So I guess we won't be defunding the police after all. When a mob surged disgracefully into the U.S. Capitol, armed agents of the state rightly repelled the attack. There's a lesson here.
Actually there are several. The most important being the need to find some constructive way forward. And if you think it starts with me repudiating my past support for Donald Trump, I can't do it. Not from pride, stubbornness or something darker. Because I never supported him.
From the time his candidacy became serious in 2016 I insisted that he was unfit for office. And lately he has been doing all he can to prove it beyond any shadow of doubt.
Worse, many of his supporters have been trying to prove they are what their opponents say they are. And not just the rioters. Everyone who acts as if it were a demonstrated fact that the election was stolen.
As I have written previously, I do not think 2020 saw the immaculate conception of President Biden. I'm quite used to being isolated on a policy issue. But it's strange to find myself almost alone in the radical centre on this one.
I suspect there was ballot fraud in more than a few places. It would be astounding if there had not been. But I gravely doubt it was sufficient to change the overall outcome even if, and I'm agnostic on this point, it did move at least one state from the Republican to the Democratic column.
Before you yell at me, please recall that as I've also already said, and sometimes it is one's moral as well as intellectual duty to state or indeed restate the obvious, the Democrats should not have dismissed the possibility. Since they almost certainly won the election anyway, and are sure they did, they have a very high immediate stake in its integrity, to say nothing of their more general stake in the health of the Republic.
In the face of allegations of irregularity, they should have declared their determination to get to the bottom of any plausible claims. Instead they went all smash-mouth. So what if, months from now, some intrepid reporter and editor reveal undeniable cheating, perhaps enough to flip one very close state? Can you imagine the sour vindication many MAGA types will feel?
If not, allow me to explain. It will mirror the sour vindication many anti-Trumpers felt when that mob attacked the capitol. And what we need right now is not sour vindication but some form of generosity.
Which brings me back to defunding the police. A major problem in contemporary American politics, and not just there or only now, is loud mindless polarization. Too many Trump supporters are sneering defensively that the same Democrats now denouncing mob violence seemed to wink at it through much of 2020. And the problem is, they're right. But they have no constructive purpose in being right. Public affairs should not be a race to the bottom where one side says "Your mob attacked democracy" and the other says "So did yours" then blows are exchanged.
It's not just this attack on the Capitol in which, let us not forget, a number of people died under circumstances not yet clear. A few days ago an agonized NBC news alert said "An Ohio city shows the devastating impact of 2020's rise in gun violence". And my first uncharitable thought was: Oh, you only just now noticed that, without law enforcement, order breaks down especially for the "marginalized"?
Perhaps so. And it's tempting to stick my tongue in their eye over it. But to what end? Surely the point here is for one side to say yes, policing must not be brutal or racist and the other to say yes, policing is necessary.
Which is why I'm also trying not to do the anti-Trump sneer. Having spent years telling Republicans, conservatives and Christians not to put their faith in this man, I am technically in a position to taunt them. But I don't want to.
OK, I do a bit. But I'm trying to resist, because I feel their pain, including at the taunting now coming from the other side. Enough with the virtue-signalling already. Also, for all my distaste for Trump, I am not blind to his very real accomplishments, for instance in the Middle East. And in giving a voice to many who had been voiceless too long. But I need his backers to concede that he gave them the wrong voice.
I need them to say American elections are not decided by violent mobs rushing Congress. And for the left, seeing the police defending democracy, to say proper policing is a necessary and admirable part of governing.
It doesn't matter who goes first. But it matters that we go soon.
Photo Credit: New Statesman
