It Keeps Dripping

More and more confirmation that the Russian Bounty (Putiny on the Bounty?) scandal is only just beginning to come into focus.  At one point today, the White House mouthpiece had to assert affirmatively that the 45th President of the United States is - in fact - literate.

They have decided to whine about the leak, because they have precious few other options, but it's distressing that they story isn't the lead headline in every newspaper in the world.

More Of This

The House passed a mostly common sense expansion of ACA today. This is on top of their police reform bill from the previous week. 

I know there are a segment if Sandernista dead-enders who claim there is no difference between the parties...blah blah Neoliberalism blah blah...but owning the House will allow Dems to produce popular legislation that will die in the Republican Senate.

I do worry about Democratic messaging.  Like many, I've been very impressed with the speed and focus of the Lincoln Project in the anti-Trump ads that they've produced.  Before a newscycle has ebbed, they have an ad on the Internet. Perhaps the real impediment to Democratic politics is their reliance on poll-tested, consultant-based, non-offensive messaging.  Nixonian "nutcutting" isn't really the Democrat's style, but they need to find some points and hammer them.  They especially need to follow the Lincoln Project and Karl Rove's technique of hitting your opponent's strengths. 

Take this for instance.

This Is Hilarious

The rationale that all the Mayberry Machiavellis used to justify supporting Trump was that he would give them conservative justices that could be entrenched for decades and undermine any attempt at progressive reform.

John Roberts is putting a torch to that idea.

Roberts has taken on the role of Anthony Kennedy, but he's not too far from becoming David Souter. His basic impetus at the moment is to preserve the Court's legitimacy by restricting its activism. The Louisiana case is hilarious, because it was basically the same as a Texas case where Roberts sided with the anti-abortion wing. Now he pleads stare decsis when he realizes he could eliminate abortion for most American women.

This is awesome.  Not because Roberts WILL become Souter (though that would be amazing), but because it shows what happens when the conservative Court strategy meets a pragmatist with a lifetime appointment.

Finally, there is an excellent chance that this decision, along with the LGBT rights decision from the other week, will depress evangelical turnout.  They, too, sold their souls to the Orange Tinted Devil and in the end, they couldn't even get the Courts to give them forced birth.  That's a poor return on investment.

Drip, Drip, Drip

The (should've been) bombshell report that Russia has been offering bounties on coalition forces in Afghanistan is not going to go away, I hope.

The timeline is instructive. The report first surfaced in newspapers and got a somewhat muted response from Trump's media flack. Basically, the excuse was "Trump and Pence were not briefed on this."  This led to howls of protest from those associated with the intelligence community. There current spin is that these reports are considered false.  Here's the spin:

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said during a television appearance Monday morning on Fox News that lawmakers would be briefed on the situation later in the day, adding, “I think that will clear up a lot of the false reporting.”
...
McEnany said media reports have been based on “alleged intelligence that was never briefed to the president of the United States,” and she criticized the media for “spewing out” false information.

McEnany said that as a matter of practice, Trump is briefed only on intelligence that is found to be “verifiable and credible.”

So the White House's first response was "Trump was never briefed." That was met with a resounding "WHY THE FUCK NOT?" The White House is now shifting to "These reports are exaggerated and inaccurate." (There is another option, which is that the intelligence was given to Trump in writing, but since he doesn't read and has the attention span of a fruit fly and the curiosity of a banana slug he never read, thus he was "never briefed." Jon Chait explores it here.)

The problem with saying that the intelligence isn't reliable or was exaggerated is that the Times, the Post and several other outlets all confirmed the story. Now we get this bombshell, right on cue. There is good evidence that Coalition forces were killed due to these bounties.

The CIA is not immune to being wrong, but they do keep their receipts. And they have some experience toppling regimes. They know what they are doing.

Basically, they are going to give McEnany and Trump enough rope to hang themselves.  They will get them to commit to a lie and then expose the lie as such.

Drip, drip, drip.

Trump vs The Coronavirus

Trump's really only claim to taking the coronavirus seriously was his decision to close some travel to China. It fit in with his xenophobic policies in general, so it was an easy move for him to make.

The strain that is currently running rampant through America apparently came from Europe.

Good job, dipshit.

Meanwhile In Other Horrible News

Israel is planning on annexing large swaths of the West Bank. This goes against decades of international understanding that - while Israel has been oppressive in the West Bank - there would be no such annexation. The pushback from Sunni Arab nations who rely on Israel as an ally against Iran is present but muted. It seems inevitable, however, that a third Intifada uprising will occur among Palestinians should this come to pass. Israel has not been shy about using the sort of state empowered violence that has largely torn apart America over the past month and a half.  While African American rights are routinely violated, Palestinians have almost none - especially when it comes to conflicts with the IDF.

For all Trump's scare mongering about the violence and "carnage" associated with the George Floyd protests, the best guess is that 27 people have died during this uprising. One man was killed in Louisville yesterday. Twice as many people have died from Covid-19 today and it's not yet noon on a Sunday (when reporting is slow), however, and given the scope and intensity of the protests, I'm surprised the number is that low. By comparison, the same number of people were killed during the uprising in Newark over 5 days in 1967. Almost twice as many died in Detroit that summer.

When/if the IDF goes to war against the Palestinians over their plan to annex the West Bank, I would expect the death toll to reach the thousands.

Netanyahu is a war criminal.

This Should End Trump, But It Won't

This story would be a bombshell in any other administration. Russia has been offering bounties to Afghan militants to kill American service members, and the Trump administration has done absolutely nothing about it.  Putin's goal seems clear: keep America tied down in Afghanistan. The Soviet Union collapsed in large part because their own misadventure in Afghanistan (combined with collapsing oil prices) unravelled their already weak economy. They are hoping to keep America mired in Afghanistan as long as possible.

What is so appalling is that American intelligence agencies have known about this for months. Yet at the end of May, Trump again suggested that Russia be allowed to return to the G7. Given an imperative need to act, Trump did nothing.

Think about that. The president of the United States knew that Russia was offering bounties on American military personnel and Trump's response was to want to invite Russia back into the G7.  There has been no response to Russia's provocation, publicly or privately.

If the American intelligence agencies know what Russia has on Trump, it would be nice to let the American people know - norms be damned.

