How it looks from here
The other night I watched Dave Chappelle’s new show 8:46. Highly recommended. Several things from it will stick with me, but one is a riff he returned to a few times—that he didn’t need to say anything right now, “the streets” are handling things. I have to admit to feeling something similar—a sense that the time has come for a younger generation to be heard and to lead. Chappelle says he trusts the people in the streets, and so do I. I just offer observations:
1) The police forces are beginning to show real pain. The disgusting display by the NY police unions—claiming wholly without evidence that three officers had been poisoned by a Shake Shack, a claim they had to retract within hours—is a putrid, steaming exemplar of the bigoted, surly, entitled attitude that has come to suffuse much of policing in the twenty-first century. It’s been around quite a while, honestly. From the generally high esteem they have enjoyed and the vast political power, wholly out of proportion to their numbers, which the police unions hold, to the immunity from prosecution for wrongdoing they have enjoyed—police, and most especially their unions, seem to have internalized a belief that they are simultaneously above criticism, besieged by a hostile and infantile public and the only bulwark against ravaging hordes of—well, it’s not clear who, exactly. Bill Di Blasio’s inability to bring his force to heel has been especially nauseating to witness and a reminder of what an empty suit that is. What a joke his presidential aspirations were!
2) The blue flu in Atlanta last night was a much less extreme manifestation of the same thing. It seems to me it was exquisitely poorly timed, coming on the same day as charges were announced against Garrett Rolfe. It will appear that it is in reaction that entirely just outcome, which can only damage the force’s standing with the Atlanta public. Not only that, but there is preliminary evidence that past bouts of blue flu have led to declines in crime. In this moment, seems like a pretty dangerous dynamic for the police to play with. Some portion of the public is ready to defund the police as it is. This action will not make that cohort shrink.
3) Though I have no doubt that public opinion is especially fluid at the moment, it appears a solid majority opposes defund. (How those questions were asked is basically the whole ballgame, though.) It’s a national poll, and there is the normally stark partisan divide. This is a rare case where the partisan divide provides an opening, though—in a heavily Democratic city like Atlanta, support for substantial reforms, to include budget cuts, is no doubt much, much higher than that poll suggests. All the action will be at the local level—whatever comes out of Congress this year (or next, frankly) is likely to be the weakest of tea.
4) Generally, my view is that protestors are doing us proud, operating in our best traditions and moving the dial on progress more than it has moved in decades, and in a very short time. Elected officials all over the spectrum are acquitting themselves mostly very poorly. I’m becoming entrenched in my view that Atlanta City Hall needs to be cleansed top to bottom.