Unbottling the Wine of Wrath

The protests around the country following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis are completely understandable. The violence by protesters is, to some degree, understandable. The unhinged violence by some cops, not so much.

Everyone reading this has probably seen the video of Mr. Floyd being slowly killed by a police officer. Everyone has probably seen the one cop standing by, glaring at spectators as if daring them to do something. Everyone has probably seen the two other cops who were assisting the killer as he snatched the life out of Mr. Floyd.

In the last few years, a cop in a Minneapolis suburb shot and killed a black man, Philandro Castile, during a traffic stop. Mr. Castile was lawfully carrying a gun, informed the cop of that, and the cop’s response was to kill him. The cop got off at trial. In fact, the only cop recently in the Minneapolis area who was convicted of shooting a civilian shot and killed a white woman.

Add to that Atatiana Jefferson, a black woman, who was shot in her own home by a Ft. Worth cop. Breonna Taylor, shot in her own home by police in Louisville. Ahmaud Arbery, shot and killed by a vigilante in Georgia; the shooter and his compatriots were not arrested for almost two months, until the video of the murder hit the news.

I don’t feel the need to go on and on. If you haven’t gotten the point, that’s on you.

Add to that the SARS-CoV-2/Covid-19 pandemic. Minorities have been getting sick and dying at much higher rates than white people. Minorities are over-represented in “essential industries”, such as health care (hospital workers, nursing home workers) and grocery retailing. Minorities do much more of the work in food processing plants. Add to that the fact that minorities, in general, have more health problems due to poorer diets, lack of access to health care, pollution and the general stress of living while black/brown.

It seemed that, as soon as the numbers starting coming out on the racial disparity in Covid-19 cases and deaths, the Trump Administration began pivoting from “lets do all we can to stop the pandemic” to “we have to open up the country to business”. The governors of several states, especially of states known in the past for such social niceties as cross-burnings, began pushing to open up their states for everything. The clear undertone from all of them was “well, it’s not our people who are getting sick, so let’s get going.”

(It could be other things, I suppose. Maybe Jared Kusher, one of the nation’s premier slumlords, complained to his father-in-law that his tenants weren’t paying rent. But I digress.)

Now let’s throw in another Covid-19 issue: Unemployment. The unemployment numbers went from essentially full-employment in February to Great Depression levels in May. Forty million people are out of work, and that number only reflects those who have successfully filed for unemployment. It doesn’t include people who can’t, because they may have no good access to computers and the Internet. It doesn’t include people who have been unable to file because their state’s computer system can’t handle the load (some states did that willfully).

The kids themselves have been out of schools for months. Poorer school districts have not been able to effectively handle the transition to online learning. The children don’t have computers or tablets at home and, even if they did, no access to broadband. Many of those kids got food assistance from their schools and are not reliably getting it now. Their parents, if they still have jobs, now have to cobble together daycare for the kids or leave them alone. That’s risky, as one thing is clear, there is little that enraptures Child Protective Services more than being able to charge working-poor people with child neglect.

Finally, factor in a president who revels in divisiveness and bigotry, a president who is nakedly interested in only doing things that benefits the wealthiest of Americans, while throwing rhetorical bones to his less-wealthy supporters. A president who is assuredly interested in widening the racial divide in this country. A president who has scrapped all efforts at police reform and oversight. A president whose reactions to the protests has been to echo racist tropes of the past (shooting the looters, letting lose vicious dogs). A president who sees an upside in looting and burning, as a way to inflame the passions of his supporters.

What do you have from all of this? You have lakes of gasoline, just waiting for a final spark to set the nation on fire. You have a president who has a vested interest in seeing the country burn.

And now there’s been a spark.