Addressing Law & Order

If the Left is going to survive Trump's Law and Order assault, and elect Joe Biden to the presidency, I believe we will have to make an adjustment in how we address that visceral and sensitive issue.

The right - and Trump in particular - has ramped up tension by supporting police crack-downs and encouraging armed militias. They contrast violence on the left as 'mob violence' and as 'destructive', while upholding the violence of the right as 'patriotic' and 'defensive'.

The right is focusing on this issue because it’s one on which they feel they can win. And they may well be right. By stoking the fears of ‘middle America’ as they did so persistently during their convention, they’ve managed to divert attention away from the issues of police violence, institutional racism and the needs for reform.

The right is equating Biden and democrats with lawlessness, just as in the past it has succeeded in equating liberals with weakness, blackness with welfare and crime, and republicans with patriotism and the constitution.

Too often, the Left has been afraid of fighting back, of actively engaging in the war over definitions, over what things mean. This is a case in point.

It's become a white, republican conservative thing to say that you want your streets to be safe. That you want dangerous people to be watched, contained. But liberal democrats of color want these things too. We too want an end to violence in the streets, and want active criminals to be dealt with, at least constrained.

One of the problems is, the social systems of control that make safe streets happen are largely under the control of the right, and they are highly suspect in many communities of the left. Which is why the left has always protested against the agents of the law, as far back as there has been Black protest in America, since the days when slave-catchers had legal authority to kidnap free human beings and re-claim them as some man's property. 

The right keeps wanting to say that the problems of police have disappeared, except for the odd, bad apple. The right wants to deny any responsibility for the state of distrust and for the demands for social justice, reform and defunding the police.

They pretend that legitimate protests have not been happening, because there's nothing to protest in Trump's America. The only legitimate action by citizens is the armed defense of the nation against vandals, looters and those who hate America. It's right out of Rynd's "Atlas Shrugged", a brilliant fantasy novel about godlike heros who overcome the hoards of the weak and servile socialists who want to sap the wealth and vitality of real humans.

The Left can't afford to make the mistake of leaving the definitions to the other side. And we can't win the war - which is already underway; no use arguing about whether anyone wants a war or not - if we won't even engage. We can't afford to focus so insistently on the social injustice issues that we hold ourselves indifferent to the vandalism, looting and attacks on police. That's even if we want the repudiation and defunding of the police. We - and not just the right - have to be willing to recognize personal responsibility. Not just that of a police officer who stands by while a fellow squeezes the life out of a citizen with his knee, but also that of a demonstrator who torches a store, or who doesn't, but who afterwards decides to help himself to the goodies that were made available.

These are issues that cannot be ignored without alienating a large segment of the American voting public. And without eroding the integrity of what the protests and demonstrations are about.

It’s hard for the Left to call attention to the 'disruptors', anarchists and looters whom so many are doing their best to make the symbols of what the Left stands for. I understand the reluctance, because the size and importance of this segment of the left is already exaggerated. And because attention to them has consistently been used to ignore the underlying causes of unrest and protest. And also because we understand the anger about a capitalist system that has consistently 'looted' the poor in favor of the rich, and then uses the law to both maintain inequalities and to punish those who oppose them. And, because much of the violence taking place is caused by policing forces, and by the vigilantes that come out to support them, with the backing of the president and republicans.

But we lose the effectiveness of protest, and ultimately will reinforce the crushing of dissent, if we lose the upcoming election because voters have been too frightened by the prospects of lawlessness and disorder to pay attention to anything else. And if Democrats become identified with an indifference to Law & Order, because our attention is so focused on Justice and constitutional law that we are seen as willing to overlook - or outright forgive - street-level crime and destruction of property, we may truly be inviting a new American fascism that goes beyond our worst nightmares.

I'm not sure how the message "You will not be safe under Biden" will be successfully corrected, but it has to be addressed directly. I think the democrats missed an opportunity during their convention, by not addressing these issues preemptively. I have to agree, as the republicans charged over and over during their convention, that the democrats hardly mentioned the disorder that has occurred - however minimally - alongside peaceful protests. And, by not naming it where it does occur, democrats can be more effectively charged with ignoring or tolerating it..

America isn't going to change overnight - as we should all know by now, especially after witnessing the strong, reactionary lurch backward that began immediately following Obama's election. I too felt a kind of jubilation at the overwhelming reactions, nationwide and worldwide, to George Floyd's murder, and the calls for justice. But I'm not deluded that the celebrity activism of the NBA is representative of the 'likely voters' who will mail in their ballots or stream to the polls on November 3.

Some of those likely voters are already tiring of all the attention on systemic racism - which a great many of them still do not grasp. They may be much more concerned about the rising numbers of assaults and the threat of street violence. And Biden and Harris damned sure better have a lot to say about that. At the very least, Democrats need to point out, again and again, that the violence occurring in America TODAY, is occurring in Trump's America, out of the discord HE has generated.