A GENERATIONAL CHANGE

In nineteen seventy four,  Charles Bronson starred in a surprise hit film called Death Wish, which was about a peaceful man who goes full vigilante in New York City after the killing of his family.  The film's endorsement of the man's violent behavior,  as he becomes a folk hero to the city and is secretly admired by the police, seemed to tap into the attitude of both the people of New York and of the country at large.  Violent crime seemed to be out of control at that time, and movies that celebrated heroes who got tough fighting against it, like Death Wish, Dirty Harry and The French Connection, ruled the box office.  In twenty eighteen, Hollywood released a remake of Death Wish starring Bruce Willis; it flopped at the box office.  A story that had seemingly once captured the nation's collected fears and frustrations was now seen as out of the touch, with the only vigilantes capturing the nations's interest being the ones in superhero movies.
There has clearly been a generational change in our country's attitude towards violent crime for a very simple reason: the rate of violent crime has been consistently dropping since the mid nineteen nineties.  While there are a number of factors as why this is, there is one pet theory (that I've already blogged  about here ) that makes the most sense to me: lead removal.  In the sixties, the dangers of babies being exposed to lead fumes from paint and car exhaust led the government to begin a program of lead removal, with most communities becoming lead free in the nineteen eighties.  The drop in crime that started in the nineties happened because you had children growing up not being poisoned by lead, which causes both a drop in IQ and a reduction in the development of impulse control, and therefore less likely to become criminals.  I first wrote about this theory over six years ago, and as time has passed I've come to believe it more.  Especially when you consider that Chicago, a city that still has a problem with violent crime, is also one of the few cities in the US that still uses lead pipes for its drinking water, becoming the exception that proves the rule.

This drop in violent crime has lead to a generational shift in this country, with young people growing up in  less violent world and being less worried about it.   This is part of the reason why so many young people are joining in the Black Lives Matter protests against police violence. Unlike their parents, they don't understand  or accept the violent behavior of the police because they don't see violent crime as out of control. 
And they have every right to protest, because the falling violent crime rate has not resulted in changes in the police's behavior; if anything, it has gotten worse in the past few years, with more cops being outfitted in surplus army gear, looking more and more like soldiers, and wielding weapons like assault rifles, and yes, even grenade launchers.
So yes, with violent crime on the wane, it is time to start defunding the police budgets and spending that money on homeless shelters, drug addiction centers and mental health facilities, all of which will cause a reduction in crime without increasing violence.  And also on continued removal of lead, because it is still a problem, and one that, according to a twenty seventeen report by the department of House and Urban Development, is one that is far more  likely to affect children of color.
The good news is that the recent protests really do seem to be sinking in with the American public, with polls showing more and more approval for changing the police departments.  Will this attitude hold?  Will real change take place?  Only time will tell, but for now, it looks like the Black Lives Matter movement has really arrived.

DEATH CULT?

Donald Trump's hold on the Republican party has been so complete that it is reasonable to say that the party has become a cult built around him.  And that all elected members of the party (save Mitt Romney) have to never publicly criticize him in any way lest they feel the wrath of his supporters.  From Ted Cruz endorsing him even after  he said that Cruz's father may have been involved in the Kennedy assassination(!),  to Lindsay Graham veering from calling Trump a "religious bigot" during the campaign to becoming one of the president's strongest defenders, there appears that there is literally nothing that Trump can do that his party will criticize him for. 
And how strong is the Trump cult?  Consider the rally that Trump held last Saturday in Tulsa Oklahoma.  In the age of the coronavirus, holding a rally with thousands of people in an enclosed area would seem to be a recipe for disaster.  And yet it was held.  And it should be said that this rally held no great relevance: he unveiled no new policy ideas or made any attempt to address the nation as a whole.  His only mention of the virus was when he blamed it, yet again, on China, calling it "Kung Flu" at one point.  So the only function of this rally was the same as every other rally he has had in the past three years; as an opportunity for Trump's massive ego to swell even larger in front of  an adoring crowd as he fires up his base.
Now it is true that precautions were taken in the lead up to the rally, with temperatures taken, and hand sanitizer and masks made available.  But the fact of the matter is that it was still an unnecessary gathering of thousands of people, in a state that has actually seen a recent increase in the number of infected people.  And most of those thousands did not wear masks or socially distance themselves, as the picture above clearly shows. 
And the attendees knew full well of the danger.  Before attending they had to sign a release form saying that they would not hold the Trump administration responsible for getting the virus at the rally.  In other words, our  country's president held a rally that risked the lives of his own followers (not to mention other people they could come in contact with)  for no reason other than he wanted another chance to bask in the glow of their adulation.  Normally, this would be big and frightening news,  but Trump has so denigrated the office of the presidency in this country that it's just another day in Trump Land USA.
It really does appear that Trump's followers will follow him right off a cliff; just as he has dismissed and downplayed the still serious danger of the coronavirus even as the number of infected Americans continues to climb. so have most of his followers decided to defiantly not wear masks or observe even the slightest safety measures.  It gets even worse when you consider that Trump's loyal base are mostly older people, putting them squarely in the category of people mostly at risk from dying from the virus.  And he just doesn't care. 
The  good news is that while Trump may have a stranglehold on his base, the rest of the country is getting tired of his lies, boasts and conspiracy theories, and his recent approval ratings have fallen as the election in November approaches.  While running simply as the "not Trump" candidate may seem a simple strategy for Joe Biden, it may be just enough to get him into the White House.  It's enough for me, anyway.

