By Jim Geraghty
Tuesday, June 09, 2020
For a brief moment, we had a broad, bipartisan national
consensus that the police should not kill those in their custody. Then, our
warring factions of idiots went and ruined it.
On May 25, Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin did
something terrible, pressing his knee on the back of George Floyd’s neck for
more than eight minutes, during which time Floyd’s heart stopped beating and he
died. Chauvin’s fellow officers, Thomas Lane, J. Alexander Kueng, and Tou Thao,
stood and watched. This angered many Americans, if not almost all Americans.
Then, some residents of Minneapolis chose to respond to
Chauvin’s actions by setting fire to the Third Precinct headquarters of the
city police. The country had not yet finished discussing important questions
such as, “What is the appropriate consequence for these officers?” and “Is this
incident representative of systemic problems in police forces in Minneapolis or
the rest of the country?” But the arson in Minneapolis and provocations such as
firecrackers
thrown at police during protests outside CNN Center in Atlanta had already
prompted the country to leave those questions unresolved and move on to other
heated debates: “Are these protests ‘mostly peaceful’?” “Is looting justified?”
“How much of what’s happening on city streets is driven by Antifa?” “What
counts as Antifa?”
Our national discussion was quickly overrun by those who
wanted to use the actions of Chauvin and his fellow officers to define all
police across the country, and those who wanted to use the actions of the
looters and rioters to define everyone participating in the protests. Anyone
with eyes can see that not all police officers are Derek Chauvin, and not
everyone who attended a protest, march, or demonstration in response to Floyd’s
death was looting and committing acts of violence. But if some cops are bad,
then police forces across the country might have to accept changes in
procedure. And if some people who came out to protest exploited the moment as
an opportunity to commit selfish crimes, the protesters would be forced to
acknowledge that the police play an irreplaceable role in protecting the public
and restoring order at times of unrest.
Loud voices on each side had their narrative, and they
weren’t going to let a little inconvenience like the truth get in the way.
As the violence in Minneapolis worsened, President Trump
responded by tweeting, “Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the
Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control
but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!” This turned the
discussion into the familiar territory of, “What do you think of what Trump
tweeted?” with reaction splitting down the usual partisan lines.
CBS News reported that on June 1, President Trump had a
“heated and contentious debate in the Oval Office” demanding “the military put
10,000 active duty troops into the streets immediately. . . . Attorney General
William Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark
Milley objected to the demand, the official said.”
Later that day, shortly before the president spoke from
the White House Rose Garden, members of the U.S. Park Police and the National
Guard forced protesters out of Lafayette Square using horses, batons, riot
shields, and, depending upon who you ask, either “tear gas” or “pepper balls.”
(The Park Police initially said they had not used tear gas, then said they’d
used chemically similar “pepper balls,” then went back to insisting that tear
gas had not been used.)
And on and on it went, as even the most pressing question
of “How do we end the rioting and looting and restore order?” slowly got
squeezed out by such other matters as whether the president could invoke the
Insurrection Act, ignore the objections of mayors and governors, and send the
troops in himself. After more than a week of violence in America’s cities, some
protesters and organizers believed they had found the appropriate solution: to
either “defund the police” or “abolish the police.” Nine Minneapolis City
Council members — a majority — declared over the weekend that they will “begin
the process of ending the Minneapolis Police Department and creating a new,
transformative model for cultivating safety in Minneapolis.”
The two loudest voices in this debate about American
policing were, on one side, a president who wanted to send thousands of
military personnel onto the streets of our cities against the recommendation of
his top staff, and, on the other side, protesters and city lawmakers whose big
takeaway from this crisis was that law enforcement should be eliminated
entirely.
It’s enough to drive a good person insane: No matter what
the news of the day, the dumbest possible response is guaranteed to emerge on
one side, triggering the dumbest possible reaction from the other side.
In dealing with the coronavirus, one side’s loudest
argument is that the desire to reopen society is primarily driven by whining
about a desire
for haircuts, and that anyone who wishes to reopen a business is
pro-killing grandma. (Or that was the argument, before large numbers of
young people and African Americans wished to march in the streets to protest
Floyd’s death.) Loud voices on the other side argue that the death rate is
exaggerated. There is now a partisan divide over who should wear masks.
When good news comes down the pike, such as the recent
drop in the unemployment rate, allegedly respectable voices such as Paul
Krugman and Howard Dean speculate that the numbers are fraudulent, and that the
Bureau of Labor Statistics is lying in order to help Trump’s reelection. We
can’t discuss “what should be the next step to help the economy?” because we
have to spend time arguing about whether Brad Pascale is running the Bureau of
Labor Statistics.
Our 24/7, warp-speed news cycle and the endless game of
talking-head Rock ’Em Sock ’Em Robots that comes with it never take the time to
figure out a workable consensus solution to one problem before zipping along to
the next one. The rhythm of the news is a crisis, followed by a provocation,
followed by an overreaction, followed by an overreaction to the overreaction,
followed by another crisis . . . over and over and over and over again.
The president deserves plenty of blame for this state of
affairs. His instincts are always the same: accuse, blame, inflame, castigate,
threaten, bellow. But his opponents shouldn’t get off scot-free, because they
never seem to be satisfied with declaring, “This is bad, and the president is
wrong.” Trump’s statements and actions must always be the worst of the worst,
the greatest outrage in the history of outrages, and the response must always
be to swing the pendulum as far as possible in the other direction. The
president wants to restore order in the streets with soldiers; his opposition
declares that the proper alternative is to do away with policing entirely. The
president wants to reopen the economy; his critics contend that steps in the
direction of reopening are an “experiment in human sacrifice.”
Where are the sane grown-ups? Isn’t anyone willing to take a break from the usual partisan food fight to spend just a little time trying to solve our actual problems? Or are we just destined to be bystanders in a Civil War of Stupidity indefinitely?
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