Talking Past the Problem

In response to the growing outcry for police reform, President Trump had a Rose Garden signing of an executive order to try to encourage some change in policing, and while some have referred to the effort as "woeful",  I'm not entirely sure what more can be expected from this president at this time. 

I guess that sounds damning, and of course, that's how I mean it. The man has honestly spoken in favor of police brutality in the past, and has long been critical of the Black Live Matter movement. It's easy to be skeptical of the intentions of a politician (for this is exactly what Trump is, now) who has shown no concern for a reckoning regarding policing previously, and has even advertised the desire to see the death sentence for men eventually found to be innocent of a grave crime. His most recent step towards addressing the protests in the wake of the George Floyd slaying was an empty photo op that relied on brutality towards protesters to even be made possible. 

Which isn't to say that the executive order is completely useless. I think that some of what is raised has utility in regards to creating a more flexible emergency response that doesn't rely only on police force alone but integrates social services, and creating a culture with strong professional standards and a culture of accountability through training programs and a database to keep track of officer violations (that might lead to removing officers who consistently engage in civil rights abuses and prevent their being moved along to other police forces) are actually reasonable and apt responses. I just don't know how as an executive order it can reach down to the local level, and feel that congressional legislation would have more leverage in facilitating change. 

But the actual remarks made by Trump today strike me as problematic, and consistent with a worldview that isn't going to really address what has brought so many people to the streets. In a campaign year, he had to take a dig at former President Obama and his current presidential opponent, the former Vice-President Biden--quite undeserved, in that the previous administration certainly did do the work, and Trump's DOJ tore it down (just like the Admnistration tore down the previous administration's pandemic response tools).  Trump had to talk up the economy that he squandered with his pitiable COVID-19 response with a promise to bring it back, deviating from the topic. 

He also quite wildly referred to school choice:

We achieved the lowest black, Hispanic, and Asian unemployment rates in American history and we will do it again, we’ll do it again. We’re fighting for school choice, which really is the civil rights of all time in this country. Frankly school choice is the civil rights statement of the year, of the decade and probably beyond because all children have to have access to quality education. A child’s zip code in America should never determine their future and that’s what was happening. We’re very, very strong on school choice and I hope everybody remembers that. And it’s happening, it’s already happened, but it’s happening. We have tremendous opposition from people that know they shouldn’t be opposing it, school choice. All children deserve equal opportunity because we are all made equal by God, so true.

This history of school choice has not actually been all that much about equality, so much as segregation of schooling by other means. That felt a little like an intentional dog whistle.

But he also wildly deviated off topic to say things like there is an AIDS vaccine (nope--and PrEP, although great, is not the same thing), and made empty platitudes like this:

Americans can achieve anything when we work together as one national family. To go forward we must seek cooperation not confrontation. We must build upon our heritage, not tear it down. And we must cherish the principles of America’s founding as we strive to deliver safe, beautiful, elegant justice and liberty for all.

This, along with "Americans want law and order, they demand law and order. They may not say it, they may not be talking about it but that’s what they want. Some of them don’t even know that’s what they want but that’s what they want...sounds an awful lot to me like: "You will take the law and order you get, so we'll create the law and you go and be orderly." And that is not exactly how this democracy is supposed to go.

He is saying things that some people might want to hear, but he's talking past the problem--it's a set piece for his campaign. We need a partner who will work towards a bigger solution, and he won't be it.

Not ever.

(FWIW--I failed to point it out myself, so if it were unclear, Trump is as disinclined to ever mention structural or systemic racism as part of the roots of our injustice system as he once claimed Democrats were to --inaccurately--refer to Islamic extremism as a driver of terrorism.)