Time for calm and leadership
It’s time for perspective. The vast majority of protests across the United States are peaceful. The rage and frustration over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and wounding of Jacob Blake — and systemic racism more pervasively — are real and justified. That a few in those crowds have exploited the chaotic scenes to loot or vandalize businesses and public buildings is unacceptable.
To conflate the cause of social justice with the spasms of lawlessness, as some have done — most notably, the president of the United States — is demagogic and dangerous.
This is a moment for leadership. No one in a position of responsibility should be rationalizing violence or vandalism from within the protests or encouraging vigilantes or agitators to escalate the tensions in their warped sense of patriotic duty.
Yet there was the president of the United States, after a second fatal shooting within a week, fanning the flames with a barrage of tweets in the aftermath of a deadly Saturday night in Portland, Ore., in which a group of his supporters drove through the city firing paintballs from pickup trucks. Protesters threw objects back at them. Ultimately, a man wearing a hat with the insignia of the farright group Patriot Prayer was shot and killed shortly before 9 p.m.
“The big backlash going on in Portland cannot be unexpected after 95 days of watching and incompetent Mayor admit he has no idea what he is doing,” Trump tweeted Sunday morning. “The people of Portland won’t put up with no safety any longer. The Mayor is a FOOL. Bring in the National Guard!”
Most outrageously, Trump had added the comment “GREAT PATRIOTS!” when he retweeted a video of the proTrump caravan heading into Portland.
The Portland shooting came just days after two people were killed and another was wounded in Kenosha, Wis., allegedly by 17yearold Kyle Rittenhouse, who had arrived in town to join other armed men to protect a city that was engulfed in unrest after Blake was shot seven times by a police officer.
Rittenhouse had strolled the streets with impunity with an AR15style rifle strapped to his shoulders. He told a reporter he was there to provide first aid and protect a business. He was asked if his role was “nonlethal.”
“We don’t have nonlethal,” he replied, according to the Washington Post.
Video showed him walking past police with hands raised. He was not stopped and questioned. He was arrested the next day and charged with firstdegree reckless homicide and other counts.
Those who are escalating a volatile situation are not great patriots. The madness of vigilantism should be condemned, not excused, before more human lives are lost. The overheated rhetoric that stokes it must cease.
The selective outrage, the cries for “law and order” and sweeping and unwarranted denunciation of Black Lives Matter protesters as “agitators and thugs” (Trump, once again, in a Sunday morning tweet), are not happening in a vacuum. It’s a political strategy.
Tellingly, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway told Fox News last week “the more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns, the better it is for the very clear choice on who’s best on public safety.”
The White House announced that Trump would be going to Kenosha on Tuesday. Will his presence be a source of calm or inflammation for a nation that desperately needs the former? Will he be a leader or provocateur at this critical moment in his presidency?