Age And Covid-19

We are seeing a massive increase in Covid cases nationwide, though especially concentrated in the South and Southwest. We are not - as of now - seeing a massive spike in deaths. Josh Marshall runs through some theories as to why, but the most likely reason is that younger people are the ones getting sick. I know that the restrictions at my mom's elder care facility are very stringent, and we know that elder care facilities are terribly vulnerable to Covid deaths.

Marshall also notes that over time this wave of young people will spread the virus into the elderly and cause another wave of deaths. My guess it will get into a community like the Villages in Florida and cause a wave of deaths. (This also might explain why Biden is doing so well with voters over the age of 65.  They ain't playing when it comes to Covid.)

There is possibly a case that we are backing ourselves into a form of herd immunity. If we lock the elderly away and the rest of the country goes ahead and gets mostly back to normal, maybe we get to a level of herd immunity that makes it harder for the virus to spread. The problem with this is could lead to half a million deaths. 

Let America Breathe Again.

Died Of A Theory

There is a quote from Jefferson Davis, "If the Confederacy falls there should be written on its tombstone 'died of a theory.'" The context of the quote is both in terms of extreme state's rights positions by some state governments, but also the idea of arming slaves (somehow) to fight for the Confederacy. It's unclear whether Davis is referring to states' rights or white supremacy, but really...does it matter? The theoretical underpinning of the Confederacy was BOTH.

(Don't worry, this is not about statues.)

The idea of a "died of a theory" seems especially relevant now as we see the renewed surge in Covid-19 cases.  As many doctors have said, this isn't a second wave, because the first one never ebbed. If anything, it's like a powerful tsunami that crests and rolls and rolls and rolls and crushes everything in front of it. It's not a huge mystery as to why we have dramatically underperformed the closest comparison we have - the EU. This graph tells the story perfectly:

You can see the Italian and then French and Spanish outbreaks roughly preceding the NYC outbreak over the course of March. You can see Europe shutting down and putting into place tough masking and rigorous testing policies. The EU will - most likely - see a second wave in the fall. What the US is seeing is more a series of outbreaks that shows no sign of abating. In fact, NY looks a lot like the EU.

What recent research has found is that consuming right wing media - especially Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson - created resistance to public health steps. I'm currently in rural Georgia, and mask wearing is very sporadic. (Ironically, the local Walmart has pretty decent mask coverage for this year, maybe 66%, whereas the upscale grocery store is closer to 25%. It will be interesting to see if that changes soon.)

Basically, by the time election day 2020 rolls around, I don't think it's out of the question that 300,000 Americans will have died of Covid-19, the country will be in a depression, and racism will not have been addressed at all by the Republican Senate, much less Hair Furor.

The complete collapse of America's ability to govern itself is directly tied to the theory that underpins the modern GOP. In order to keep winning elections, the GOP had to move further and further to the right and drag their voters there with them, using Right Wing Media has a megaphone to create a segment of the electorate that is anti-science, antt-education and generally anti-government.

The GOP has become a party of extremists, because their theory kept moving them in a direction that made them incapable of meeting any important needs of governance.

Take the economy. We will need a massive stimulus and aid package directed at those who have been made unemployed by the pandemic. Otherwise, people will be evicted from their homes, go hungry and struggle to make any ends meet. The Senate is not currently considering doing anything to extend aid packages to states (probably because they know the next aid package will include mail-in voting demands from Democrats). The GOP simply doesn't think the government should help people who -through no fault of their own - have lost their job.

Modern conservatism has its roots in Goldwater's extremism and Nixon's racial politics of grievance, but they found their apotheosis in Reagan's ability to sell a noxious stew of racism and class warfare under a smiling cowboy hat. "Government is not the solution to your problem, it is the problem." is a fantastic throw-away line in a debate, but it became the single most important animating principle behind the GOP.

Since 1988, the Republican presidential candidate has won the popular vote exactly once, when they ran an incumbent Dubya Bush in the middle of a war.  He won 50.7% of the vote. (Compare that to Obama's 52.9% four years later.) The GOP has never been broadly popular since Reagan's days, they have simply distributed themselves better to win elections by narrow margins (and gerrymandered and suppressed votes).

As Rahm Emanuel notes (ugh), if suburban women join with People of Color and young people into an enduring Democratic coalition that can routinely win urban and suburban congressional districts and move Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and even Texas into the Democratic column, then the GOP can have etched on IT'S tombstone: died of a theory.

What Will Change?

How do we reconcile these two pieces? 

Black Americans Think Protests Will Bring Change

Senate Teeters On Edge of Failure on Policing Reforms.

Nothing meaningful will get done with Trump in the White House and McConnell as Senate Majority Leader. Not at the national level. Certain states and municipalities will make some reforms, but the broader national scene won't budge with Republicans in control. 

What will happen to the energy of the protests? Under Murc's Law, the Democrats will be blamed for Republican intransigence. What happens if Democrats win the White House and Senate, but can't kill the filibuster. Or they do, but now Joe Manchin is the vote needed to pass any meaningful reform?

I do believe things will get better, but I don't think they will get better enough.

Statue Update

Vandals in Madison tore down a statue of a Union soldier who worked tirelessly for abolition. They also assaulted a state representative.

Inevitably, the excesses of radical politics force more and more extreme actions to keep the juice going.  That's as true for the Tea Party as it is for Anarchists. The problem with rage is that it inevitably clouds judgment. Imagine trying to be in the mob that destroyed a hero of the antislavery cause and telling them to stop.

Inevitably, the argument becomes that ALL statues are monuments to oppression.  That seems to be the message from Madison. The problem is that when you start tearing down everyone, who will be left to stand with you?

There is a right wing expectation that studying American history should simply be a tale of glory and righteousness with no room for nuance or critical self-reflection. The far left seems to take the complete opposite take - nothing America did was ever right - and similarly reject nuance or self-reflection.

All heroes have feet of clay. Or as Pappy Boyington said, "Show me a hero and I'll prove he's a bum."  Boyington should know, as he was both. But people do need someone to look up to, even if that person has flaws.

Eminently Reasonable

Eugene Robinson lays out a good, clear argument for the removal of Confederate statuary from public places.

He notes - properly, I think - that there is a fundamental difference between slave owners like Washington, Jefferson and Madison and those who committed treason in defense of the institution of slavery like Davis, Jackson and Lee.

