STOKING VIOLENCE

So, it has come to this.

Monumentally inept in confronting the coronavirus crisis, impeached for trying to bribe a foreign government, commuting the prison sentence of the felon who might have sunk him, confirmed as Russia's colluder-in-chief by a bi-partisan Senate panel, trailing in every poll taken for most of this year, illegally staging the Republican National Convention at the White House, obtaining no bounce from that week-long lie-fest in any case, narcissistically programmed  to care only and always for himself, and able to look evil in the eye and welcome it so long as evil returns the favor . . .

Donald Trump has now settled on the only means left to create a possibility of re-election.

He has decided to stoke violence.

As anyone with a functioning news feed knows, Portland, Oregon has been in the headlines for the past three months.  After the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police last May, protesters took to the streets of Portland as they did almost everywhere else.  For the most part, and as was also the case everywhere else, those protests were peaceful.   Less than two months in, however,  the federal Department of Homeland Security (DHS) deployed irregularly uniformed officers to the city.  There were no names on their brown cammo fatigues and no insignia designating their federal department or service.  They were armed with Trump's egotistical weapon of choice, the over-sized, sharpie-signed Executive Order suitable for framing, and were told to protect Portland's federal courthouse from ostensibly violent anarchists.  

The federal force was neither invited by the state and local authorities nor needed in view of the actual threat.  Indeed, inasmuch as what Trump, Acting DHS Secretary Chad Wolf and Attorney General William Barr called "anarchy" was principally vandalism in the form of spray-painted graffiti on the courthouse's walls, the threat was de minimis.  Comprised of some customs and border patrol agents along with personnel from the US Marshalls Service, the force also wasn't trained in crowd control or in policing would-be riots.  Their  presence  predictably resulted in larger protests but instead of de-esclating tension, which is more or less Policing 101 when faced with hostile or emotional crowds, Trump's troops exacerbated it.  

Protesters were arrested without probable cause and then ferried away in unmarked vans to makeshift holding facilities.  

When the famous "Wall of Moms" stood between  federal officers and the protesters, the mothers were tear gassed.  

When a Navy veteran approached just to talk, the feds beat him.  

And when one protester merely stood  up . . .

They shot him.

Eventually, Trump's ersatz cops had to leave. The sideshow of their presence hadn't goosed the President's numbers (which was really all he wanted in any case), and Oregon Gov. Brown had state police guard the federal courthouse and shoo away the graffiti artists. Though DHS denied it was leaving, it stood down nonetheless.  Though the protests continued, their size shrank and none were violent.

Then came Kenosha.

There's a -- and now, it seems, almost inevitably -- "bad dream" quality to the events in Kenosha this past week and a half.  I do not know what happened as the police shot Jacob Blake seven times in the back on August 24. All I have seen is the video taken by an on-looker.  In it, Blake is running around a car and moving into the open passenger-side back door toward the rear seats.  One of the cops is grabbing his shirt, holding it tightly enough so that it rises off Blake's lower back.  None of us -- the great unwashed and uninformed -- knows what, if anything, Blake is saying, why he is doing what he is doing, or what the police are telling him, and investigators are saying nothing other than "be patient". His family attorney  has issued  a statement, and in it he asserts that Blake was de-escalating a domestic disturbance, was tasered by police, and was circling the car to check on his children when he was shot.  

Their view is that the shooter should be arrested.

But  even if that is not the whole story . . .

Can we do a reality check here?

Blake was surrounded by police, one of whom had his hands on him.

Did they have to shoot him seven times in the back?  Were they in imminent danger? 

Lots of folks who afterward took to the steets -- yet again --  think not.

And that is not unreasonable.

What happened in Kenosha thereafter, however, most assuredly is.  

Police vehicles were vandalized.  The windows of Kenosha's  public library were smashed.  Dump trucks were set on fire and Wisconsin's Governor had to call out the National Guard.  When the city's Mayor tried to hold a press conference with community leaders outside the city's Public Safety Building, he couldn't.  When he tried to get back inside, protesters blocked the door.  A cufew was imposed but looters burned stores even as Blake's family called for peace.  And then, in the middle of it all, 17 year-old Kyle Rittenhouse drove from Illinois with his AR-15 assault rifle, joined other armed individuals and self-appointed militia in the streets of Kenosha, and killed two people while  injuring a third. Afterward, he walked by police, hands high and assault rifle akimbo.  Though it is illegal for a minor to openly carry a firearm in  Wisconsin, he was not arrested.

Rittenhouse claims he went to Kenosha to protect property and help any who were injured.  He arrived with a friend (who was also armed).  On the night of their arrival, they stood outside a mechanic shop that he claimed had called for help. "Our job," he explained, "is to protect this business". That, of course, isn't his job at all. His lawyer claims Rittenhouse opened fire in self defense after being accosted by "multiple rioters".  The criminal complaint filed once Rittenhouse actually was arrested back in Illinois the next day says he opened fire after a plastic bag was thrown at him.  He has been charged with homicide.

Four days later, back in Portland, there was another killing.  This time, as a caravan of armed Trump supporters rolled through the city confronting BLM protesters,  one of those supporters was shot and killed.  The shooter has not yet been identified or arrested.

A normal President faced with all these tragedies would call for calm, implore people to leave their guns -- as well as any armed adolescents -- under lock and key at home, let the police protect whatever and whoever needs protecting, and deplore violence in whatever political garb it comes clothed.

Trump, however, is not normal.

In the past two weeks,  he has (falsely) accused the "radical left" of being responsible for the on-going protests in Portland and those in Kenosha, and regularly exaggerrates (to the point of caricature) the extent of violence in the nationwide BLM protests as a whole.  He has praised uninvited militia and the armed Trump supporters who have shown up in both towns ostensibly to protect property and restore order, neither of which they accomplish or are in any way good at.  He defended Kyle Rittenhouse, claiming -- with no evidence whatsoever -- that the teen acted in self-defense, and during last week's RNC, his now former counselor, Kellyanne Conway, made his real views explicit. "The more chaos and anarchy and vandalism and violence reigns," said Conway, "the better it is for the very clear choice on who's best on public safety and law and order."

So, reduced to a bumper sticker, Trump's campaign  is simple -- "If the streets burn, Trump wins."

Yesterday, Joe Biden went to Pittsburgh to speak in a converted steel mill.

He condemned violence: "Rioting is not protesting," said Biden.  "Looting is not protesting.  Setting fires is not protesting.  It's lawlessness, plain and simple. And those who do it should be prosecuted. Violence will not bring change.  It will only bring destruction.  It's wrong in every way."

He condemned Trump:  "The president long ago forfeited any moral leadership in this country.  He can't stop the violence because for years he has fomented it."

And then he made clear the difference between the two:  "I look at violence and and I see lives and communities and the dreams of small businesses being destroyed . . . Donald Trump looks at violence and sees a political lifeline."

At this point, roughly 60 days before the election, the choice is pretty simple.

There's Joe Biden,  the man who would be President.

And then there's Donald Trump, the man-child . . .

Who can't act like one.