What have we learned:
1. Terrorists can act with impunity so long as they are white; they can attack police, lay siege to any capitol, openly carry guns to legislatures, plot kidnappings, kill, and even dress like dystopian Price Is Right contestants while doing so, and will calmly walk away, unscathed, toting mementos.
2. Not only will they face few, if any, consequences; they will take selfies with the police charged with protecting us from them
3. Lawmakers egging on the terrorists will face no consequences either.
4. Law enforcement is completely fungible depending on the perpetrator(s); “law” is changeable moment to moment, and “consequence” meted out absent trial, also with impunity
5. Law enforcement is rife with collaborators in domestic insurrection; so long as that continues, there is no law.
6. If you are black, you will face censure, endless public rage, and forced unemployment for silently taking a knee; if you are white, you can raise a fist in solidarity with terrorists on your way into the Senate, where later, amid the wreckage, you can make an utterly disingenuous, provably false and craven speech, validating and supporting the inane narrative undergirding the terrorists and their violence, and suffer no consequences. Likely, you will be rewarded.
7. A candidate can run and win on an openly white supremacist, xenophobic platform, with enthusiastic support from half of the constituency, no matter the damage he/she causes, so long as the racism is shared. Enthusiasm and support will grow as norms and laws are broken, especially absent real punishment.
8. Lies are the engine, the more outrageous the better, and money the lifeblood — combine these two and you will always find a Ted Cruz-type to excitedly sign on, greasing the skids with their personal snake oil. Bonus points for scripture quotes.
This is merely a small part of what we now know.
History tells us repeatedly what happens when law is lopsided, criminals are allowed free reign, the power of the state falls into the hands of violent xenophobes, and justice is sacrificed for empty comity.
If America is to survive, it’s on all of us. The perpetrators, from police to terrorists, to legislators to president and administrative officers, must be held to account and punished within the full extent of the law.
Otherwise, the ultimate lesson is: MORE.
- Rob Shapiro is a Los Angeles-based actor and songwriter. Todd Johnson’s review of Rob’s excellent, tragedy-inspired album, Beauty in the Broken Place, was– quite appropriately– the first article posted in East Portland Blog in the year 2020.
