The America we’re seeing right now is not just Trump’s America. It’s the GOP’s America. After two decades to demanding no restrictions on guns and militarizing our police, we have overly aggressive law enforcement officers making the assumption that everyone is armed, especially Black men. Despite the prevalence of cell phone videos, police continue to shoot unarmed Black men while ignoring heavily armed White ones.
The episode in Kenosha, Wisconsin, is especially disturbing. Police called to a domestic disturbance shot a man seven times in front of his children as he tried to enter his van to leave. In the riots that followed, armed right-wing militia showed up on the streets of Kenosha. According to reports, police welcomed them and offered them water. When a 17-year-old armed with an AR-15 shot three people, he was able to walk past police officers running toward the sound of shots. They apparently didn’t consider a White man with a gun as much of a threat as a Black man without one. Had a Black man with a gun walked toward a line of police officers after shots had been fired, we all know the outcome would have been different.
The NRA and their affiliate, the Republican Party, have been telling us for decades that more guns make us safer. That’s clearly not true. Police now assume that everyone has a gun so any objection to their intervention is considered a threat. And Black men apparently are especially threatening to the cops. Otherwise, videos of cops shooting unarmed White men would surface every few weeks, too.
Trump has stoked divisions in the country since he first began his campaign in 2015. He railed against immigrants, calling them criminals and “rapists,” playing to the fears and prejudices of his base. He called white supremacists who marched in Charlottesville “good people” after one of the racists plowed into a crowd, killing a young woman. He rejected renaming military bases named for Confederate generals or removing monuments to the Confederacy that adorn public property. As the country demands a reckoning for its abysmal record on race, Donald Trump is standing in history’s doorway.
Republicans, for their part, are doing what conservatives have always done—blaming the victim and making excuses for discrimination. In George Floyd, they saw a thug, not a victim. In Kyle Rittenhouse, the vigilante in Kenosha, they see a victim, not a thug. In Congress, they’ve blocked bills to restore the Voting Rights Act and to curb excessive force by police. They are standing with Trump and condemning protesters who believe they have no other options but to take to the streets since GOP led legislatures and U.S. Senate that refuse to address the inequality that’s so obvious to everyone else. In short, they stand with the flawed status quo instead of embracing the concept of building a more perfect union.
Thomas Mills is the founder and publisher of PoliticsNC.com. Before beginning PoliticsNC, Thomas spent twenty years as a political and public affairs consultant. Learn more >
Gosh Thomas, you paint a rather one-sided picture of urban gun violence. Just yesterday, a demonstrating Trump supporter was shot and killed in Portland. And you failed to mention the retired Afro American police officer (who’s widow spoke so eloquently at the GOP Convention) who was shot dead in St. Louis while helping defend a friend’s shop from BLM vandalism. And then there was the federal security guard who was shot and killed in Nevada while on duty during a BLM protest, and the Black small business owner and well-known Trump supporter in the Northwest who was shot and killed in broad daylight in front of his shop. (i can’t recall what city.) And the shooting in Kenosha, as tragic as it seems, may well be ruled self-defense as the video shows a BLM demonstrator hitting the shooter over the head with a skateboard just prior to being shot himself.
Seems that in your zeal to condemn the NRA, the Republican Party, White vigilantes and local police that you conveniently forgot about these violent incidents by BLM protestors and other anti-Trump zealots. So for the cause of honest reporting, it is essential to provide a full accounting of recent urban gun violence in the U.S.
Let us hope Trump and his marry little band of near do wells and hanger on, fail in their attempt to block absentee votes, by playing shenanigans with the postal services. If everybody’s vote counts, there is little doubt Trump will be unemployed by January 2021. If Trump goes, so goes the Senate. Tillis will be back selling, whatever he sells, Mitch and Graham officially retire and we can set about passing legislation designed to help folks through this virus and the resulting economic problems occasioned by gross negligence and lack of proper planning. This time, I hope Biden does not have to fight an uphill battle with the legislative branch, hell bent on making him a one term president.
Don’t think so, this 17 year old male armed with a AR15 Rifle had just shot a person who was peacefully exercising his right of free speech. The way I see it, this skate border was using his skate board to disarm this 17 year old shooter to prevent him from shooting others. That skate border laid down his life to save others. He is a hero i my book!
Agree the Senate is key. Even if Trump should win, control of the Senate would permit a successful impeachment. And conveniently eliminate him from standing for election forevermore.
What are you smoking? It takes a vote of 67 Senators to impeach a President. Under the most optimistic scenario, the Dems will have a one or two vote Senate majority. And the 67 vote requirement for the Senate to find a President guilty of impeachment charges will take a constitutional amendment to change.
Bruno, it may take 67 senatorial votes to remove Trump. But there are currently 12 Republican seats up for reelection. If most of those seats go to Democrats, which recent polling seems to support, the chances that a few Republicans for political reasons may join Democrats and vote for removal. The chances of this occurring are looking better each day as the Attorney General of New York and DA of Manhattan are investigating Trump for impeachable offenses. Granted, this scenario may be akin to drawing to an inside straight, but a lot of unusual things are happening these days.
This is why it is more important to flip the Senate than it is to win the WH