What to say

Apologies for the mild radio silence of late. I have gotten pulled into discussions on Facebook about the ongoing protests following the killing of George Floyd (today we all know what I'm writing about, when I look back at this 10 years later, I may not -- though I hope I do).

I put a spectacularly ill-timed post up from a friend of my brother-in-law's who was a longtime  officer with the NYPD and then New York Housing Police the morning after Floyd's killing. That pissed off a fair number of friends of color of mine, after which I decided to focus on reading and listening rather than making my voice heard. But, inevitably, my brain/mouth -- to the extent I can separate them -- draw(s) me back into things. And, since I tend not to post the exact same thing as everyone else (why bother?), discussions get started, which demand responses. Which is good, because what's a social platform for if not discussion? Certainly we have seen the limits of virtue-signalling and demonstrating allegiance to one tribe or another.

But it has been a particularly difficult moment to try to be a mediator of discussions, when the basics of the situation on the ground are rather clear. George Floyd's killing has very little ambiguity in it. Nobody could look at it and make up some exculpatory fantasy -- as they did with Ahmaud Arbery. The only discussion can be about the way forward, and on this score Trump and the Law and Order faction are going with a nuclear option that threatens to explode them or us.

One edge fear I have is that Trump wants to keep populations of color and liberals in the streets engaging in superspreader events so that the coronavirus will rage on, giving him an excuse to push elections into a vote by mail paradigm or have restricted polling places in urban centers. Democratic polling has shown that African-Americans won't vote by mail. So Trump might be willing to gamble that his electorate will vote no matter what, because whatever else we may say about them, they seem to have been making it to the polls.