If the majority of that title sounds familiar to you, it might be because of this, which I published in this space in this space two and a half months ago. Otherwise known, in the age of digital politics and media, as an eternity. I'd love to tell you that there was no longer a reason to have to write about this subject again. I'd like to tell you that, with or without my voice, the demands for Donald Trump's resignation have reached the level at which, even for an individual as narcissistically stubborn as Trump. I'd like to be able to tell you that, given the rate at which his perfidy geometrically expands on a daily basis, we've moved on to not-much-of-an-improvement Mike Pence in the Oval Office, and have even more hope for the potential that this fall's election can bring.
But I can't.
Because Trump is still where he never should have been in the first place: holding the fate of the United States, and its people, in his untrustworthy hands.
I know I'm not alone in asking Trump to resign; I see people making the same demand in my Twitter feed on a regular basis. I know that at least some prominent media figures have made the same demand. Well, at least one of them, anyway.
This should, at the very least, puzzle many of us. All the more so, if you take a moment, or longer, to flash back to our political life in the late 1990s.
Back then, we had a President, Bill Clinton, whose extramarital affair with an intern (and subsequent attempts to conceal said affair) led to his becoming only the second president in our 200-plus history to be impeached, and tried in the Senate. Whether you liked the use of the impeachment process on Clinton (and I didn't), you have to admit that it didn't come to pass as a result of a media vacuum. Over 100 newspapers used the power of their editorial pages to demand that Clinton spare the nation the trauma of impeachment by resigning.
How many of those newspapers, how many of all newspapers, have been "bipartisan" enough to make the same demand of Trump? Even more specifically, how many of those newspapers have done so in response to the recent revelation that Trump knew about, and did nothing to stop, his political patron, Vladimir Putin, from paying the Taliban bounties to kill American troops. Let me repeat that, with emphasis: paying the Taliban bounties to kill American troops. Perhaps the ultimate dereliction of presidential duty, and certainly of a far greater moral magnitude than a concealed extramarital affair. And one that is compounded by the fact that, during the period in which Trump and his team knew about the bounties, he continued to attempt showering Putin with favors.
Well, how many?
{crickets}
That's right, folks. Zero.
As noted above in the link, this failure has not gone unnoticed by any means. In fact, CNN has covered this failure of the Fourth Estate, and come up with a whole bunch of mealy-mouthed explanations, ranging from the highly polarized nature of our current decline of bipartisanship to fear of reprisals from Trump fanatics. In the wake of the Capital Gazette tragedy two summers ago, I can't say that the latter concern is a perfectly unreasonable one.
But it's not good enough, and neither is the polarization excuse. The Civil War itself did not stop newspapers from publishing editorials. And the point of having freedom of the press enshrined in our Constitution is to give the press the power to say unpopular things that, despite being unpopular, need to be said and heard If it's truly the case that, in 21st century America, the decision to let Second Amendment rights trump First Amendment ones has been effectively made then, for all practical purposes, there's no Constitution to defend in the first place. If the publishers of our nation's newspapers have made the calculation that surrendering some degree of their Constitutional authority will guarantee the economic future of their product, they are desperately wrong. The truth is that a world filled by the Internet with questionable voices needs to be supplemented--even protected--by as many authoritative ones as possible.
Freedom isn't free. If media companies need better security at their offices against right-wing fanatics, higher better security, pass along the costs, and be worth paying for in the first place. The most effective antidote to bad speech, ultimately, is good speech, to paraphrase Justice Louis Brandeis. Not surrendering speech, and democracy, to the barbarians.
So I hope and pray--and you should at least join me in hoping--that editors and publishers across this country will find a way to screw up what's left of their courage, and do the right thing: demand what I demanded in April.
Donald Trump must resign.
NOW.
Tuesday, June 30, 2020
Thursday, June 25, 2020
Barr: To Impeach, Or Not To Impeach?
Less than three months ago, I wrote about Bill Barr, the current U.S. Attorney General, officially the people's litigator, and unofficially Roy Cohn's (and Rudy Giuliani's) replacement as fixer-in-chief on behalf of the Commander-in-Cheat (sorry, Rick Reilly). I denounced his proposal to use the coronavirus pandemic as an excuse to suspend the Bill of Rights, and argued that his record overall makes a compelling case for making his office subject to direct elections by the voters, as is the case with its state counterparts. I concurred with a former deputy Attorney General that Barr's conduct justified and required his resignation. I did so with the expectation that he would not do so. You can find all of this, and more, here.
