Donald Trump and American carnage // Will Urban Uprisings Help Trump?
The story of Trump’s
presidency was arguably always leading to this moment, with its toxic mix of
weak moral leadership, racial divisiveness, crass and vulgar rhetoric and an
erosion of norms, institutions and trust in traditional information sources.
Taken together, these ingredients created a tinderbox poised to explode when
crises came.
Trump, they say, was
uniquely ill-qualified
for this moment. He tried to wish away the threat of the coronavirus and
failed to prepare, then paid no heed to how communities of colour bore the
brunt of its health and economic consequences. As unrest now grips dozens of
cities, he speaks an authoritarian language of “thugs”, “vicious dogs” and
“when the looting starts, the shooting starts”. The nation waits in
vain for a speech that might heal wounds, find a common sense of purpose and
acknowledge the generational trauma of African Americans. That would require
deep reading, cultural sensitivity and human empathy, none of which are known
to be among personal attributes of Trump..
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/01/george-floyd-donald-trump-black-lives-matterWill Urban Uprisings Help Trump?
It’s simply incorrect to argue that mass political violence inevitably spurs a
backlash that benefits conservatives. By 1970, Nixon sought to nationalize that
year’s congressional elections as a referendum on law and order—even
intentionally spurring crowd violence against himself for the cameras to
capture. A columnist reported, “Nixon’s advance men this fall have carefully
organized with local police to allow enough dissenters into the staging areas
so the president will have his theme well illustrated.”
When disorder is all
around them, voters tend to blame the person in charge - and, sometimes, punish
those who exploit the disorder for political gain. That this was a wrong,
and overly simplistic, conclusion is suggested by another of that year’s
election results - Bobby Kennedy’s. Campaigning in a Black neighborhood in
Indianapolis for the Democratic primary in Indiana, a racially diverse
bellwether state, he received word of Martin Luther King’s assassination before
it had become public - before his audience knew.
So he broke the news to them in
a tender, improvised
rhetorical masterpiece in which, for the first time publicly, he
reflected on the assassination of his brother and the pain of losing someone you
love to violence. The fact that Indianapolis was one of few big cities not to
face rioting that day is often attributed to Kennedy’s speech. And though the
reasons are many and complex, and still debated today, he won the primary.... When disorder is all around
them, voters tend to blame the person in charge for the disorder—and,
sometimes, punish those who exploit it for political gain....
