The reason I am a lawyer today is because of Rodney King. Well, not HIM, per se, but the whole situation. Back then, as now, there were many who were more upset at the looting of things, than the savage beating of King.

They saw the police as doing what was necessary

to protect “good decent people” from “that kind” of folks.

That kind were not men.They were not husbands, fathers, sons, artists, cab drivers, doctors - but rather only thugs & gang members. That is all that was said about them, most especially in the nightly news.

Black men simply were NOT newsworthy unless they were being entertaining or violent. Study after study have proved that editorial choices were perpetually made to highlight the danger to society posed by out of control black & brown men. This warped, stereotype framing has been

going on for decades.

Since the time of Rodney King, some things have gotten better.
The election of Obama gave a lot of us hope that things were changing. But I noticed in the words of Sarah Palin, that her ilk had no intention of accepting that sort of change.

The Tea Party-ish GOP dug in its heels & decided that its mission was to see Obama fail & to preserve the notion that the White House was for White Men, and perhaps occasionally, the white women who derived their status from them.

As they dug in, they could feel the social movement towards equality gathering steam. People like Mitch McConnell, Paul Ryan &Lindsey Graham understood that demographics were working against them, and if they didn’t do something drastic, they would soon become political fossils.

So they bent to the right, thinking they could harness all that seething racial resentment & use it to fuel “conservative” policy, which-with today’s hind sight-was just subterfuge for funneling tax money into the hands of their friends.

But then came Trump. He didn’t seek to

appease the racially resentful. He sought to UNLEASH them. He validated every one of their deeply held beliefs. He assured them that HE was going to place THEM back atop the social pecking order.

And he made it OK for them to act upon their instinct to dominate because

he would change our government
and our institutions to allow them free reign to do so.

That is what Trump was promising we he vowed to remove the “deep state.” If you have wondered what the “deep state” is, it is people loyal to ethics, integrity, equality, professionalism,

honesty and justice, rather than to white male supremacy. And in today’s politics, the litmus test of loyalty to white dominance is simply loyalty to Trump. It isn’t more complex than that.

The attack on the “deep state” is an attack on Jews, minorities, Muslims, women, gays,

immigrants, and anyone who is comfortable with them.

If you cannot get your head around what is happening now, take off the lenses you have worn, maybe for your entirety life, and see Trumpers as the screaming, seething segregationists of the 50’s and 60’s.

They may look a little different, but the sentiment, the driving motivation, is EXACTLY the same.

They have NEVER been able to see black people, or gay people, or non-Christians as equal: not in the sight of the law, not in the order of society, and not in the eyes of God.

Trump has given oxygen &fuel to all of that simmering bigotry. The truly twisted of the bunch have come to believe that they have the absolute right to exorcize their frustration &rage from the last 30 years of social progress, on any “inferior” person who has the misfortune

of crossing their path.

The officers in Minnesota, Amy Cooper, the men who killed Ahmaud, what they did was not new. Indeed, we have seen many many examples of white people demonstrating that they believe the police exist to be their personal enforcers. They want police to

contain minorities & bend them by the use of authority or force, into absolute submission. Nothing short of total compliance is acceptable, and even that is frequently insufficient to stave off brutal over reaction by the police.

We see in real time the completely different way

police approach minorities without weapons, as compared to their kid glove handling of white men with weapons designed to take out a city block. Those images force us to wonder, whose side are they on?

In THIS polarized, badly broken country, you have to pick a side.

Trump will have it no other way. You either believe that the system has to enure solely to the benefit of white people, or you do not. And what is so so sad, is that there is no way to negotiate that. One side will ultimately win that battle.

That side WILL be us.

The only solace that the Trumpers may have, is that we are simply NOT hard wired as they are. We believe in share. They believe only in oppress, or be oppressed. Which is why the only tenable outcome of this battle is for them to be removed from power for the foreseeable future.

If they cannot share, they cannot play at all.

Do not, however, despair. I believe that goodness will prevail. The young people will win. And as painful as this chapter is-as raw and open a wound as it may be-it can only TRULY be healed by being brought into the light.

It is now there for all to see. It is undeniable. And the good people of America can and must come
together to heal it.

And we will.