{"id":3856,"date":"2016-07-09T17:30:07","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T22:30:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/?p=3856"},"modified":"2016-07-09T17:30:07","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T22:30:07","slug":"chait-it-is-not-1968","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/napervilledemocrats.org\/ntdo\/chait-it-is-not-1968\/","title":{"rendered":"Chait: It Is Not 1968"},"content":{"rendered":"

Welcome perspective from one of my go-to voices, Jonathan Chait of New York Magazine:<\/p>\n

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It Is Not 1968<\/a><\/h2>\n

By Jonathan Chait<\/a>Follow @jonathanchait<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

\"People

Scenes from the protest in Dallas. Photo: Laura Buckman\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

In his January 2008 speech<\/a> following his defeat in the New Hampshire primary \u2014 the one will.i.am set to music<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 Barack Obama insisted, \u201cWe are not as divided as our politics suggest \u2026 we are one people, we are one nation.\u201d That conviction, to say the least, has been sorely tested during Obama\u2019s presidency. It has been especially strained during a presidential campaign in which Republicans nominated a race-baiting demagogue for president. And last night, when a gunman murdered police officers during a Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas, it appeared to reach a kind of breaking point. In the feverish late-night heat, race-baiters<\/a> at the New York Post<\/i>, Breitbart, and Matt Drudge stoked a race war they clearly craved. It was 1968 again, more than a few observers said. Everything seemed to be coming apart.<\/p>\n

But the old, tattered ideal of unity may be healthier than it seemed. The demonstration in Dallas was the very model of a functioning liberal society \u2014 a peaceful protest against police conducted under the protection of the police themselves. Even the most radical of the protesters deplored<\/a>\u00a0the shootings, and the police honored the right to protest.<\/p>\n

Probing deeper, into more tender spots, one could even detect a formative consensus about the underlying cause of the protest: the routine violence by police against African-Americans. Videos of the murders of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile have not only galvanized African-Americans who have grown accustomed to the constant threat of police brutality, but they also shocked no small number of white Americans. \u201cIn the era of Facebook Live and smart phones,\u201d wrote the conservative columnist Matt K. Lewis<\/a> in the Daily Caller, \u201cit\u2019s hard to come to any conclusion other than the fact that police brutality toward African-Americans is a pervasive problem that has been going on for generations.\u201d Leon H. Wolf<\/a>, writing for RedState, conceded that police brutality against minorities had gone on because \u201ca huge, overwhelming segment of America does not really give a damn what cops do in the course of maintaining order because they assume (probably correctly) that abuse at the hands of police will never happen to them.\u201d They may not agree with Black Lives Matter on the exact scope of the problem, but the two sides have a shared sense of its existence \u2014 no small achievement in a country where the two parties cannot even agree on such questions as climate science \u2014 and broad moral contours.<\/p>\n

Among Republican leaders, the impulse to restore calm prevailed over the impulse to stoke racial hysteria. Paul Ryan<\/a> praised the values of peaceful protest. Newt Gingrich — Newt Gingrich! — conceded<\/a>, “It’s more dangerous to be black in America. You\u2019re substantially more likely to be in a situation where police don\u2019t respect you.” Even Donald Trump obliquely, and with a characteristically shaky command of the facts, conceded the need for some solution to police abuse: \u201cThe senseless, tragic deaths of two motorists in Louisiana and Minnesota reminds us how much more needs to be done.\u201d Whatever Trump actually believed\u00a0\u2014 the identification of Trump\u2019s real convictions always being more art than science \u2014 he at least felt compelled to make some nod toward the perception that the police had gone too far. It was not inspiring, it was not ideal, but it was also more than one would have gotten from, say, circa-1968 George Wallace.<\/p>\n

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Demonstration in #Dallas<\/a> @ Belo Garden Park pic.twitter.com\/IUx5IaERSB<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014 Dallas Police Depart (@DallasPD) July 8, 2016<\/a>
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