Thread by @dshephard

Prepare to see extraordinary restraint and patience by law-enforcement in dealing with these outbursts of MAGA insurrection. Prepare to repeatedly hear your friends express disbelief that so few arrests are made amidst lawless, seditious behavior.

Why is this happening?

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Law-enforcement doesn’t know how to confront WHITE insurrection.

Up and down the chain of command, the entire crop of current law-enforcement came of age over the last half century in which the entire exercise of power was uniformly directed at sublimating people of color 2/

in service of a state that safeguarded the racial-supremacy of white power. The bias against people of color, favoring whites, was inculcated in law-enforcement culture, to say nothing of the society-wide inculcation outside of law-enforcement, & mirrored the existing bias of 3/

the state. Law-enforcement is the projection of force to conserve that order.

Law-enforcement is trained in the ways of state-based racialized-rule. They are trained to see whites as “friend” and non-whites as “foe.” 4/

Their threshold for what constitutes a threat from whites wildly deviates from what constitutes a threat from people of color. They are not psychologically trained to contain a treasonous white mob. In fact, their very definition of treason doesn’t extend beyond racial lines. 5/

They don’t have a clear playbook for how to handle the unrest they face in the late stages of Trump’s rule. Instead, they react with a mix of tolerance, hesitation and fear of angry white rioters. 6/

If you’re looking for signs of insidious systemic racism in America today, the signs are hiding in plain sight - in the disciplinary actions NOT taken. For clarity, contrast the law-enforcement reaction to the siege of the U.S. Capitol today 7/

- the most egregious display of anti-democratic unrest in recent memory - with the violent, suppressive law-enforcement reaction to the Black Lives Matter protests throughout the summer of 2020. Even more specifically, this all plays out as the Kenosha D.A. simultaneously 8/

refuses to press charges on the police officers who exercised NO restraint, let alone humanity, when confronting Jacob Blake, an unarmed black man, who police shot in the back 7x at point-blank range in front of his children.

How did we get here?

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The American government remains untarnished by internal threat as long as it maintains and propagates racialized rule. The moment the primacy of that racialized rule comes under challenge is the moment the American government and Constitutional law becomes imperiled. 10/

There is one instructive precedent for this in our history: the American Civil War of the 1860s. 160 years ago, the nation fractured over the same internal existential “threat” that faces us now: deracialized-rule. 11/

Here in the 21st century, the majority status of the American white demographic is eroding to a minority, and the nation can no longer sustain legitimacy continuing to deny opportunity, justice and wealth to the diversifying plurality of Americans. 12/

This transition was destined to be replete with paroxysms of political and racial violence. The Trump presidency is a milestone of this transition.

In 2016, sensing the political and social changes underway with the ascendance of people of color and women, 13/

the American electorate sought to restore the old order and “make America great again” by elevating the apotheosis of racialized rule, Donald Trump. Brush fires of hate and political violence became commonplace, foreshadowing a burgeoning civil crisis. 14/

Trump’s recent repudiation in the 2020 presidential election is a stinging rejection of the restoration of that old order and an embrace of a more equitable future. Quite simply, large segments of white America can not accept it. 15/

Consequently, they are “forcing the end” as former FBI assistant director, @FrankFigliuzzi1 warned was inevitable. Specifically, they make an outcome happen that they wanted to happen when they see that it wasn’t going to happen. 16/

That outcome is “getting their way” by any unlawful means necessary. It’s the court of last resort after the Supreme Court denies their case. (It should come as no surprise that before the storming of the U.S. Capitol today, 17/

Rudy Giuliani made a speech wherein he called for “trial by combat.”)

In Summation

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It would seem elementary for law-enforcement to merely apply the laws when faced with these unlawful surges of violence and unrest. In other words, it would seem elementary for them to make mass arrests and contain the mayhem. 19/

However, therein lies an instructive divergence between theory and practice. Lawful and unlawful are not objective truths despite the fact that they are codified as such by law. What is lawful and unlawful is in the eye of the beholder. 20/

The collective eye of the American civic order affords enormous tolerance and privilege based on race. Justice is not blind. That is a merely an ideal, not a reality, and that was on display today for all to see, if they only just looked. 21/

So, prepare to see extraordinary restraint and patience by law-enforcement in dealing with these outbursts of MAGA insurrection. Prepare to repeatedly hear your friends express disbelief that so few arrests are made amidst lawless, seditious behavior. And know why. 22/

If these flashpoints escalate to a graver existential threat, the nation will only persevere if it begins to finally confront the difficult racial truths that stretch back to its founding. It is up to us to lead the way.

@davidm1108 @MsLaToshaBrown @civilrightsla @Bereaver

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