We should temper our adulation of a man like Washington who struggled to reconcile his commitment to republican principles with the wealth his slaves created for him. While he freed them in his will, they obviously couldn't profit him from the grave.  Jefferson is even more complicated - as he is almost all things. Jefferson believed ardently in a politics of white male supremacy, with a possible allowance for Native Americans to join if they properly changed themselves into white people through adopting agriculture. His party disenfranchised women in New Jersey who had briefly been given the vote after the Revolution. And yet it was precisely the soaring ideals he expressed that gave urgency to the later causes for African American and female citizenship.

There is no such complexity with Jefferson Davis, a middling Secretary of War and Senator, whose only claim to "fame" was his disastrous presidency of a failed secession movement. I have seen the arguments that if - for instance - Washington had been wiped out at the Battle of White Plains in 1776, he would have been branded a traitor.  Yes.  He would have, by the British.  Assuming a later, successful movement for American independence, he would have been rehabilitated as a pioneer patriot.  If you want to be cynical, history is written by the winners, and the Confederates were losers.

Except the point of the statues is that they weren't. These statues arose as Jim Crow and lynch law returned African Americans to a state of virtual slavery. They were monuments as much to reimposition of white supremacy as they were to the failures of the Confederacy. The "Lost Cause" didn't lose...not by 1890.  It was only in the 1950s and '60s that the Lost Cause was defeated.  And not coincidentally, that era marked the return of the Stars and Bars to public display.

I had an interesting Twitter exchange on the subject of Ulysses Grant. Grant was a subject of scorn from a period roughly synchronous with the Progressive Era until very recently.  The corruption that typified the Gilded Age was ascribed to Grant's poor managerial skills and he was considered something of a dunce.  Some of that was simply an effort to tear down Grant in order to rehabilitate Lee, again to appease white supremacists in the South and North. Recently, a statue of Grant was defaced during protests.

Grant is properly being rehabilitated by modern historians. He was one of the most gifted military leaders the country has known, he was one of the finest writers to hold the office of the presidency, and his memoirs are considered the finest of their type. Grant was also - more or less alone - the only president from Lincoln to at least Harry Truman who exerted political capital on behalf of African Americans. Grant was committed to crushing the Klan, and largely did suppress them in areas where military Reconstruction was allowed to continue. As soon as he left office, the Klan came roaring back.

Grant assumed office wanting a "policy of peace" with Native Americans, and for his first term largely held to it. As someone who had served in the West, he was greatly sympathetic to Native claims to land. However in 1873 a crushing depression hit the US, and at roughly the same time, gold was discovered in the Black Hills.  Grant was faced with a dilemma: hold to his Policy of Peace or take the Black Hills and inject badly needed gold into the US economy (effectively an inflationary monetary policy in the days before fiat currency). He chose the economy and dispossessed the Lakota of the Black Hills by force. (This was the war that cost Custer his life.)

So, how do you reconcile Grant, perhaps the most vigorous defender of African American rights from 1865-1945 with Grant the hypocritical violator of his own Policy of Peace? How do you look at Grant's sincere belief that Native Americans should be citizens with the man who jettisoned his commitment to the Lakota?

By doing just that. You acknowledge that Grant was complicated.  You also acknowledge that leadership has its limits. Grant's plan to give Native Americans citizenship fought incredible headwinds and had few if any powerful supporters.  His decision to seize the Black Hills was a calculation to help millions of Americans struggling under a Depression rather than tens of thousands of Lakota who wanted to retain a place that had been sacred to them for hundreds of years.

There is not a single person who occupied the White House who did not find his ideals compromised by the realities of the job.  You must have ideals to lead, but those ideals will always be eroded by the hard choices of governing.  I don't think some on the Left realize this. Their politics tends to be absolute. The same goes for the Right, who has abandoned the necessities of governing in favor of electoral politics.

Compromises between various stakeholders in a society, a community or a business is not acceptable to people who hold the most fervent beliefs.  That goes for self-styled Socialists as well as Neo-Confederates. Yet, without some form of compromise a society cannot exist. 

Motivated Reasoning Is The Most Powerful Force In The Universe

Reading this profile of Trumpists in Tulsa and their takes on BLM, it's pretty clear that motivated reasoning is stronger than any other intellectual force. When you hear them say that Trump doesn't exhibit any racism...I guess some of that is epistemological closure, where they get all their info from Fox, OANN and Facebook. Some of it is also a simply case of "I voted for Trump, I am not wrong, Trump is not wrong, therefore anyone who opposes him must be wrong."

When you proceed from the infallibility of your own political judgment - in this case usually anchored in some iteration of "common sense" that is really just ingrained prejudices and practices - then nothing can really shake that.  It's telling that most people who have moved away from Trump usually say they voted for him in 2016 because they hated Hillary or they didn't think it would be so bad. They were not supporting Trump, so much as they supported the Republican Party.

It is worth noting two things that arise from this premise.

First, there is no reaching someone who is committed to Trump. There is no argument, no magic bullet of information, no enlightening moment for someone who doesn't want to be enlightened. If they haven't considered dropping their support for Trump or the GOP, they are not going to change now.

Second, all those suburban voters who are fleeing the GOP and Trump have the potential to grow the Democratic Party into a governing majority for a decent while. The Sandernistas and Rose Twitter think that letting "Wine Moms" into their hip socialist club will ruining everything. The reality is that over time, the moderates will assume more left wing positions for the same reason Trumpists think Trump is a family man: motivated reasoning.

Once they pick a side and become Democrats - even for just a few election cycles - they will move left because of the same motivated reasoning pattern. 

Father's Day Gift

That was a lovely gift last night: the sea of empty seats at Trump's Volkssturm rally. This take is particularly juicy.

There was some shenanigans from kids ordering tickets so the Trumpists would think it was going to be an overflow crowd, but the reality was...the Trump Show is over. The rolicking assault on decency and "PC" has lost the spark of the original version in 2016. Instead, we have 122,000 dead Americans, 13.3% official unemployment and a president who is a global laughingstock.

The aggrieved white people that flock to these things seem to be tiring of them. The RCP polling average has Biden with a 9.5% lead, but the average isn't the median which is closer to 10 points...and growing.

Yes, yes, it's a long way until November.  Yes, yes, act like you're losing.  Yes, yes, we need to keep our eye on down-ballot races, especially in the Senate and governorships.

But Trump is flailing, and there is nothing in his record to suggest he can change course.

Bob Barr Needs To Be Impeached

Again, the incompetence is the only thing rivalling the corruption. Bob Barr has now said that Donald Trump has fired Geoffrey Berman.  Again, we have no idea why this was the moment Trump wanted to fire Berman - a former donor to his campaign. Presumably it has to do with the SCOTUS ruling about subpoenas for Trump's financial records, or perhaps an impending indictment for Kushner, Ivanka or maybe even Trump himself.  Who knows?

