The Isolation Diaries No. 38

“The best friend of a nation is he who most faithfully rebukes her for her sins -- and he her worst enemy who, under the specious...garb of patriotism seeks to excise, palliate, or defend them.” Frederick Douglass

I can’t dislodge the events from this past Monday out of my head. First, Trump’s bellicose speech in the Rose Garden where he threatened to deploy active duty military personnel against American citizens, then the brutal clearing of protesters from Lafayette Park so Trump could lumber to St. John’s Church for a campaign photo op. In his speech Trump mentioned the 2nd Amendment, one of his favorite dog whistles, and in front of St. John’s Trump held a Bible aloft as if he had never seen one before, as if the book had fallen from the sky. The point of the speech and the photo op was to signal to Trump’s diehard supporters, Guns & God, Law & Order.

The stunt failed as nearly everything Trump attempts fails. He sounded like an authoritarian tyrant and looked like a fool, but this creation of television got the images he wanted for his reelection campaign. Add stirring patriotic music and a voiceover and Trump will be transformed from a pathetic coward to a manly hero.  

Peaceful protesters were assaulted with flash bangs, tear gas, and stampeded by the forces of the state. A military helicopter hovered above the crowd at low altitude, its downdraft bending trees and scattering dust and debris. There is so much to say about this spectacle, and yet, I feel as if words fail. I lived through Richard Nixon and George W. Bush, and believed I had seen the low points of the American republic, but what we must understand about Donald J. Trump is that there is no bottom to which Trump can sink. His basement leads to one sub-basement after another, each one more tawdry and debased than the one that came before. 

What we have witnessed this week is forces of the State oppressing citizens using equipment and tactics perfected by the military outside America’s borders. This is as true today as it was during the Vietnam War era. The police, Secret Service, National Guard, and mounted Feds who stampeded peaceful demonstrators exercising a right enshrined in the Constitution acted as cruel and cavalier and arrogant as graduates of the Israeli Defense Forces do when they brutalize, humiliate and murder unarmed Palestinians. 

The police are out of control. 

Because this is America, protection of property will take precedence over people. The narrative about the nationwide demonstrations is already shifting from police brutality and racism -- the murder of unarmed, handcuffed, face down on the pavement George Floyd in broad daylight -- to law and order. Don’t be outraged about police brutality, meted out with impunity across this nation, be outraged because some lowlifes smashed windows and looted a Target. 

The world we’ve made small is closing in. We’re still in the midst of a pandemic. Millions of Americans are out of work. Glaciers are melting. The power structures constructed on a foundation of white supremacy, war, genocide, and greed can read the demographic writing on the wall. America is changing, people are stirred now because they see the rot, corruption and racism at the heart of the structure. The rich and comfortable hate the idea of solidarity; the powerful squirm when they hear the people speak of justice. That’s why they despised Martin Luther King, Jr.

It’s a long way off still, but through the billowing smoke and the chaos and pain, one can glimpse the arc of the moral universe bending toward justice. 

Let justice be our North star.