Violence and Virus vs. 1968

Occasionally, the Sunday-morning talking heads wax eloquent about our divisive times and compare ours to the period leading up to the civil war. I always find that to be a bit of a stretch, but comparisons with 1968 are hard to avoid. We have civil unrest in our cities where, alongside a handful of peaceful protesters, lawless mobs burn, vandalize and loot. We have racial tensions, both real and imagined. We have a deep cultural divide, not as clearly along generational lines as I recall it from ‘68, but it’s every bit as deep. We are still bogged down in proxy wars, but the real trouble is at home. We also experience effects similar to those of the assassinations of ‘68. Thankfully, no prominent leaders have been methodically taken down, but citizens killed by police are politicized to the point where police are killed by citizens in retaliation, and it all takes place alongside a backdrop of gang warfare that dwarfs Chicago in the 1930s.

One measure of the divide between us is the list of seemingly mundane issues that fall along political lines. If I told you five years ago that the country would be split over specific medical treatments, would you have believed me? If I suggested that the interpretation of pharmaceutical studies would be politicized, wouldn’t you think I was nuts? The left, in general, has tended not to be on board with the war on drugs, but mention Hydroxychloroquine and holy smokes. That hits a nerve.

The left also holds the administration responsible for the pandemic as a whole. Although the White House was quick to limit travel from China, they waited thirty days before shutting down Europe, which proved to be our biggest source of the virus. In hindsight, that was a big mistake. Everyone acknowledges as much, but what the left wants us to remember is that when we only had 15 cases in the entire country, the President said that he thought they had caught it in time. I don’t have any peer-reviewed studies to cite, but I have reason to believe that, as a general rule, people who sleep with supermodels tend to be optimists.

The mask issue is every bit as divisive. My friends on the left wear them with pride. It’s a political statement. It’s their answer to open-carry. My friends on the right do it begrudgingly, if at all. Like the shutdown of schools and the economy, the wearing of masks is seen by some as a manipulation of personal rights for a pandemic that is statistically comparable to the tuberculosis epidemic of the 19th Century, the misidentified Spanish Flu of the early 20th Century (it originated in Kansas) and to a lesser extent, the 25,000 to 50,000 annual fatalities attributed to the seasonal flu. Comparisons with the seasonal flu are a bit flawed. We are currently showing more than 150,000 COVID fatalities on the books, and although there is reason to believe that some of that is overstated for tracking purposes, it is still unquestionably more fatal than the seasonal variety. The necessity of the economic shutdown is a different matter. I question that myself.

No, I don’t think civil war is inevitable, but we took a small step closer this week. It would not have taken a clairvoyant to predict that in cities where politicians sideline law enforcement and allow mobs to rule the streets, it was only a matter of time before vigilantes struck back. Well, it has happened. On Wednesday morning, a 17-year old male was arrested for killing two rioters and injuring a third. He had traveled to Kenosha, Wisconsin, from a neighboring community to join what was described as a “heavily armed militia” that claimed to be acting in support of law enforcement. I fear that we will see more of that until our politically correct mayors decide to get their cities under control.

Having said that, we can’t ignore the catalyst for the violence. People in minority communities continue to get shot and the general public doesn’t understand why. I have always said, and will continue to say, that police officers deserve to go home to their families at night, but I think there is room for a few policy tweaks. I find it difficult to believe that, given our economic and technological might, we don’t have some more effective tools for non-lethal force at our disposal. We can get better at this.

I also think that the law enforcement community would do themselves and the rest of us a favor by being more transparent and educating us on the rules of engagement. The narrative usually goes like this: An officer perceives danger and in a split second has to make a life and death decision. The officer’s assessment is usually correct but occasionally isn’t. We all see a crude phone video that’s unsettling as heck and find out that the perpetrator was not armed. The officer gets hauled into court, and although his life and career are messed up, he doesn’t go to jail because he had every reason to perceive that he was in personal danger and had to make a split-second decision. So that’s when we burn our neighborhoods down.

In the shooting of Jacob Blake, which is tragic by any measure, it has been reported that he had been “tased,” at least once, yet he was not subdued, nor was he compliant. When he went to the car, it wasn’t clear if he was reaching into it for something, or intending to drive it. There are sketchy reports about a knife in the car, but a car in itself can be a lethal weapon. Does the use of the taser demonstrate that there was a responsible, orderly escalation of force? I’m way out of my wheelhouse here, and would not speculate as to the officer’s guilt or innocence. That’s what investigations are for, but it’s what I don’t know; what we all don’t know, that underlines my point. It would behoove the law enforcement community to educate us if they are willing.

Granted, there is a contingent of people who want you to believe that police officers just drive around all night looking for black folks to shoot. That won’t change, but for the rest of us, it would be nice to see evidence that we are rethinking the lethal force equation, and at the same time, learn more about what it’s like to walk in the shoes of the officer.