America Burning

100,000 dead from the Coronavirus. 40,000,000 have lost their jobs because of an unprecedented 2 and a half month long economic shutdown. Now, cities across America are in flames over racial injustice and police brutality. Meanwhile, the President of the United States continues Tweeting like a Middle School bully. Oh, and this afternoon, a private Company will launch men into orbit for the first time in history. Welcome to America in 2020.

Recency bias is the temptation to think that the most familiar thing is either the worst or best thing to ever happen. It is seldom true. America has lost over 100,000 people in pandemics before. There has been unemployment rates higher than we are seeing today, and in my lifetime there have been at least four times where race riots have swept through American cities. So, none of what we are witnessing is terribly new. Well, that’s not accurate either. We’ve never tried to shut down an entire economy before, no American President before Trump tweeted fifty times a day, and what the heck is TESLA?? What is new and terrible is that all of this is happening at the same time. Scary.

I posted a blog yesterday about the George Floyd murder and subsequent violence that had broken out in Minneapolis. In it I offered two observations, one that although I could never condone violence I could certainly sympathize with the rage and hopelessness that the protesters feel after seeing yet another member of their community murdered by a clearly bad cop, and second that although the majority of police officers are good people doing a difficult job under horrible conditions with courage and nobility, there are far too many bad cops doing unspeakable things and when they do, they need to be brought to justice, not shielded by some mysterious thin blue line claptrap. For reasons that are beyond my ability to comprehend, many people disagree. So, I’ve been thinking it over and trying to come up with a more effective way to communicate the principle at play with regards to police misconduct. After much thought, here goes.

I love teachers. I’m married to one. My daughter is one, as is my sister. Teachers have been huge influencers in my life. They do fundamentally vital work, they fight ridiculous bureaucratic headwinds, and are paid an embarrassing wage compared to the importance of the job they do. However, when one of them gets caught having sex with a student, I’m sorry...I want them in jail. I don’t want to hear some Teacher’s Union hack at a press conference using wishy washy language about stress or mitigating circumstances. I’m not interested in listening to some education bureaucrat talking about complicated relationships and how we have to stand by our teachers. No, no...he had sex with a child. His career as a teacher and his days of being a free man on earth are over!!  Taking this position about this teacher/rapist does not change a single thing about the fact that I love, respect and honor teachers. It simply means that I will not under any circumstance tolerate sex between teachers and their students. 

There. Is that better? Have I made it clearer?

Then there’s this...We need to not rush to judgment. We don’t know what might have provoked this officer to place his knee to the neck of this unarmed man for 8 and a half minutes until he was dead. 

Have we seen video from every angle showing the entire encounter between these four cops and Mr. George Floyd? No. No we have not. But, let me ask you...what could a single unarmed man possibly have done to four heavily armed police officers that would justify the reaction we all DID see on video? Did he take a swing at one of them, resist arrest? Maybe he did. So then, its ok to jab a knee into his neck and sit on him for 8 minutes while he is NOT resisting arrest in response? Why on earth is this such a difficult concept to understand? Was reasonable force exercised by the cops here? If you think so...I just don’t know what to say.

Here’s what I know this morning as my country burns. We, people like me and most of my readers, are going to have to start listening to black and brown people. We are going to have to do a better job of trying to put ourselves in their place, and try to imagine what it’s like to have to live with injustice. We are going to have to develop our underused empathy muscles, the ones atrophied by partisan politics. We need to stop listening to the voices of bitterness and resentment and start listening to the voice of our Savior who died not just for us but for everyone of those angry people in the streets of Minneapolis, Atlanta, Louisville, Oakland, Portland....and Richmond.