Now that Berman has been sacked, the question becomes: Will Berman leave? Or will he take his firing to the very court that appointed him?  If he does leave, will he testify before the House? And if leaves, that elevates Audrey Strauss - apparently a Democrat - to the position of acting USDA.

The naked abuse of power means that neither Schumer nor Gillibrand will allow Trump to replace Berman permanently with anyone suspect, unless Lindsey Graham wants to end the practice of holds...six months before Democrats could take control of the White House and Senate.

It's always tempting to see this as some sort of double secret nefarious plan by Trump to somethingsomething argblebargle.

Bullshit.  He's pissed that Berman - a guy he thought was loyal - is actually doing his job, so he wanted him gone in a fit of pique. He apparently did not think about who that would leave in charge of the NYSD AG's office.

Regardless, Barr's willingness to flaunt the rule of law means he needs to be impeached as quickly as possible. This is a crisis and needs to be treated as such.

So many clowns. So few rubber noses.

Friday Night Massacre

If there is any singular characteristic of Trumpistan it is the rank incompetence. Take the Supreme Court's DACA ruling.  Roberts' ruling wasn't that DACA was "good law" but that the Trumpists simply screwed up the method they used to try and get rid of it.

We now have another example of Trump's stupidity and incompetence undermining his efforts to be authoritarian and cruel. Last night, Trump's consigliere, Bob Barr, tried to fire the US Attorney for Manhattan. He announced it as a "resignation" to which Geoffrey Berman immediately fired back in a legalese version of "the fuck I am." There seems to be strong ground for Berman to resist Barr's efforts to get rid of him.  Barr said "resigned" because he can't fire Berman.  Berman knows this and basically told the Attorney General to pound sand.

Knowing what we know about Trumpistan, two things are probably at play.  The recent rulings by the SCOTUS - especially Gorsuch's textualist reading of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 - would suggest that the Court is going to compel the release of Trump's tax returns and financial records.  This has always been Trump's biggest fear. Since Berman's office is one of the bodies investigating Trump's finances, Barr made a transparent attempt to at least delegitimize Berman, even if he couldn't fire him. Barr was as much trying to please Trump's raging id as he was actually trying to remove Berman.

So, the Trumpists know that Berman is close to something damaging and they really don't have much that they can do about it. If the House also gets his financial records, then Trump can play the "politics" card against them.  But the USAG for Manhattan is different...unless you pull this stunt.

The House should move swiftly to impeach Barr anyway. This is grade A bullshit.

The Juneteenth Conundrum

I'm all for making Juneteenth a national holiday, but ignorance about the day is often cast as part of the institutional racism in education. I don't think it's that simple.

Juneteenth was primarily a holiday in Texas, because that is where the specific context of June 19th comes from. June 19th is NOT the day "slavery ended." There really isn't a "day" when slavery ended.  Was it the day Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation (September 22nd)? It didn't actually go into effect on that day, but rather January 1st. But the Emancipation Proclamation didn't actually free any slaves. It freed slaves in "areas of active revolt" as a war measure. Once Union armies moved into an area and rested it from Confederate control the slaves were "freed"...until Confederates re-occupied the territory.

Maybe the proper date is January 31st, the day the 13th Amendment passed Congress.  Or maybe it is December 6th when the 13th Amendment was ratified by the required number of states and was enshrined into the Constitution? It really took the 13th Amendment to finally and irrevocably end chattel slavery in the US...though a form of de facto serfdom emerged to re-subjugate the Freedmen.

It's not necessarily that Juneteenth is a "bad" holiday.  The Declaration of Independence was actually passed on July 2nd, but that hasn't mattered. And shouldn't we celebrate the Treaty of Paris if 1783 that actually guaranteed independence? Or the day we ratified the Constitution?

The debate over Juneteenth is whether we should have a holiday to celebrate the end of slavery.  We should. Making it June 19th is probably as good an idea as any, but I don't think ignorance of Juneteenth is a massive failure of our education system.  Juneteenth is simply the commemoration of a day when one group of African Americans in Texas was finally guaranteed their freedom. It speaks to the ways in which the White South endeavored to keep African Americans in some form of bondage, even after the war had been lost and the slaves freed. That should be covered in every history book by discussing the Black Codes, debt peonage and Klan terror.

I suppose if anything, the discussion over Juneteenth is a good way to examine how history can largely be an exercise of perspective. Slavery ended for one distinct group of people on June 19th, and that day was taken to symbolize something greater by a broader (but still distinct) group of people. The celebration of that day has increased and dispersed recently and now we can have a national discussion about it.

(I would prefer December 6th - the day the 13th was ratified - simply because it would fit perfectly into my teaching syllabus, but that's neither here nor there.)

Roberts Is Walking A Fine Line

We've been told not to trust in John Robert's desire to maintain the Court's legitimacy. While that saved Obamacare a few years ago, it's a new era...or so we should believe.

But there is little way to view today's decision as anything but Roberts finding a clever way to reject a bad policy on technical grounds. 

Murc's Law

Murc's Law is the assumption that only Democrats have any agency over governmental actions, even when in the minority.  It's usually a position held by leftists, who assume that any bad thing the government does was at least tacitly the plan of Democrats.  Massive tax cut for the rich passed without any Democratic support?  Must've been the Democrats' secret wish all along.

I was thinking of that when it comes to police reform. The House is working on a laudable bill that will write into law important - if likely insufficient - reforms, like banning chokeholds, no-knock warrants in drug cases, create a national database of police misconduct and reduce qualified immunity.

The Senate Republicans will not pass it. Trump would not sign it.

The Left will blame this on Democrats.

This Would Be Awesome

I wondered if steroids could treat the cytokine storm that is so lethal in Covid-19 cases.  Looks like it could help. It's not a peer reviewed study, however, so let's not get our hopes up too much.

Again, my guess is that a drug "cocktail" will ultimately be the therapy that puts a lid in Covid-19's lethality, and that will come a long time before any vaccine.

Too Much To Hope For 2.0?

Will social conservatives bolt from Trump because Gorsuch backed LGBT rights?

Too Much To Hope For?

