It's sort of extraordinary how brutal police are willing to be, the lengths to which they are willing to go, the solidarity they are willing to show, in order to deliver to U.S. citizens—the protection of whom is their ostensible jobs—the clear message, "we are at war with you."

Even more extraordinary how patient Black citizens have been, having been given the message "we are at war with you," staying so peaceful so long.

Even more extraordinary how aggrieved police & those who align w/them are, when citizens finally agree "yes, you are at war with us"

Police exist, ostensibly, to keep the peace. But who believes in peace? Not them. It's those the police wage war upon who believe in peace.

The peace wasn't broken this week. It's been broken all along. It's just this week been broken in a way people like me can't ignore.

If there's a riot, that is the failure of our ostensible peacekeepers, not the rioters. If police are unable to meet riot with any means beyond violence, that is a double failure. If they never even make the attempt, that is utter failure.

It's a failed institution.

Or, I should say, it's a failed institution, if what you want is an institution that keeps peace.

Police behave and talk and carry themselves in society as if they think they were hired to wage war, not keep peace. Exactly so.

Who hired them? We did. I did.

We should fire them

We don't need—shouldn't want—an army to wage war on our fellow citizens. We need peace. We don't have it. So, our keepers of the peace have failed.

So they are a failed institution.

So we should end it. and re-imagine.

If we don't want that, we can't be thought to want peace.

Who burned down the Target? The police.
Who escalated the demonstration?
Who was the cause of the demonstration?
Who killed George Floyd?
Who watched his killer do it?

No police? None of it happens.

They insisted on waging war. Now they have a war zone.

So I have a choice.

My mission shouldn't be to list ways I'm not like George Floyd's killers (I should hope there are many) finding reasons to self-exonerate, and therefore not have to change.

My mission should be to locate ways I benefit from a society that made George Floyd's murder inevitable.

My mission shouldn't be parsing the increasingly muddied report of violence, to assign blame to fellow citizens rising up against systemic generational oppression.

It should be recognizing that all violence belongs to this ostensible peacekeeping institution, that insists on war

But even if my priorities remained entirely selfish, I'd have to conclude this is an unsafe organization to allow to exist.

George Floyd's murderer was the standard, not an outlier.

A force that will do this to others today will do it to you tomorrow. https://twitter.com/chadloder/status/1267011092045115392?s=20

Their mission, ostensibly, is fostering a peaceful lawful society. Protect and serve.

So the riot is their fault.
Thus every broken window is theirs.
And every act of mob violence.
And of course their escalation of every situation is theirs, too.

It's a failed institution.

What do you do with an institution that is ostensibly meant to create peace, that instead creates riots?

It would be like if you had—imagine this—a political party elected to national governance, who refused to govern, instead creating systemic failure to secure their own power.

We can't ever have peace when we empower institutions to wage war against our own brothers and sisters.

May we end all our failed institutions.