I left unsaid the question of whether or not I thought there was any hope that Barr's abhorrent behavior would improve, or would be checked in any way. The answer to that question seemed painfully obvious. But, just in case it wasn't obvious to anyone, recent events have made it painfully clear that the answer is no.
Last weekend began with Barr's botched, comic-opera-level attempt to replace the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor currently investigating several areas of Donald Trump's unsavory life, with a crony who had never prosecuted a case. Gee whiskers, why would he do something like that? Couldn't be for the purpose of undermining the aforementioned investigations, could it?
Well, if you still have some doubts about the answers to those questions, consider the fact that, tomorrow (I write this on Monday evening) two other Justice Department employees, one current, the other former, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about even more Barr-related corruption: the attempt to interfere with the sentencing in the department's case against Roger Stone, and the hijacking of the department's Antitrust Division for political purposes.
The naked corruption of Barr, played out especially as it has in broad daylight, has reached the level of egregiousness at which faculty members of his law school have publicly denounced him. Will that stop him? Of course not.
Only two things can do that.
Option Number One: we wait until next January, and pray that, in the intervening election, his boss loses to Joe Biden, giving Biden and the Democrats (especially if the party controls both houses of Congress) the chance to finally clean up all aspects of the Trump carnage, including what's been done to the Justice Department.
Option Number Two: impeachment.
I can literally hear your eyes rolling, even now. We've been down this road earlier this year, with regard to Barr's boss. And we all know how that turned out: Mitch McCONnell and his Senate "colleagues" did their best I'm-not-listening performance and, with near unanimity, let Trump off the hook. If the House did in fact impeach Barr, there's no reason to expect that the result would be any different.
And, unsurprisingly, the signals on this subject being sent out by some of the key players in the House suggest that, as of now, the consensus among Democrats is that they're not prepared to go through what would admittedly be a study in forgone conclusions. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would be in charge of drafting and sending articles of impeachment to the full house, has already signaled that consensus, citing the corruption of Senate Republicans as the basic reason. Just recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said much the same thing, expressing the view that the question of Barr's corruption, as well as his corruption of the Justice Department, would at this point be best addressed in an election.
Would it?
It's a seductive conclusion, which, in an of itself, is one reason why it should be resisted so vigorously. By not pursuing impeachment proceedings against Barr, the Democrats avoid the dreaded risk of polarizing the electorate, even though the electorate is already as polarized as it can be. It would save them time for passing more legislation that would die a lingering death on McCONnell's desk. It would give them more time to investigate corruption in other agencies of the most corrupt government in the history of the Republic, and allow them to issue subpoenas that, based on their track record to date, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing.
In other words, how much of a real waste of time would it be?
In fact, it would be the exact opposite: it would provide a showcase that would allow House Democrats, witness by witness and question by question, to dismantle the Potemkin illusion of a functioning executive branch and expose it in broad daylight for what it is, a crime syndicate of the first magnitude. It would give them the opportunity to issue massive numbers of subpoenas and then take them to court, asking for decisions on the whole lot of them and using the election as a justification for expedited action by the court. It would create a media narrative that would be impossible to ignore, which in turn would be a campaign asset for Democrats running at every level of government, shaping public and, ultimately, electoral opinion in their favor.
And if, as seems completely likely, the Republican caucus in the Senate wants to walk the plank of perfidy for the sake of "protecting" Barr and Trump, let them. Let them hold the hammer that puts the last nail in their political coffin. Bullies have no other recourse when you show them that you are not afraid of them. In fact, the impeachment process would force not only Senate Republicans to walk that plank but also, by doing so, to follow House Republicans in the process. Judging by recent events, they seem to be more than willing to do so.
Frankly, all of this seems like pretty obvious stuff to me. It should be obvious to people like Pelosi and Nadler, who know far more about national politics and the lay of the D.C. land than I do.