Today's landmark and almost shocking decision to extend the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to LGBT Americans is a welcome development in a sea of shitty news. Since Anthony Kennedy's retirement, there has been some worry that the Court will reverse every important civil rights and minority rights ruling.  Today, we hold out some hope that Roberts and Gorsuch aren't complete revanchists.

Also, the troika of true reactionaries lost their collective shit over this very reasonable ruling.  I've always felt that Roberts is constrained by the knowledge that "the Roberts Court" will be held responsible to history in much the same way the Taney Court has been. If he overrules Congress enough, he will delegitimize the Court and invite widespread reforms (should Democrats ever get enough votes in the Senate) that would weaken the conservative levers in the judicial system.

After reading the unhinged rantings of Alito and Kavanaugh, would it be too much to hope for that Roberts and Gorsuch develop a personal distaste for the troika that pushes them leftwards?

"Defund the Police" Is A Stupid Slogan

As this Vox article accidently points out, "Defund the Police" doesn't even have a single meaning. It can mean something close to abolishing the police, retasking funds at the margins or disbanding entire problematic departments, like Minneapolis's.

If your slogan requires fifteen minutes of frenzied explanation as the majority of people turn away from it...it's a bad slogan.  Slogans are supposed to be appealing.  "Medicare for All" isn't actually a program, but it was a clearly understandable slogan. 

The old saying in politics is "If you're explaining, you're losing."

Just say "Demilitarize the Police."  Everyone understands what you mean, and I would bet it get 80% approval.

In Twitter Jail

I have been in Twitter Jail for several days now, as I referred to one of my favorite actresses - Carrie Coon of Fargo and The Leftovers - by her name, not her @name.

Anyway, some AI program must've picked up on her last name as being a racial slur. Kind of funny, really. But I appealed the decision.  That was something like five days ago. They still haven't read the appeal.On the other hand, I've got more free time.

Statues And History

It was 2017 when the battle of statues in Charlottesville and elsewhere led to the unrest that killed Heather Heyer. Since then, the issue has receded and crested along with other aspects of how to accommodate our racist past. It has now taken center stage across the Western World.

The first thing to note is why we have statues in the first place. Almost by definition, statues are meant to honor important figures or events. They are commemorative, which usually extends to honoring the subject. It is not - as some conservatives have tried to argue - about "history," it is about honoring certain people, events or topics. Context matters. The Statue of Liberty, for instance, was given to honor America's centenary from our revolutionary ally, France. It's placement and Emma Lazarus' poem led to its context within the debate over immigration.

The second thing is why there is a statue in the first place. Why honor that person or event? When we look at the statues of Confederate generals, they were placed there to honor the Lost Cause of Treason in Defense of Slavery. Robert E. Lee had an impressive moment as a junior officer in the Mexican War, but that's not why his likeness is littered around the South. In 2020, there is no reason to honor the Confederacy. In fact, removing the statues is as considered and purposeful a move as putting them up during the Jim Crow era was. By removing them, we are acknowledging that the Civil War was about slavery and the subjugation of a race of people in brutal bondage.

Columbus is slightly more complicated. On the one hand, he was a genuinely awful human being. He was the first slave trader in the Americas and his treatment of the Taino was genocidal. However, the worst thing he did, he didn't even know he was doing - namely introducing lethal pathogens into a population that had no immunity to them. The microbial genocide was not a purposeful act by Columbus. He is also known for something else, namely his linking of the Old and New Worlds for the first time. It is completely understandable why Native Americans would hate Columbus and the veneration of him, but there isn't necessarily NO reason for having a statue.  On the other hand, he was actually a fairly shitty navigator who would've killed his crew if it wasn't for the fact that the New World was where it is. He clung to his belief that he had found Asia, which shows that maybe holding him up as a paragon of exploratory genius is misguided.

A similar problem emerges for statues of Churchill. He was, even by measures of the day, remarkably racist in his dealings with India. There certainly shouldn't be any statues of him in India or Pakistan. However, Churchill is also known for something else: his wartime leadership of Great Britain and his critical role from 1940-1941 of preserving resistance to Hitler's dream of hegemony. Churchill is complicated. 

Thomas Jefferson is incredibly complicated. His politics were a conscious appeal to white supremacy and solidarity in the face of appeals from (ironically) the Federalists to give women and freed Blacks the vote. He also articulated the very ideals that later generations would use to enfranchise everyone. Seneca Falls used his language to appeal for rights for women. Jefferson is the American Janus; the two-faced deity that looks to a racist past and a future of true equity.

Even Lincoln, apparently is on the chopping block. There is a movement among some to label Lincoln a white supremacist.  I would argue the historical record on that is dubious at best. Lincoln was certainly a realist who navigated between a majority of Americans who wanted nothing to do with African American equality, his need to win a Civil War by keeping the North united and a legitimate repulsion with slavery. Lincoln was almost fundamentally a humanist and his desire to alleviate the suffering of African Americans is difficult to question.  But there we are. The desire to label Lincoln a white supremacist (including a plaque on the bust of Lincoln that is a landmark on our campus) is different from tearing down a statue. Lincoln is famous for a great many things, including emancipation. My guess is that this would go nowhere.

There is no legitimate reason to venerate the Confederacy.  None.  Whether statues, military bases or NASCAR events, it's time to end the Civil War for good. However, we shouldn't monomaniacally judge the past by the standards of the present.  We can contextualize them to seek to understand why someone like Lincoln clearly embraced white supremacy in his rhetoric if rarely in his actions. That's exactly what history should be doing.

Jon Chait Is An Excellent Troll

Chait loves trolling the Far Left from the Medium Left. Here are two examples.  The first, I largely agree with. "Defunding the Police" is a bad slogan, because you have to explain what you really mean by it. It sounds like one thing, but really is another. I like "Demilitarize the Police" because I would wager it's popular, gets at the heart of the problem and embraces reforms that the public largely supports. As Chait notes, the job of activists isn't to appeal to workable legislative and electoral coalitions; it's to change the conversation. The problem is that we have seen ample evidence that activists get outraged when their preferred policy positions are not completely followed.

His other trolling is part of a consistent set of writing he advances about illiberal leftists. Some of it, I agree with. I feel my own school slipping into some forms of restrictive behaviors. There is some merit is placing certain words and concepts beyond the Pale, but it can get out of control. At some point, people need to confront ideas and concepts that are troubling. I don't think, however, the anger over Tom Cotton's piece was misplaced. Giving op-ed real estate for naked authoritarianism - especially from someone as dangerous as Tom Cotton - was a piss poor judgment call from the Times. And hardly their first.

