wealth. Slashing taxes and deregulating finance and industry. Simple as that. At best, they'll take such steps as are necessary to protect the homes of the rich and powerful from the impact of rioting. If you're working and middle class, well, you're on your own. Conservatives have always been quite explicit about this in other contexts. Why would they change their spots now?
Once people wake up to the fact that conservatism in America is all about enriching the already most wealthy and nothing else, they turn to the liberals. The Democrats. The so called progressives, am I right?
Bill Clinton carried on the most reactionary elements of the Reagan-Bush years and in fact doubled down on them, enacting the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act in a vain attempt to reach to the center and gain the approval of conservatives. Who still branded him a radical leftist and crushed him in the 1994 midterms.
One would expect that America's first black president, Barack Obama and his black female Attorney General Loretta Lynch would have taken the issue seriously? As the 2010s progressed, more and more African Americans ascended to Mayorships and Chiefdoms over major police departments across the country. Surely they would have gotten a handle on things? Right?
If I hear you laughing, know that I laugh with you.
Between 2013 and 2019 - an even split between the time of liberal democrat Barack Obama and conservative republican Donald Trump, 7,666 people in the U.S have been slain by police. Not all of them black, of course. And I'm sure some of these were non preventable and legitimate acts of self defense on behalf of law enforcement personnel. But still, that's a damn high number, and it suggests to me a very deep problem in the American body politic.
A problem we're not voting our way out of. At least not now, as things stand.
Which brings us back to the rioting. Sure, it's bad. But it's got us talking seriously about this, hasn't it? We're hearing, in drips and drabs, about concrete measures that can, and in some cases have, been taken to actually deal with this issue. It's complicated, and good results won't be immediate even if the broadest suite of proposals were implemented immediately. It goes beyond even reform of the police, into a complete reappraisal of the role of the state in America and its relationship with its citizens.
While rioters and looters are hard to sympathize with, I'd suggest that political leadership in America can deal effectively and proactively with its social problems if less rioting is what they'd like to see. Perhaps a political system that's open, transparent and genuinely democratic instead of simply a tool of the rich elites to maintain control would be a good place to start. At the very least, can we not wait until our cities are burning down before we actually start addressing serious problems?
Getting such leadership and such a system requires that we citizens will have to grasp the fact that the complacency we've become accustomed to over the last few decades won't cut it any more. Politicians won't just do their jobs the way we're all expected to and do the right things for the nation the way we're expected to do our jobs correctly. Keep thinking that you can just go to and from your job and otherwise shut off, and sooner or later the riot will be on your doorstep. The political class needs ongoing pushing and pressure.
Voting conservative and hoping that normalcy, law and order will thus prevail would now be a case of doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results.
I believe there's a word for that.
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