DEFUND THE POLICE?

The recent protests over the police murdering of George Floyd seems to be having better results than any other recent protests around the same issue.  This time the protests have endured, and the American public are now on their side .  In a stunning reversal, recent polls have shown sixty percent of Americans now agree with the Black Lives Matter movement, an increase of twenty points since the last poll was taken.  Like the issue of gay marriage, the country is clearly starting to be more on the side of equality than not.
There are several reasons for this: The first is quite simply it is impossible for any decent human being to watch that horrible Floyd video without being outraged and disgusted.  It's not just the needless brutality of the killing, it's also the casualness of Derek Chauvin, the officer with his foot on Floyd's neck and the equally blase manner of the other cops around them, even as Floyd was calling out for mercy.  The unthinking, cold manner of those officers can one lead to one conclusion: they've done things like this before without punishment, and they clearly thought that they could get away with it again.  (And Chauvin has already had seventeen complaints made against him in his twenty years of service).  It also really shows how much the importance of nearly everyone in America having a cell phone in their pocket has changed things: Floyd's killing and other recent cell phone videos of police brutality would have gone unseen by the public, allowing the police to file false reports and sweep the violence under the rug, as it certainly appears that they have been doing for decades.
Another reason that these protests seem to be sinking through is because some police departments have responded to protests over their being too violent with acts of excessive violence, from clubbings to tear gas firing, shooting themselves in the foot politically.  Also, the marches have been more ethnically diverse than past ones, and, let's face it, legislators are more likely to listen to white people complaining than people of color.  The fact that even Mitt Romney (who has proven himself as the only honorable Republican elected official in the country) marched in a Black Lives Matter rally shows how this issue is getting through.
The good news is that the sudden popularity of the movement may lead to real changes not only in the police departments around the country but also in other ways: Nascar recently banned Confederate flags from their races, statutes of Confederate soldiers have been removed, and there is a movement to rename military  bases named after Confederate leaders.  (Unfortunately, our president is on the wrong side of this).
While there have been many solid suggestions made by police reformers, from the list on the 8 Can't Wait website (click here to see it) to some ideas about how our country should change the way that the police are used (why have them waste time pulling over drivers for minor traffic violations?).   One  new slogan has emerged on signs at the rallies: Defund the Police.  In spirit, I agree with the sentiment of it; even the police themselves have complained about how they are used to deal with issues like homelessness, drug addiction and mental health issues because the country  has failed to deal with them.  Defunding the police means that cities should stop giving so many tax dollars to the police while taking money away from drug rehab programs, homeless shelters and other kinds of social spending that do a better job of preventing crime in the first place.  It's the kind of change that America should have started making years ago.
But there's a problem with the nature of the slogan: it sounds extreme.  The right wing media has already latched on it and openly claimed that the protesters want to abolish the police entirely, leading to anarchy on the streets.  Even though this absurd notion does not seem to have seeped out of the right wing media bubble and into the mainstream of the country,  it does give right wingers the opportunity to try and discredit an entire popular movement simply by purposely overstating the intention of a slogan.
It might seem silly for me to focus on the wording of a slogan, but sloganeering is an important part of our modern political discourse, and conservatives have been better at it than progressives for years.  Consider that conservatives have discovered that instead of saying that you're anti abortion, you can call yourself "pro-life", or that you don't hate the LGBT community, you just want to "defend traditional marriage".  The sad fact of the matter is that coming up with a catchy bumper sticker sized slogan is important in our country; as much as I despise Donald Trump's presidential campaign of twenty sixteen, "Make America Great Again" was an undeniably great campaign slogan and the fact that the Hillary Clinton campaign couldn't come up with a good one to counter it is part of why she lost. 
So, "MAGA", is a good slogan,  but "Defund the Police"?  Not so great in my opinion. It is truly sad to think that from having a catch phrase that is viewed as going too far, an entire positive movement may be killed or crippled before reaching any of its laudable goals.  But I do think it's possible.

