I saw a comment today on Facebook from someone I don't know, so I'm not sure if he's a conservative troll or just a very, very timid Democrat. His photo on his Facebook account indicates he's white. He gave what I take to be a version of "I'm not a racist, but ..." This discussion was about whether the slogan "defund the police" is too scary for Democrats to use. He agreed that it was saying, "Agree. Also think war against Confederate statues is a distraction AT THIS TIME. Not sad to see a one go down. Afraid it is just a reminder to every Trump supporter just why they voted for him in the first election. There’s a season for every purpose."
Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter From a Birmingham Jail called out this argument long ago.
So, your option is, what, Democrats should find their own bunker to hide in until November so they won't accidentally say anything that might irritate some Republican who would never vote for a Democrat in 100 years? It was the hardcore Trumpist South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley who jumped on the remove-Confederate-symbolism bandwagon after the racist mass murder in a Charleston church in 2015. It certainly wasn't because she was out to anger Republican white supremacists, it wasn't because moving a flag or a statue is cheap and easy compared to taking on the arms manufacturers who flood the country with small arms. And it scares you that Democrats are as far to the radical left as, uh, ... Nikki Haley?The legacy of the DLC (corporate-friendly Democratic Leadership Council) and the conservative aspects of Clintonism weighs heavily on the Democratic Party. That's true with crime and pretty much everything that touches the causes of excess police violence. Ben Smith described the DLC while it was in its death throes as an organiation (The end of the DLC era Politico 02/07/2011):
The DLC was formed in the 1980s - the debacle of the 1984 Mondale campaign was a key motivator - to wage just that kind of intra-party war against what [the DLC's last director Al] From and his allies saw as interest-group liberals content to consign the Democratic Party to minority status. The group and its best-known chairman, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, pushed balanced budgets, free trade, tough-on-crime policies, and welfare reform – all of which alienated the base, but became a key part of Clinton’s “New Democrat” agenda and his presidential legacy.A large part of the political strategy behind the DLC - to the extent that it was just a corporate lobbyist effort to push the party to be more conservative on economic issues - was based on the fact tht, until 1992, California was considered a "safe" Democratic state in Presidential elections, which meant the Democrats saw themselves needed to win some Electoral College votes from the states of the old Confederacy.
Though it was business-friendly and often cast as a corporate tool – or, as Jesse Jackson once put it, “Democrats for the leisure class” – the DLC had at its core an idea, the seed of the international “third way” movement that produced Clinton, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other leaders on the center-left. Indeed, its financial collapse could prove, in a backhanded way, that it wasn’t just the tool of monied interests since it is shutting its doors for lack of cash.
Since Clinton's victory in 1992, the political landscape has changed drastically, demographically and economically. The Reaganism of the Republican Party has devolved into Trumpism. And if rising strt Tom Cotton is any measure, has plenty more Mussolini potential in it. The bipartisan neoliberal promises that endless tax cuts for the wealthiest, privatizatin of public services, and corporate deregulation "trade" treaties have failed to deliver for the majority the prosperity and freedom they promised. Crime rates have fallen for 25 years or so worldwide and in the United States, but police murdering black men for no good reason is still a common story in the American news. But the Democratic Party is still lurching along with zombie DLC policy ideas and a political strategy of trying to sound as much as possible like conservative Republicans.
If the US were a multiparty parliamentary democracy, one of the two major parties would likely already have become a minor party or gone out of existence, and the other would be struggling to compete for second place. Instead both parties have in some essential way collapsed to the point that the Republicans are running a Presidential campaign that is a demented combination of the Nixon-Agnew law-and-order campaign of 1968 and the March on Rome theatrics of Mussolini and his Fascist Party of 1922. And the Democrats with Status Quo Joe Biden as their candidate is trying for a rerun of 2008, only with a more conservative tone and a much less charismatic candidate.
Meanwhile, 2020 may be on track to become a milestone year like "1968", though we'll have to consult the Owl of Minerva on that afterwards. But we so far have a trifecta of a worldwide pandemic, a massive worldwide recession, and a remarkable nationwide uprising of protest against police violence in the US, with international demonstrations in solidarity. If there was a ever a time for conceptually moribund political parties to transform themselves, this moment right now qualifies. But so far, neither is up to it.
So both parties are content to avoid any kind of leadership that might encourage mainstream white opinion on police violence to drift to get beyond long-standing patterns. And those standard white responses have turned out to be drearily familiar, including:
- He [whatever black man murdered by police we're talking about] probably had it coming.
- Black people cause most of their own problems by making "bad choices", particularly the choice of being born black
- Hey, let's talk about how wonderful and essential cops are! and, look, I'm forwarding this little screed from some cop you've never heard of whining and whining and whining about how touch cops have it.
- We should all pray to God to heal our country where everyone is hurting on all sides This one is a religious take to be expected from ministers for whom "cops shouldn't murder people" would be a heavier dose of Christianity than their flock can handle. Also from their congregants who have relatives who really aren't interested in hearing white supremacist crap from them.
- We need to finally recognize how big a problem racism against African-Americans is in this country. (The subtext is very often: dadgummit, do I really have to pretend to care about this again?)
- We need better training for the police. (A good idea as far as it goes that has recently become at least a more mainstream respectable one, and morphs easily into Biden's version: Let's give more money to the police! For training, that is.)
- Some statues of racist, pro-slavery heroes have come down, and I'm fine with that but I'm not entirely comfortable with it, especially the wildcat versions. But let's not go too far with it! (The comment at the first of this post is a variation of this one.
- We need to set up some more task forces. And maybe a commission or two. (This has the validation of Obama taking this general position.)
- We hereby declared that we've definitely decided to do something serious this time! Check back with us in a year or so and maybe we'll have some concrete ideas. (Minneapolis City Council approach.)
There really are some large problems that need to be tackled that are central to the police violence issue, e.g., the perennial War on Drugs announced by Richard Nixon in 1971, almost 49 years ago to the day. But it is always an option to argue for inaction by pointing to larger contexts that have to be solved as a way to avoid talking about urgently needed and practical changes: Racism is a much larger problem; capitalism produces this kind of policing; Jesus is our only hope and until everyone becomes Christians there is nothing we can do.
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