Waldman Nails It

John Bolton is about to publish his tell-all memoir of his time in Trump Circus. As Paul Waldman notes, Bolton is no hero. We will see more of these type of actions, like the ones we've seen from Jim Mattis and now Bolton. There will be others. You have to think Kellyanne Conway is salivating over her future book deal.

But let's not for one single fucking millisecond consider any of these people heroes. They had an opportunity to help expunge this cancer from the body politic during the impeachment hearings and the Senate trial. They said nothing.

Ideally, the Mattises and Boltons and others are saving their harshest fire for the months leading up to the general election. Hopefully there is a major expose that will show all of his...Who am I kidding? We know who this shitstain is and there are still roughly 40% of Americans who will vote for him. 

Maybe the constant drip drip drip of revelations (like his tax returns that show him to be poorer and more in hock to Russia than we "know") will depress that number to the mid-30s.

Maybe.

But I've given up holding out any hope for Republicans as a group, and that certainly includes feckless arseholes like John Bolton.

ACAB

Holy Crap, this piece...

Is Trump A Racist? An Moron? A Racist Moron?

Back in 1980, Ronald Reagan began his presidential campaign by talking about "states rights" in Philadelphia, Mississippi - the site of the lynching of James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, better known as the Mississippi Burning murders. This - in case it needed spelling out - is racist dog-whistling that came to typify Republican efforts to win over white working class voters in the actual South and the pockets of the cultural South that checkerboard across parts of the Midwest.

It worked.

It also, however, was like a drug, and by 1992, Pat Buchanan nearly won the GOP nomination away from a sitting incumbent by taking the dog whistle to an bullhorn.

Trump has taken it to an air raid siren.

For starters, there is Trump's decision to hold one of his volkssturm rallies to soothe his raging id in Tulsa. The rally will take place in June 19th.  Tulsa was the site - 99 years ago of the Greenwood Massacre (or Tulsa Massacre) that was highlighted recently on HBO's Watchmen series. Greenwood was a reasonably successful African American community (known as the "Negro Wall Street") and when whites tried to lynch 19 year old Dick Rowland, African Americans fought back. In the end, we don't actually know how many people were killed by white mobs and the Oklahoma National Guard, but the number was probably more than 200. Greenwood was destroyed.

That is where Trump is going to kick off the latest phase of his re-election campaign.

He is then going to accept the nomination, apparently, in Jacksonville on August 27th - the 60th Anniversary of "Ax Handle Sunday" a white riot against sit-in demonstration.  The NAACP already planned commemorative events.  Now, it seems inevitable that there will be violent clashes outside the convention center where Trump will be hosting his True Believers in his attempt at being re-coronated King of White America.

Now, Trump is also a moron and likely has no idea about the history of Tulsa.  I'll admit, I hadn't heard of Ax Handle Sunday. Trump's Razor suggests that the stupidest explanation is usually the correct one, but with Stephen Miller and fellow Rightist Trolls having increased control over the president's agenda as normal people flee for the exits, you just never know.

I'm sure that Trump will think that violence outside of his convention will make him look good to his base. With a GOP mayor and governor in Jacksonville and Florida, he can count on National Guard troops in ways that he cannot in other places. He will no doubt revel in the footage of military personnel pummelling people of color and their mostly young allies.

Will we still have the capacity to be outraged by August?

Cry Me A Fucking River

This piece is...whoo boy...something. It's an amalgamation of police whining that the protesters have hurt their feelings and in some cases bruised them physically. Let's take this doozy of a quote:

“Law enforcement is the only profession where you get rocks, bricks and molotov cocktails thrown at you merely because you’re in the same chosen profession as someone else who did something horribly wrong thousands of miles away,” said Steven Casstevens, head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “I can’t believe that’s where we are. Aren’t we better than that as a country?”

I mean is there anyone outside the White House with less awareness of the moment that Mr. Casstevens? Yeah. Being a cop is a choice. Being black in this country isn't. And yet the members that Mr. Casstevens wants us to feel sorry for have a clearly established record of targeting and killing African Americans.  George Floyd was the breaking point, but the list of names is very, very long and in fact includes thousands lost to time. That Mr. Casstevens can turn around and say, "Don't judge us because Chauvin was wrong..." WTF do you think African Americans are saying? They are routinely seen as threats and a menace to public safety, which is why the police harass and kill them in such disproportionate numbers.

There is no doubt in my mind that while there are a great many credible, competent police officers in this country, the job appeals to people with an authoritarian bent. They want to be revered. They want the badge to imbue them with honor and a place of prestige. And they will brook no lippy college student or African American impinging on their "authoritah." Those men have responded to the protests with a combination of anger and fear that has created a straight line to violence.

How about this one:

“Stop treating us like animals and thugs and start treating us with some respect,” New York police union leader Mike O’Meara demanded angrily at a news conference on Tuesday. “We’ve been left out of the conversation. We’ve been vilified. It’s disgusting.”

Again, they seem to be cloaking themselves as an aggrieved minority. Are they unaware of using the language that they use against African Americans? They must be aware, and they just don't give a shit.

Take Of Two Polls

The first take is kind of comical. Trump is apparently enraged that polls show him losing by double digits to Biden. There is a lot of noise in polls, so the best thing to do is take an average of polls.  The current average at RCP has Biden leading by an average of 8.1%. CNN has a poll showing Biden up 14, whereas IBD/TIPP has Biden up 3.  Neither are likely right, which is why you use an average. At 538, they have a few more polls in their sample, including state polling and it looks grim for Trump indeed.  (Those arguing that no one should believe the polls because of 2016 have no idea what they are talking about. Trump could still win, I guess, but the polls were not wrong in 2016.)

Trump has responded by lashing out at the polls themselves, like some medieval potentate killing the messenger. This is...hilarious. Trump has managed to stay a step ahead of the political reaper by manufacturing another controversy to distract the media and his critics, but he is now facing legitimate crises and his numbers are tanking and he has no one to blame but himself. Oh, and the economy isn't bouncing back no matter how hard he wants it to.

The second polling story is tragically sad. Georgia has basically committed itself to disenfranchising its African American citizens in the middle of the biggest outpouring of civil rights activism since at least the 1960s. This is not a coincidence and not just something that happened. At this point, the GOP knows full well that they are headed for a reckoning in Georgia and other states like North Carolina and Texas. Toss up states like Florida and Arizona are trending away from Trump and Michigan and Pennsylvania are essentially lost to him. 