Let's hope that this is one sign that it truly is that obvious, and that they end up doing the right thing. For themselves, and for all of us.
I left unsaid the question of whether or not I thought there was any hope that Barr's abhorrent behavior would improve, or would be checked in any way. The answer to that question seemed painfully obvious. But, just in case it wasn't obvious to anyone, recent events have made it painfully clear that the answer is no.
Last weekend began with Barr's botched, comic-opera-level attempt to replace the current U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, a career prosecutor currently investigating several areas of Donald Trump's unsavory life, with a crony who had never prosecuted a case. Gee whiskers, why would he do something like that? Couldn't be for the purpose of undermining the aforementioned investigations, could it?
Well, if you still have some doubts about the answers to those questions, consider the fact that, tomorrow (I write this on Monday evening) two other Justice Department employees, one current, the other former, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about even more Barr-related corruption: the attempt to interfere with the sentencing in the department's case against Roger Stone, and the hijacking of the department's Antitrust Division for political purposes.
The naked corruption of Barr, played out especially as it has in broad daylight, has reached the level of egregiousness at which faculty members of his law school have publicly denounced him. Will that stop him? Of course not.
Only two things can do that.
Option Number One: we wait until next January, and pray that, in the intervening election, his boss loses to Joe Biden, giving Biden and the Democrats (especially if the party controls both houses of Congress) the chance to finally clean up all aspects of the Trump carnage, including what's been done to the Justice Department.
Option Number Two: impeachment.
I can literally hear your eyes rolling, even now. We've been down this road earlier this year, with regard to Barr's boss. And we all know how that turned out: Mitch McCONnell and his Senate "colleagues" did their best I'm-not-listening performance and, with near unanimity, let Trump off the hook. If the House did in fact impeach Barr, there's no reason to expect that the result would be any different.
And, unsurprisingly, the signals on this subject being sent out by some of the key players in the House suggest that, as of now, the consensus among Democrats is that they're not prepared to go through what would admittedly be a study in forgone conclusions. Jerry Nadler, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee that would be in charge of drafting and sending articles of impeachment to the full house, has already signaled that consensus, citing the corruption of Senate Republicans as the basic reason. Just recently, Speaker Nancy Pelosi essentially said much the same thing, expressing the view that the question of Barr's corruption, as well as his corruption of the Justice Department, would at this point be best addressed in an election.
Would it?
It's a seductive conclusion, which, in an of itself, is one reason why it should be resisted so vigorously. By not pursuing impeachment proceedings against Barr, the Democrats avoid the dreaded risk of polarizing the electorate, even though the electorate is already as polarized as it can be. It would save them time for passing more legislation that would die a lingering death on McCONnell's desk. It would give them more time to investigate corruption in other agencies of the most corrupt government in the history of the Republic, and allow them to issue subpoenas that, based on their track record to date, they have absolutely no intention of enforcing.
In other words, how much of a real waste of time would it be?
In fact, it would be the exact opposite: it would provide a showcase that would allow House Democrats, witness by witness and question by question, to dismantle the Potemkin illusion of a functioning executive branch and expose it in broad daylight for what it is, a crime syndicate of the first magnitude. It would give them the opportunity to issue massive numbers of subpoenas and then take them to court, asking for decisions on the whole lot of them and using the election as a justification for expedited action by the court. It would create a media narrative that would be impossible to ignore, which in turn would be a campaign asset for Democrats running at every level of government, shaping public and, ultimately, electoral opinion in their favor.
And if, as seems completely likely, the Republican caucus in the Senate wants to walk the plank of perfidy for the sake of "protecting" Barr and Trump, let them. Let them hold the hammer that puts the last nail in their political coffin. Bullies have no other recourse when you show them that you are not afraid of them. In fact, the impeachment process would force not only Senate Republicans to walk that plank but also, by doing so, to follow House Republicans in the process. Judging by recent events, they seem to be more than willing to do so.
Frankly, all of this seems like pretty obvious stuff to me. It should be obvious to people like Pelosi and Nadler, who know far more about national politics and the lay of the D.C. land than I do.
Let's hope that this is one sign that it truly is that obvious, and that they end up doing the right thing. For themselves, and for all of us.
Saturday, June 13, 2020
Do We Really Need to "Defund The Police"?
