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For a brief moment, I thought the coronavirus, mass unemployment, and looming budget cuts would reduce the nation's obsession with identity politics.
But the lockdowns just ratcheted up the pressure, the Floyd killing lit the match, and it's identity politics 100x.
I believe that the riots would not be happening without the last two months of lockdown. The psychological pressure, especially in working-class communities, is intense. Millions of people out of work. The media driving mass fear and panic. The perfect conditions for violence.
Imagine: We have spent the last few weeks outraged at college kids going to the beach and "Karens" mask-scolding people at Whole Foods. Meanwhile, our poorest neighborhoods are devastated by unemployment, social breakdown, and now riots. The media is complicit in all of it.
George Floyd needlessly lost his life. Derek Chauvin should be held fully accountable. Our poor communities are going up in flames. But the media elites, who will use this violence to advance their own narrative, will never pay a price. They will never be held to account.
And we shouldn't pretend "you can easily rebuild a Target." Violence has a way of permanently sticking to a community. In my village in Italy, there are still ruined buildings from the bombings in WWII. Not everything that is broken can be rebuilt.
Yes, sadly, when the cameras turn off and the media packs it up, the poorest people in Minneapolis will end up paying the price.
Lockdowns & civil unrest are at loggerheads.
I guess the victims of inequality will be more viciously impacted by any system stress, independently of anybody's politics. As a result the people who make it their business to engage in identity politics will have a lot more material to work with. Is it a useful analysis?
There is a massive asymmetry: Elites who manufacture and distribute identity politics have all the upside; the poor who are the raw material of identity politics have all the downside. The elites transfer all of their risk downward. Shameful.
Who are your media owned by and what are their aims?
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