The GOP's only hope at this point is to lean heavily into making it very hard for African Americans to vote. That's it.  That's their strategy for November. In support of the guy who asked for and received Russia's help to undermine our democracy in 2016, they are going to double down in 2020.

It's nice to see Mitt Romney develop a political backbone recently, but it's very hard to say that there are any good Republicans left.

Maybe This Time IS Different

When protests over George Floyd's death erupted, I was fatalistic that little would change - especially in the short run. With McConnell in charge in the Senate and Trump bunkered down in the White House, it seemed dubious that anything would change - especially if protests turned disruptive, which they were bound to do.

Instead, we have Mitt Romney - America's whitest man - marching. We have protests made up almost entirely of white people in small towns.  The BBC suggested that the confluence of the incontrovertible video evidence and high unemployment made conditions right for mass protests.  I have to think that Trump's presence was also a catalyst.  America feels fundamentally different under Trump, and a lot of the white people on the streets are no longer able to casually dismiss racism.

The Democrats in the House have entered a decent bill. Anything more aggressive stands no chance in the Senate - indeed, this one likely won't even get a floor vote.  But it's a start.

The Mask Slips Further

I don't think even most Republican Congresspeople at this point would deny that Donald Trump wants to be a dictator. Some, like Tom Cotton, are cool with that.  Others shake their heads and stroke their chins and whisper off the record that they are "deeply troubled."  That all of this comes on the aniversary if Tiananmen...well, the 2020 writers aren't known for their subtlety. 

Jamelle Bouie makes the case that what we are seeing is police rioting as much as protesters. Police have always been able to control minority populations through force that is rarely checked. Now, those powers are being threatened, and what is more the multiracial crowds have to frighten the hell out of them. Police have relied on white passivity or complicity to exercise this control. Increasing numbers of Americans are awake to the reality of racism in America and in policing. If 76% of Americans and 71% of white Americans really do feel that racism is a huge problem, then that is a paradigm shift on this issue. While 57% of Americans saying that police treat African Americans worse is too low, it is also historically high. 

The wave of police brutality in response to protests about police brutality once again proves that those writers for 2020 are truly beating us over the head. The failures of leaders like we are seeing in NYC stands in stark contrast to the will of voters and the desire for a more peaceful and just society. Ubiquitous cameras make the usual official responses almost obscene.  (It also helps remind those swooning over Cuomo during the height of the pandemic, that he really ain't all that. And De Blasio better have a strong primary challenger.)

What started as a protest over a recent series of lynchings in Georgia, Kentucky and Minnesota has become about the overall brutality of an overpoliced society. As police increasingly treat everyone the way they've treated People of Color over the centuries, the complaints from Communities of Color are harder to brush off. And everytime Cuomo or Cotton or Trump try to brush them off, a new video emerges of police brutalizing protesters.

There is an argument that America has only been a true democracy for the past 50 years, once African Americans were allowed to vote in the South. Before that, police and vigilante violence perpetuated an apartheid state for a quarter of the country. Now, in our hardened partisan age, that violence is being directed against a much broader swath of Americans. In the constant struggle between Red and Blue, the Boys in Blue are tightly bound to the Red States.

My hope - and it's a fragile one - is that Trump's unique toxicity will expose the Tom Cottons of the world, and we will be spared the smoother, smarter Trumps like Cotton by remembering the horror show of Trumpistan. My hope is that from this naked grab for authoritarian power, we will reinvigorate our democracy and create a more just society.  But that is a generational project.

Stripping off the blinders about police is just one of the first steps.

How Do We Get Back To Peace Officers?

One impact of the civil unrest today is that a lot of white people are being exposed to the behavior of police in ways that isn't exactly Officer Friendly. In other words, they are being exposed to life under the police for people of color.

Think of it this way: Covid-19 is scary, because we just don't know who or how it will strike. You might get it and not get sick at all, or be sick as a dog, or be hospitalized, or die. The terrifying uncertainty of it has rattled people. 

In other words, Covid-19 and your experience is similar to police and African Americans for all of American history.

Not every encounter between police and African Americans is violent or bad, but literally any one of the encounters could turn fatal.

So how can we create a police environment that serves everyone. Naive calls to "abolish the police" fail to take into account human nature. Crime actually does happen. After the Freddie Gray protests, Baltimore police stopped policing certain parts of the city and crime exploded. We need police, but we need good police.

There are some good ideas in this piece, but they are still mostly rooted in making changes in police departments under existing institutions.  There was one important suggestion that we need "multiple different departments" to handle different issues.  The police currently handle all sorts of situations - including homelessness and the mentally ill - that they simply aren't prepared to handle. That's a true institutional change that could be helpful.

As Radley Balko has laid out (time and again), we also need to look at expanding how we define civil rights. A white person can kill someone in a parking lot in Florida under "stand your ground" but a black person can be gunned down defending his home against what appears to be a home invasion. Balko also notes the incredibly damaging role the "war on drugs" has played in both militarizing police and targeting people of color. There aren't any "no-knock" warrants in Old Lyme for Chip's stash of Molly.

Ultimately though, I think - as I have argued before - that only by removing DAs from police oversight can you have real change.  Yes, police unions are a problem, because they tend to aggressively defend bad cops, effectively normalizing "bad cop" behavior. If there was a combination of community oversight and a separate office within the DOJ to prosecute officers, we might see more of what we are seeing in Minnesota, when the case was kicked out of the Minneapolis DA's office and the charges were made commensurate with the crimes.

No one reform will work. Police need to be retrained. Some of the jobs they do need to be re-tasked to social workers - homelessness and drug interventions, for instance, maybe even domestic disturbance calls. Changing the how they are trained to deal with confrontation is important.  And none of this will work as long as there is a critical mass of steroidal rage monsters wilding behind a badge.

Crossroads

The past ten days have been a tough time in a tough year in a tough era. I had a very discouraging discussion with a student who is obviously depressed and despairing over the state of America, especially for young men of color like him.  I really couldn't, in good conscience, tell him it would be OK.  I just don't know.

Social unrest can sometimes lead to progress, but usually that requires political actors to wed an agenda to the protests. Congress has been largely sidelined by the pandemic - since so many of them are over 65, an unexamined flaw in our gerontocracy.  At best, we will see a patchwork of reforms at the local level. They will immediately be assailed by other political forces, including Trump's hopelessly corrupted DOJ.