I write this on a Saturday night on which there has been yet another senseless killing of an African-American male by police offices who used deadly force in a situation that did not call for it. This time, it took place in Atlanta, yet another large American city with a history of distrust and fear on the part of its citizens of color toward the men and women who are sworn to protect everyone, yet seem fundamentally unable to do so.
This has to end. It should have ended a long time ago. But how?
One answer might lie in the slogan that, in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, has emerged as a rhetorical companion to the phrase "Black Lives Matter": "Defund The Police." Taken in its most literal sense, that would mean eliminating all law enforcement agencies, so that citizens would have no protection at all against career criminals, to say nothing of natural and human-made disasters in which everyone looks to police office to help, at the very least, maintain some semblance of order.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of media mouthpieces on the right-wing side of the political divide are using the popularity of the slogan to "prove" that all "liberals" and their constituencies are total anarchists, solely interested in destroying all law and order for the sake of achieving total political dominance and power for their own ends. Sorry, ladies and gents but, if that's what you think when you look at us, find your local mirror. You're more likely to find what you're looking for there.
I don't think, in any case, that people who are using "Defund The Police" as a kind of mantra for this moment literally mean that. As I've followed the political discussion over the past week, it seems that the real request being made here is to stop trying to use police departments to address problems that are better left to different types of professionals, social workers and doctors for example. In my own work as a domestic relations attorney, I can relate to this desire in a very powerful way. How many times have I been involved in a case where one spouse alleges domestic abuse against the other, the police are called, the officers arrive on the scene with no witnesses or other evidence to help them put the pieces together, and they leave without making an arrest or filing charges? More than I can think of at the moment.
And in that conundrum, and similar ones throughout society all across the country, lies a part of the answer behind the present crisis. The systemic racism that pervades more police departments than we care to admit is, ultimately, the same systemic racism that pervades the attitude of most Americans--or, at least, far too many of them--and influences their preferences on how their tax dollars are spent. For almost 40 years, we have systematically cut spending on social welfare programs that are able to provide resources to successfully address problems like domestic violence, drug abuse, vocational training (and re-training). We've allegedly done all of this in the name of fiscal prudence, even as we blow holes in public budgets with bribes that we call tax incentives, and wars fought in the name of democracy but actually prosecuted in the name of profits.
But I'll let you in on a little secret, even though I think that many of you know it already. Racism is the overarching motivation for cutting social spending. White taxpayers perceive most of money going to folks that, in the taxpayers' opinion, don't deserve it because they allegedly don't do enough to make it worth anyone's while. Never mind that the actual experiences of these taxpayers play no role in supporting or even shaping those opinions; for the most part, none of them have ever spent enough time in urban neighborhoods or poor rural areas to have any sense of what is actually going on. They're far too busy making sure that they're being misinformed by Rush Limbaugh, by Fox News, or whatever other media outlet they've pre-selected to grease their prejudices.
But that's not to say that we haven't been increasing spending in some areas. In fact, for the past 30 years, and especially in the post-9/11 era, spending on police departments and other law enforcement agencies have gone through the proverbial roof. And it's not just the amount of money being given out; it's also what it gets spent on. Not just rubber bullets and tear gas, but heavy artillery, including tanks. Tanks! Would someone explain to me why police departments need that level of firepower? Do people with dark-colored skin really frighten racists that much?
I think that, right there, we have the beginning of the solution It doesn't involve raising anyone's taxes It doesn't involve even an increase in overall spending levels. Take the money that's currently being used to outfit the nation's police departments at the level of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and use it to beef up spending on the social ills that we long ago decided to abandon. Use it on the problems police are so often called upon to solve, but without the training or other resources needed to solve them.
And, while you're at it, take some of the money that you save demilitarizing the police and put it into better recruiting programs, ones that are designed to screen out the types of people who are prone to use a badge and a baton to express their hatred of people who are "not like them."
And, one more thing.
End private prisons in this country, once and for all. They literally do nothing but create a market for prisoners. They allow private corporates to create a workforce of slave laborers, circumventing the purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment right under our noses. They are the primary reason why a ridiculously high percentage of our population is behind bars, often for offenses that could be addressed in a less punitive manner, with better results for everyone.
