Trump And George Floyd

 Jon Chait makes the case for conservatives (not Conservatives) to support Joe Biden. One thing he notes is the collapse in crime over the past two years. If conservatives care about public order, then Trump oversaw the massive spike in crime that Biden's administration has largely reduced.

I suppose there is a certain slight of hand at play there, because I think the spike in crime from 2020-21 was about more than just Trump or Biden being president.

Chait rightly notes that it was Trump's divisiveness that spurred a lot of the protests in 2020. You had four years of an American president who constantly denigrated more than half of his fellow countrymen and debased America's democratic practices. When Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, it mobilized a very angry population. The reason these were "rainbow" protests is both because the Floyd murder was so awful and brazen and because people were ready to take to the streets. Throw Covid into the mix and you get the spring and summer of 2020.

I lived in LA during the Rodney King riots (it's not fair that they are called that, by the way), and police chief Daryl Gates responded to that outpouring of justified rage by pulling the cops off the street. Anger turned to opportunism as criminals replaced angry protesters to loot what they could. An anxious city that had been disgusted by the verdict was relieved to have the LAPD protecting their homes and businesses again.

That's the textbook move for police misconduct that leads to civil protests. Pull back and let people experience life without the police. Throw in the societal "collapse" of the Covid years and there was a massive spike in crime. It was amazing, in retrospect, how few of the Floyd protests turned violent or destructive. However, reduced policing and the sense that "anything goes" during the pandemic led to a spike in crime. 

The way Trump tore open societal wounds rather than try and bind them was not confined to 2020. The explosion of protest was a built up rage against what this fuckstick was doing to a country that we naively believed has moved past its worst divisions. The "Blue Flu" response to the Floyd protests was a product of Trump's encouragement of the worst sort of policing and then their outrage when it turns out there were consequences for lawlessness under cover of the badge.

When I look at Trumpist outrage online, I see people desperately trying to work themselves and others into a lather over shit that simply isn't happening. Republican pols saying that Joe Biden is a dictator. I know "every accusation is a confession" but how the hell do you look at Biden and see a dictator? How is America - a nation with the best economy in the world right now, a nation that is NOT involved in combat anywhere -  a nation in decline? 

The only thing Biden and Trump have in common is that they are both too old. In every other measure, Biden excels Trump by leagues. Fundamentally, though, the positive reason to elect Biden is because he is not intent on dividing America, pitting against each other. That is very much what Trump wants to do and did. He wants us at war with each other, so that we won't notice his criminality as he loots his office. 

Division, fear, anger: that is the soil that a demagogic authoritarian plants his seeds of despotism in. That is one of the main reasons why the country erupted in protests over the murder of a single man. Floyd's death was not just the product of a terrible policeman and bad police culture; it was the product of Trump's malign divisiveness.