We are This Nation

I find myself unable to concentrate this morning. I’ve been unable to work because I just watched a coup attempt in this beautifully imperfect land, led by the despicable and their enabler in chief. Watching a crowd of white racist thugs march on the capitol, breach the halls intending mayhem shouting for multiple hangings, AND THEN GET ESCORTED OUT LIKE CHILDREN WHO’D MADE A MESS, without arrests, without heads bleeding from police batons hitting their insurrectionist craniums, reminds me of a sad, horrible truth: We are this nation.

Watching this on live TV I kept shouting “Where are the rubber bullets?” The same rubber bullets used on protests against police brutality this year. The same rubber bullets police used whenever a protest is done by a crowd of people with black or brown skin. Where were the tear gas canisters? Where was the robust police response to the “Wild” day that we all knew Trump and his crazed hate-filled followers had planned? A day symbolized by one of the mob parading through the capitol waving the flag of traitors.

Perhaps the unhinged, psychopathic president kept the National Guard from being called out and that failure was the culprit for the underwhelming police response to insurrection. Perhaps, but not the whole answer. An aside, this is just one more reason why the Democrats should grant DC statehood – that and the principal that ALL the people should have the same say in how they are governed. But this failure stems from the problem with America that is reflected in our police forces.

Police departments all across the country are heavily influenced by white supremacists. Our police have been corrupted, there is no other way to read the signs going back before the presidency of this unhinged wanna-be tyrant. I know many good officers believe in the rule of law for everyone. That goes without saying. But police have responded with brutal force when, and only when, crowds are filled with black and brown people. This is no accident.

This is our semi-official, though unstated, national policy, and it was during the Obama years as well. We need a reckoning of our souls. We need to look at how systematic racism has left communities of color bereft of financial equity, educational opportunity, and basic rights like the ability to drive a car without fearing for their lives during a traffic stop for a missing taillight. We need to look at reforming police departments to shift to community-based policing and de-escalating situations. We need to shift funding priorities to getting more money and less police in communities of color.

Trump is not the instigator of racism, or right-wing lunacy, or the finger-pointing at the “other” that they perceive has made their lives turn out bad. But his feral mind knew long ago how to use racism to his advantage. For decades the Republican Party has purposely used white nationalism to secure electoral gain. Since 1968 and Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” the Repubs have clothed more and more of their rhetoric in white nationalism as a way to stay in power. They’ve needed to use racism because they can’t win elections on their other main messages of un-taxing the rich and corporations, and letting people wear guns to everything from schools to bars. What could go wrong with a mixture of guns and alcohol after all?

We have a political party dedicated to preserving the power of the rich by employing white racism. This division gets stoked by a thousand secreted internet chat rooms, encouraged by the public rants of people like Trump, and abetted by the silence of other Republicans who seek their political fortune over the needs of the country. We have a police force dominated by those who believe in preserving white supremacism. We are a hollow democracy where one party seeks to keep voter turnout down by any means necessary and then cries foul at every loss and disputes the results.

We are this nation and it sickens me.