Just a few ideas, for starters. No, don't eliminate the police. But their funding definitely needs to be reduced. For the sake of all of us.
This has to end. It should have ended a long time ago. But how?
One answer might lie in the slogan that, in the wake of the George Floyd tragedy, has emerged as a rhetorical companion to the phrase "Black Lives Matter": "Defund The Police." Taken in its most literal sense, that would mean eliminating all law enforcement agencies, so that citizens would have no protection at all against career criminals, to say nothing of natural and human-made disasters in which everyone looks to police office to help, at the very least, maintain some semblance of order.
Unsurprisingly, a lot of media mouthpieces on the right-wing side of the political divide are using the popularity of the slogan to "prove" that all "liberals" and their constituencies are total anarchists, solely interested in destroying all law and order for the sake of achieving total political dominance and power for their own ends. Sorry, ladies and gents but, if that's what you think when you look at us, find your local mirror. You're more likely to find what you're looking for there.
I don't think, in any case, that people who are using "Defund The Police" as a kind of mantra for this moment literally mean that. As I've followed the political discussion over the past week, it seems that the real request being made here is to stop trying to use police departments to address problems that are better left to different types of professionals, social workers and doctors for example. In my own work as a domestic relations attorney, I can relate to this desire in a very powerful way. How many times have I been involved in a case where one spouse alleges domestic abuse against the other, the police are called, the officers arrive on the scene with no witnesses or other evidence to help them put the pieces together, and they leave without making an arrest or filing charges? More than I can think of at the moment.
And in that conundrum, and similar ones throughout society all across the country, lies a part of the answer behind the present crisis. The systemic racism that pervades more police departments than we care to admit is, ultimately, the same systemic racism that pervades the attitude of most Americans--or, at least, far too many of them--and influences their preferences on how their tax dollars are spent. For almost 40 years, we have systematically cut spending on social welfare programs that are able to provide resources to successfully address problems like domestic violence, drug abuse, vocational training (and re-training). We've allegedly done all of this in the name of fiscal prudence, even as we blow holes in public budgets with bribes that we call tax incentives, and wars fought in the name of democracy but actually prosecuted in the name of profits.
But I'll let you in on a little secret, even though I think that many of you know it already. Racism is the overarching motivation for cutting social spending. White taxpayers perceive most of money going to folks that, in the taxpayers' opinion, don't deserve it because they allegedly don't do enough to make it worth anyone's while. Never mind that the actual experiences of these taxpayers play no role in supporting or even shaping those opinions; for the most part, none of them have ever spent enough time in urban neighborhoods or poor rural areas to have any sense of what is actually going on. They're far too busy making sure that they're being misinformed by Rush Limbaugh, by Fox News, or whatever other media outlet they've pre-selected to grease their prejudices.
But that's not to say that we haven't been increasing spending in some areas. In fact, for the past 30 years, and especially in the post-9/11 era, spending on police departments and other law enforcement agencies have gone through the proverbial roof. And it's not just the amount of money being given out; it's also what it gets spent on. Not just rubber bullets and tear gas, but heavy artillery, including tanks. Tanks! Would someone explain to me why police departments need that level of firepower? Do people with dark-colored skin really frighten racists that much?
I think that, right there, we have the beginning of the solution It doesn't involve raising anyone's taxes It doesn't involve even an increase in overall spending levels. Take the money that's currently being used to outfit the nation's police departments at the level of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and use it to beef up spending on the social ills that we long ago decided to abandon. Use it on the problems police are so often called upon to solve, but without the training or other resources needed to solve them.
And, while you're at it, take some of the money that you save demilitarizing the police and put it into better recruiting programs, ones that are designed to screen out the types of people who are prone to use a badge and a baton to express their hatred of people who are "not like them."
And, one more thing.
End private prisons in this country, once and for all. They literally do nothing but create a market for prisoners. They allow private corporates to create a workforce of slave laborers, circumventing the purposes of the Thirteenth Amendment right under our noses. They are the primary reason why a ridiculously high percentage of our population is behind bars, often for offenses that could be addressed in a less punitive manner, with better results for everyone.
