President Obama recently said: “America is not as divided as some have suggested.” With all due respect Mr. President…I disagree.
I think America is far more divided than we’d like to believe; and I think that our nation stands on the precipice of a very dangerous conflagration.
There are those who would call the assassinations in Dallas a by-product of the racial divide that still exists within the country. There are those that would compare the fear and tension in the aftermath of those shootings with that which gripped the country in the 1960’s. Both summations are oversimplifications of the complex systemic problems that threaten to tear this country apart.
The violence that engulfed our country in the 60’s was essentially over two controversial subjects….the Vietnam War and black civil rights. America’s global interventionist policies and the civil rights of black Americans are still the subjects of heated and sometimes violent debates; but they serve as but a portion of the corrosive divides that threaten our nation.
We are a nation that has become anesthetized to violence. 20 six year olds are massacred in their classroom. Gun violence in our nation’s second largest city is commonplace; many of the city’s neighborhoods war zones. Reports of police using excessive force against young African American males seem an almost daily occurrence. More often than not domestic disputes result in a violent conclusion; too often a tragedy if a firearm is available.
Yet we do nothing.
Nothing but to take this culture of violence and intermingle it into a society where a confluence of difficult issues are having a very real impact on people’s lives. Economic inequality, inadequate wages, burdensome debt, job loss, foreclosures, skyrocketing tuition costs, lagging education, immigration issues, terrorism, institutional failures throughout government and a congress that is little more than a rotting corpse wedged against the door to progress. If you are borne in poverty you are 65% likely to remain impoverished until you die. For many the American dream is dead. The reality of that statement can be at once soul crushing and incendiary.
The reaction to all of these issues from the fringes is bombast, hate speech and fearmongering. After the massacre in Dallas we saw supposed leaders weighing in with a divisive message that only added fuel to the fire. Former Congressman Joe Walsh: “We are at war. Watch out Obama. Watch out Black Lives Matter punks.” Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani: “Black Lives Matter is painting a target on the back of all police officers. Black Lives Matter is inherently racist and anti-American.” New York Police Commissioner William Bratton called Black Lives Matter: “a leaderless crusade that doesn’t accomplish anything.” The head of the Minneapolis Police Officers Federation, Bob Kroll, calls Black Lives Matter: “a terrorist organization.”
Normally society would shrug off such comments as extremist views from the radical fringes. But today the fringe elements have found their voice. How else does one explain the elevation of one Donald Trump to the status of presumptive nominee of the Republican Party for the office of President of the United States? A man whose political views and inflammatory, divisive, racist, fearmongering hate speech are one in the same.
What we are facing today is not simply a black versus white issue. It’s not just about gun violence or economic inequality or any other singular issue. It is far more complicated than that.
It is about who we are as a society and what we want that society to look like in the future.
I no longer see us as a civilized society. People don’t treat each other the way we do in a civilized society. In a civilized society black fathers should not have to warn their black sons how to behave if they are pulled over by a police officer.
No, I see us as living in a jungle. A jungle where jungle law prevails. The survival of the fittest.
The hunter and the hunted.
Micah Johnson recently demonstrated that the rules in our jungle have changed.
The hunted is now the hunter.
What are we going to do about it?
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