The authoritarian theater that Trump has tried to use to exploit this has largely failed to do anything outside his base.  Much of it has been dismissed as absurd.  Getting into a fight with an Episcopalian bishop is...something. It seems as if there has been some backing off the use of the military, and the temperature seems to be falling a bit in many places.  We all know that it won't take much to reignite the protesters' righteous anger, and there are those that want American cities to burn so they can install Trump as a dictator on behalf of white Americans without college degrees.

The presence of purported law enforcement personnel around DC without any identifying badges is a tactic right out of Putin's takeover of Crimea.  The difference is Crimea was largely, ethnically Russian; DC is among the most solidly Democratic constituencies in the country. The possibility of escalating violence is real. (I should hazard a guess that these paramilitary groups in DC are mercenaries hired by Erik Prince. Again, this is right out of the dictator's playbook.

Every 48 hour period seems to be a crisis about the future of democracy in America. We are seeing how Trump behaves when he gets embarrassed and thwarted: he calls for violence and summons armed thugs to protect his person.

What happens in November?  It's early in the polling on this, but the early returns are fascinating. Biden appears to be leading from anywhere to 5-10 percentage points, and Trump's favorables and support have not budged from 40% neighborhood.  Biden gave a very good speech yesterday, and Obama is going to give one today. Trump will Tweet angrily from his bunker that he is not in a bunker.  I don't think this civil unrest will re-elect Donald Trump.

So, once again, my main concerns about November are twofold.

First, we need to destroy Trumpism at the polls. He needs to win about 35% of the vote -Hoover and Alf Landon territory.  We need to carry a net of 6-7 Senate seats.  We need to make Trumpism radioactive in American politics. (Here's a case that if it's close we have a constitutional crisis.)

Second, will we have a free and fair election? We have seen how Trump behaves when cornered.  What happens if he's looking at polls that have him losing 60-40? Or 65-35?  What does he do in the weeks of late October and early November?

Can his narcissistic armor blind him enough so that he doesn't see the Blue Wave coming?

The Protests Need To Change

The often spontaneous outpouring of grief and rage that has characterized the last week needs to find a new method of expressing itself. A few things are becoming clearer.

White men are hijacking the narrative by pushing extremist positions.  For every righteously enraged African American screaming at the police, there's some 20 year old anarchist or 30 year old white supremacist smashing windows and causing trouble unrelated to the agenda of BLM. 

Meanwhile, Trump - a fearful narcissist who spent a night huddled in the White House bunker - seems intent on using this moment as his own Reichstag fire. Given a chance, he will try and use the gathering chaos in some places as a pretext to militarize the response even further. Trump is obsessed with the appearance of strength, as his ridiculous photo op yesterday shows us. It also seems apparent that there is another segment of white men - whether in police or military uniforms - who would love the opportunity to "light'em up."

The challenge for the protest movement is first that it has no central leadership. There are also few African Americans in leadership positions to exert positive pressure to change the nature of these protests.  John Lewis is one of the few who comes to mind. While it is not my position to speak for BLM, tactically it seems wise to do the following:

• Work with local authorities to understand when curfews go into effect and help plan marches and protests around curfews so that clashes with police are minimized.
• Change the tone of the marches. Become funeral processions for those who have died. Reduce the temperature, while maintaining the protests.
• Identify the white provocateurs early and keep an eye (and bodies on them). 

These protests don't belong to me. This anger isn't mine to define.  The reality is that right now, police reform at the national level is simply impossible. Even if you could get reform through the Senate - which you can't - Trump would veto it. Possibly, you can get reform through local governments.  None of that can happen while white supremacists and anarchists divert attention from the message of reform.

The protests must continue, but they must change.  I've seen the footage from Tiananmen, the Maidan, Tahrir Square.  The slaughter of civilians by military personnel is closer now than I can ever imagine. It should not be incumbent on the protesters to avoid this...but it is.  The Squatter in Chief wants to kill you. He wants to hurt you. 

Because I believe that Black Lives Matter, I don't want to see protesters bleeding on American streets. I fear we are close to that moment.

It's Not Actually That Hard

I'm not going to dive into the various factions that are trying to hijack the current protests, but rather I want to talk mostly about the police today. The fundamental job of police is public safety. That includes everyone. What's striking about BLM protests is the fundamentally moderate nature of their demands. They want to be treated as equal citizens, not subjects to a police state that finds them expendable. That's it.  Don't kill them. That's hardly a radical demand.

Sure, there are other demands about economic justice, poor health care...but fundamentally, the basic idea is: we are citizens and equals and want to be treated as such.

The more the police clash with them, the more the protests are amplified. To a degree, that's why the various factions trying to hijack these protests are making things worse. Whatever the issue is with looters and vandals, the overwhelming use of force against the protests simply amplify the message that they are trying to convey. We all know how police treat armed white men; we all know how the police treat unarmed protesters of color.

And the thing is: it is actually not that hard to de-escalate most of these protests. We are seeing how police can turn the temperature down. It's not hard. The hair trigger use of chemical weapons and rubber bullets, the various forms of police riots we have seen are absolutely NOT about public safety. They are about the fear and rage polie are feeling right now.

The police are rioting because they are afraid. Probably not of the protesters. On some level, these events are scary and the fear that this time a cop might be hurt (as opposed to the many times protesters and journalists have been seriously hurt) contributes to that fear. The real fear, however, is the understanding that police are losing control of their narrative. The Floyd murder was just egregious, inexcusable.  Increasingly, moments like that are caught on film, like the lynching of Ahmaud Aubrey.

Police rely on generally overwhelming acceptance of their police powers - at least among whites. You can be a peace officer or you can be part of an occupying army; you can't be both. Seeing large, multiracial crowds has to shake their belief in their "hero" status. The undeniable link amongst all the protests is a complete lack of respect or deference to a group of (mostly) white men who have been accustomed to that their whole careers. Beyond the dynamics of the protests themselves, that has to scare them.

If police are not given deference by the communities they purportedly serve, they either have to throw themselves open to reform or become an occupying army. What is clear from the video I'm seeing is that they feel much more comfortable reaching for occupying army than taking a knee or joining the protests.

The tough swagger of some of these officers belies a fragility that is crumbling in the face of widespread disrespect. The question for police is whether they want actual respect or simply more fear.  Right now, they are reaching for fear and that will only make things worse.