Just a few ideas, for starters. No, don't eliminate the police. But their funding definitely needs to be reduced. For the sake of all of us.
Saturday, June 6, 2020
Random Thoughts At The Beginning Of A Revolution
A revolution?
Last month, my last post described the current situation as the beginning of a second civil war. Like the first one, race forms the basic line of division, even if our history books lean on the more obvious geographic labels. Like the first one, one side (the white side) boldly proclaims its willingness to use force, to the point of violence and physical harm, to defend its interests. And there has been plenty of violence already, the vast majority of it against people of color, and not just over the past three years, nor the early decades of this still-young century, but for the entire history of this country almost from the moment white people first set foot on it. Maybe terms like "first" and "second" are irrelevant. Maybe we should just accept the fact that racial turmoil, instigated by whites against people of color, has been the one thread that runs throughout our entire history.
And maybe, just maybe, we're doing that now.
Why is this moment different? A few observations.
In a very real sense, this moment has come about in an era in which corporations have disempowered the people, while technology has empowered them. In the past four decades, as the profit motive has become exalted to an almost religious level in American corporate life, the corporations that own media outlets have focused on news that the privileged want to consume, and not the realities that all of us, rich or poor, need to face and address. In the process, the line between journalism and entertainment blurred to the point at which electing a publicity hound dog like Donald Trump as president seemed not too much of a stretch.
So, who's practicing journalism nowadays?
Thanks to the Internet, it's all of us.
Without smartphones, and the power of the World Wide Web to share video files, we may never have known that George Floyd was murdered by police, dying for the sake of being African American in the U.S..
Without smartphones, we would not have known the extent to which people of color and progressives across the spectrum were being libeled by random white terrorists and their fellow-travelers in the Murdoch media, by attempting to forment violence that they subsequently blamed on the vast majority of protestors, who were (and are, even as I type) peacefully protesting the violence that has been formented for far too many centuries. Interestingly, many of those terrorists, just a few weeks ago, were getting unearned coverage from the corporate media for carrying semi-automatic rifles on behalf of their right to not wear face masks in the midst of a pandemic. For them, the boundary between threats and actual physical force may be no boundary at all.
I have posted many times here about what I have felt is the death of journalism in America or, at least, the death of corporate-sponsored journalism in America. I have wondered whether the solution might be for major journalism outlets to re-cast themselves in the form of not-for-profits, a structure that would allow them to truly publish the news we need to have without fear or favor. In fact, here in Baltimore, there is a movement afoot to do exactly that to our city's major metropolitan newspaper, the Baltimore Sun. I take this opportunity to invite you to take a look at the website that operates on behalf of this idea, and consider doing what you can to support it.
But, maybe, as is so often the case, maybe it's not a case of either-or. Maybe, in the digital age, each of us is a journalist Each of us, any of us, could be in a position to record and share a story that has the potential to change our lives, perhaps even to change the world. What has happened over the past two weeks has already shown the potential for what this can accomplish. As a result, rather than facing an extension of our centuries-long racial civil war, we may be on the cusp of a second American Revolution.
Let's hope so.
This much is certain: Trump, who fancies himself as the most central, the most all-powerful avatar of traditional political and cultural values, has been exposed as little more than a symptom of the pandemic that has cursed this nation from before its founding: the virus of racism. That virus has now been exposed to such a powerful extent that it has resulted in one real blessing: it has created an environment in which Trump can only cower in fear in the White House, now surrounded by an extra layer of fencing. The man who bragged about stopping immigration by building a wall across the southern border is now walled inside his own bunker.
And, extra fence or no extra fence, it is now painfully clear that he has no right to be there.
He has used the protests, with the aid and connivance of his replacement Roy Cohn, William Barr, to form a personal, private army to assault peaceful protests with armed assaults. He even went so far as to use physical force against peaceful protesters--tear gas and rubber bullets--to stage a photo op in front of a church, where he held up a Bible he has probably never read.
If Trump has not crossed a line for you prior to the death of George Floyd, his behavior since that death cannot be seen as anything but an abdication of any intention to obey the law and serve the interests of all the nation's people. He must go. He must go now, if any meaningful standard of justice is used as a reference point.
