An Inflection Point for America
An Inflection Point for America
(Fred Wertheimer | June 5, 2020 | Medium)
The tragic, senseless, brutal killing of African American George Floyd by a police officer, aided and abetted by three fellow officers, and its aftermath, may well turn out to be an inflection point for America.
The killing has awakened the nation to the need to face up to the country’s ingrained racism and racial injustice in ways we have not seen since the civil rights movement in the 1960s.
It has educated a generation of young Americans on the need at times for massive peaceful protests to right fundamental wrongs. It has shown the worst and most dangerous instincts, autocratic practices, and disdain for the Constitution of the worst President in the nation’s history.
The massive protests in the country have been overwhelmingly peaceful. These protests are the essence of citizens exercising their constitutional rights to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition the government for redress. The indefensible looting and violence that has occurred has involved the smallest fraction of the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Americans who have marched for justice.
At the same time, the grave threats to our democracy caused by the President were captured by Retired Marine General and former Trump Secretary of Defense James Mattis. In a powerful rejection of the Trump presidency, Mattis said yesterday:
Donald Trump is the first president in my lifetime who does not try to unite the American people — does not even pretend to try. Instead he tries to divide us. We are witnessing the consequences of three years of this deliberate effort.
Mattis also said:
We know that we are better than the abuse of executive authority that we witnessed in Lafayette Square. We must reject and hold accountable those in office who would make a mockery of our Constitution. At the same time, we must remember Lincoln’s “better angels,” and listen to them, as we work to unite.
Former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Retired Navy Admiral Mike Mullen also attacked Trump’s actions, writing:
Whatever Trump’s goal in conducting his visit, he laid bare his disdain for the rights of peaceful protest in this country, gave succor to the leaders of other countries who take comfort in our domestic strife, and risked further politicizing the men and women of our armed forces. … This is not the time for stunts. This is the time for leadership.”
The national protests began with the police killing of George Floyd. But, they reach back to the police killings of African Americans Breonna Taylor and Eric Garner, among numerous others, and the killing of African American jogger Ahmaud Arbery by a former policeman.
The protests also reach to a broad set of problems arising from systemic racism and racial injustice for African Americans and other communities of color in our country. And they have raised in stark terms the question of whether we as a people are going to finally begin doing something about these century-long problems.
Meanwhile, nothing can tell you more about the President’s autocratic, narcissistic misuse and abuse of his office — and the enabling of Trump by his consigliere, Attorney General William Barr — than the events of this week.
In response to the killing of George Floyd and the massive nationwide protests it triggered, Trump has said and done nothing to calm the waters or to recognize the pain being felt by the Floyd family and protesting Americans.
Instead, Trump used this seminal moment to again divide the country for his own partisan political purposes.
He has used this moment for self-promotion and self-aggrandizement, and to demean and attack the nation’s governors, to threaten to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807, to improperly use the United States military, and to irreligiously use the Bible and a prominent Washington church as a prop for a reelection photo op.
On Monday, Trump in authoritarian fashion unleashed an attack, ordered by Barr, on peaceful protestors in Washington, DC’s Lafayette Park by shield-wielding police from federal agencies and National Guard troops. They used horses, batons, rubber bullets, riot shields, pepper spray — a form of tear gas — and flash-bang grenades to rough up and push back the protesters.
Why? Not to maintain order but to allow Trump to walk over to St. John’s Episcopal Church to use a Bible and the Church as a prop for a photo-op. In the process, Trump desecrated religious grounds.
The Episcopal Bishop of Washington, the Right Reverend Mariann Budde, expressed outrage at Trump’s actions saying, “The President just used a Bible, the most sacred text of the Judeo-Christian tradition, and one of the churches of my diocese, without permission, as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus.” Bishop Budde denounced Trump’s use of a Bible “that declares that God is love and when everything he has said and done is to enflame violence.”
On Tuesday and Wednesday, anonymous federal law enforcement officers roamed the D.C. streets without any identification showing on their uniforms, bringing back memories of the Russian soldiers who invaded Ukraine without wearing any identification in order to avoid being held accountable for their actions.
All of this is the stock and trade of dictators around the world, many jealously admired by Trump such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. It is also the stuff of banana republics.
Trump’s repeated attacks on voting by mail, combined with his recent threats to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 without any justifiable grounds, should make plain to all that we can expect Trump to reject the election results when he loses in November. He will wrongfully use every power of his office to do everything he can to delegitimize the election. He will falsely challenge the vote results as being riddled with fraud, and refuse to leave the White House.
To put it simply, Trump is going to create an unprecedented constitutional crisis for the country when he loses, without the slightest concern for our country, and in order to attempt to become the first illegitimate President of the United States.
The American people will not let this happen. Our constitutional system of representative government has prevailed for more than two centuries.
The Constitution and the American people will prevail in 2020.
A new President will be sworn in on January 20, 2021 and Trump will be gone, even if we need a tow truck to remove him from the White House and send him on his way.