THE AMERICAN POWDERKEG

America has certainly had troubled times before, but right now it is suffering through a truly unique set of circumstances: the worst pandemic since the Spanish Flu outbreak of nineteen eighteen, combined with the most violent political rallies since nineteen sixty eight, added to the most polarizing president in modern times.  It has become surreal to be an American, as we see masked protesters both protesting police violence and trying to maintain social distancing. 
Although the protests are ostensibly about the terrible choking death of George Floyd by one police officer as several others looked on, it's clear that they are also based on the growing tensions that have been rising in the past few years as the killing or serious injuring of African American suspects by the police have continued in this country even as violent crime rates have decreased.  Add to that the fact that the pandemic is hitting non white communities harder than others, and the country's general  level of frustration at our ongoing partial lockdown and tanked economy, and anger and protest seem like  reasonable responses. Most protestors appear to be peaceful, but violence has started breaking out at many of the gatherings.  And even that violence has become polarizing, as we watch video after video on the news: clearly it appears that the police are openly attacking non violent protestors with clubs and rubber bullets, but it also appears that some attacks are being made on the police also, along with burning and looting.  Both sides of the political fence are now pointing fingers, with far left group Antifa or far right white supremacist groups being blamed for the violence (There are even reports of white supremacists dressing up in Antifa garb, just to really confuse things!).
While sorting through all of this craziness is difficult (and honestly it appears to me that both the police and protestors are responsible for the violence, although I lean towards having more sympathy for the protestors given the understandable anger over Floyd's horrific death).  One thing is for sure: not only is Donald Trump the worst possible president to have during a pandemic (over a million more cases of coronavirus in the US than in the next highest country), he is even perhaps even worse at bringing the country together in some kind of racial reconciliation.   Yes, the man whose first real foray into politics began with him repeatedly questioning the birthplace of Barack Obama is hardly the right person to attempt to bridge the deep racial divide in this country.  And Trump has done exactly what you would expect him to do; after a few words of sympathy about Floyd's death, he has condemned the protestors, calling them "thugs", has considered sending in the military, suggested that there should  be a counter protest by his supporters and tweeted out “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” , a statement that may have been a conscious repeat of a quote made by Walter E. Headley, Miami’s former police chief, in 1967, a militant foe of the civil rights movement. But then what do expect from a president who once openly joked in a speech given to police officers that they shouldn't be "too nice" when making arrests.  As usual, he only cares about firing up his base by whipping up racial fears and hatred.  Why not, it's how he campaigned to be president.
Trump's typically erratic behavior culminated in yet another bizarre moment in a presidency that produced more than a few: last Monday he and his people decided to have a photo op moment at  St. John’s Church in Washington DC.  To clear the way, Attorney General William Barr ordered federal law enforcement officers to move away peaceful protestors, which led to several acts of brutal violence being carried out by the police on camera.  All of this was done just so that Trump could be photographed standing  in front of the church, awkwardly holding a bible like a statue.  No statement was made, no prayers said, nothing.
Although the protests won't last forever, the anger that drives them will return unless something is done about the treatment of minorities by the police.  Which will never happen under the current president.  The only way that this country can at least start to move in the right direction on this issue is for the country to soundly reject the hatred and bigotry that Trump has carried out in both word and deed in  the past four years.