But, since his party has become every bit as law-breaking and otherwise as craven as he is, it'll have to wait until November. Then, perhaps, the next American Revolution can begin.
Last month, my last post described the current situation as the beginning of a second civil war. Like the first one, race forms the basic line of division, even if our history books lean on the more obvious geographic labels. Like the first one, one side (the white side) boldly proclaims its willingness to use force, to the point of violence and physical harm, to defend its interests. And there has been plenty of violence already, the vast majority of it against people of color, and not just over the past three years, nor the early decades of this still-young century, but for the entire history of this country almost from the moment white people first set foot on it. Maybe terms like "first" and "second" are irrelevant. Maybe we should just accept the fact that racial turmoil, instigated by whites against people of color, has been the one thread that runs throughout our entire history.
And maybe, just maybe, we're doing that now.
Why is this moment different? A few observations.
In a very real sense, this moment has come about in an era in which corporations have disempowered the people, while technology has empowered them. In the past four decades, as the profit motive has become exalted to an almost religious level in American corporate life, the corporations that own media outlets have focused on news that the privileged want to consume, and not the realities that all of us, rich or poor, need to face and address. In the process, the line between journalism and entertainment blurred to the point at which electing a publicity hound dog like Donald Trump as president seemed not too much of a stretch.
So, who's practicing journalism nowadays?
Thanks to the Internet, it's all of us.
Without smartphones, and the power of the World Wide Web to share video files, we may never have known that George Floyd was murdered by police, dying for the sake of being African American in the U.S..
Without smartphones, we would not have known the extent to which people of color and progressives across the spectrum were being libeled by random white terrorists and their fellow-travelers in the Murdoch media, by attempting to forment violence that they subsequently blamed on the vast majority of protestors, who were (and are, even as I type) peacefully protesting the violence that has been formented for far too many centuries. Interestingly, many of those terrorists, just a few weeks ago, were getting unearned coverage from the corporate media for carrying semi-automatic rifles on behalf of their right to not wear face masks in the midst of a pandemic. For them, the boundary between threats and actual physical force may be no boundary at all.
I have posted many times here about what I have felt is the death of journalism in America or, at least, the death of corporate-sponsored journalism in America. I have wondered whether the solution might be for major journalism outlets to re-cast themselves in the form of not-for-profits, a structure that would allow them to truly publish the news we need to have without fear or favor. In fact, here in Baltimore, there is a movement afoot to do exactly that to our city's major metropolitan newspaper, the Baltimore Sun. I take this opportunity to invite you to take a look at the website that operates on behalf of this idea, and consider doing what you can to support it.
But, maybe, as is so often the case, maybe it's not a case of either-or. Maybe, in the digital age, each of us is a journalist Each of us, any of us, could be in a position to record and share a story that has the potential to change our lives, perhaps even to change the world. What has happened over the past two weeks has already shown the potential for what this can accomplish. As a result, rather than facing an extension of our centuries-long racial civil war, we may be on the cusp of a second American Revolution.
Let's hope so.
This much is certain: Trump, who fancies himself as the most central, the most all-powerful avatar of traditional political and cultural values, has been exposed as little more than a symptom of the pandemic that has cursed this nation from before its founding: the virus of racism. That virus has now been exposed to such a powerful extent that it has resulted in one real blessing: it has created an environment in which Trump can only cower in fear in the White House, now surrounded by an extra layer of fencing. The man who bragged about stopping immigration by building a wall across the southern border is now walled inside his own bunker.
And, extra fence or no extra fence, it is now painfully clear that he has no right to be there.
He has used the protests, with the aid and connivance of his replacement Roy Cohn, William Barr, to form a personal, private army to assault peaceful protests with armed assaults. He even went so far as to use physical force against peaceful protesters--tear gas and rubber bullets--to stage a photo op in front of a church, where he held up a Bible he has probably never read.
If Trump has not crossed a line for you prior to the death of George Floyd, his behavior since that death cannot be seen as anything but an abdication of any intention to obey the law and serve the interests of all the nation's people. He must go. He must go now, if any meaningful standard of justice is used as a reference point.
But, since his party has become every bit as law-breaking and otherwise as craven as he is, it'll have to wait until November. Then, perhaps, the next American Revolution can begin.
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