U.S. suffers from a lack of leadership

Americans watched with horror and outrage the video of a criminal suspect being asphyxiated by a Minneapolis police officer.

George Floyd’s murder was the catalyst for further atrocity: Gangs in the guise of protesters set fires, taunted and assaulted the police, looted and destroyed businesses, and terrorized innocent people. Some painted with a broad brush, toting signs inscribed with, “All cops are bad,” “Abolish (and defund) the police,” and others too vile for publication.

The individuals who were destructive dishonored the majority who protested with honor and the memory of Floyd.

We suffer a lack of leadership, which throws gasoline on the fire. Our president has engaged in a lifetime of racebaiting: federal charges against him and his father for refusing to rent their apartments to minorities and perpetrating a multiyear racist birther hoax on his biracial predecessor. He has supported criminal suspects being roughed up; his attorney general has threatened “unappreciative” communities with the loss of police protection. He has told those who commit a reprehensible but not capital crime that they can expect to be shot without due process. He oversees a violent repression of peaceful protesters so that he can have an insulting and ludicrous church photo opportunity.

When this president calls the family of the victim of police brutality purportedly to offer comfort and calls for justice, does anyone believe him, given his divisive history?

Our economy is poor; we suffer Depression-era unemployment; we are suffering a lethal pandemic that will not “magically disappear”; the issues of race relations and racism boil over. How do we unify to again be great? May God help the United States of America.

OREN SPIEGLER

Peters