Update (0830ET): Last night saw the worst of the violence aimed at police officers with one dead, at least five shot, and at least four more run over by "protesters."
At least five U.S. police were hit by gunfire during violent protests over the death of a black man in police custody, police and media said, hours after President Donald Trump said he would deploy the military if unrest does not stop.
- -One US Marshall killed in Las Vegas
- -Four officers shot in St. Louis
- -At least two officers run over in Buffalo, NY
- -One NYPD officer run over in the Bronx
- -Another run over in Greenwich Village
An emotional St Louis police commissioner, John Hayden, said about 200 protesters were “jumping up and down like crazy people”, looting and throwing fireworks and rocks at officers.
Hard to describe how rampant the looting was tonight in Midtown Manhattan and how lawless it was. Complete anarchy. Literally hundreds of stores up and down Broadway, Fifth Ave, Sixth Ave. Kids ruling the streets like it was a party.
President Trump on Monday evening threatened to activate federal troops if governors and city mayors did not act to suppress continuing social unrest across major metros over the killing of George Floyd.
After the president spoke, the situation across the country rapidly deteriorated into the evening, as riots continued for the seventh straight day.
Protests were organized in more than 200 cities. Many of the demonstrations began peacefully but turned violent by evening. About 140 cities saw riots, resulting in government officials in 40 metro areas to impose strict curfews. New York City issued its first curfew on Monday, which was the first time an official curfew was imposed in the city since 1943.
Deaths connected with social unrest continues to grow. Here's the tally so far according to AP News:
Here are some of the most important developments from the overnight:
- President Trump threatens to deploy military if states and cities don't squash social unrest
- Washington, Baltimore and New York unrest continues to worsen
- Helicopters buzz protesters in downtown Washington, DC
- NYPD officer hit by a car in the Bronx
- Las Vegas police officer shot during protests
- Two officers hit by a car in Buffalo during protests
- Four St. Louis officers shot during protests
- "This is how nations collapse": Fox News' Tucker Carlson slams Trump's response to protests
- Pelosi, Schumer condemn President Trump for tear-gassing protesters outside White House
- National Guard forceMore...s activated in 23 states and Washington, DC
- 40 cities and Washington, DC, have imposed curfews
- Looting intensifies in Manhattan
- Protests worsen in Los Angeles and Oakland
In the past seven days, at least nine people have died, +4,000 arrested, riots rage in 140 cities, hundreds (or maybe thousands of stores looted), commercial and government buildings burned, and National Guard deployed in 23 states -- here are some of the scenes of the chaos from the overnight:
Looting seen in New York City and Los Angeles as curfew nears and protests/looting spread to the suburbs around the nation. High-end stores like Bloomingdales, Gucci, Nike Soho, Chanel, Tory Burch, Kate Spade were all vandalized. Best Buy in Union Square and several drug stores were also hit.
Well, it looks like the Resistance’s long-anticipated “Second Civil War” has finally begun … more or less exactly on cue. Rioting has broken out across the nation. People are looting and burning stores and attacking each other in the streets. Robocops are beating, tear-gassing, and shooting people with non-lethal projectiles. State National Guards have been deployed, curfews imposed, “emergencies” declared. Secret Servicemen are fighting back angry hordes attempting to storm the White House. Trump is tweeting from an “underground bunker.” Opportunist social media pundits on both sides of the political spectrum are whipping people up into white-eyed frenzies. Americans are at each other’s throats, divided by identity politics, consumed by rage, hatred, and fear.
Things couldn’t be going better for the Resistance if they had scripted it themselves.
Actually, they did kind of script it themselves. Not the murder of poor George Floyd, of course. Racist police have been murdering Black people for as long as there have been racist police. No, the Resistance didn’t manufacture racism. They just spent the majority of the last four years creating and promoting an official narrative which casts most Americans as “white supremacists” who literally elected Hitler president,and who want to turn the country into a racist dictatorship.
According to this official narrative, which has been relentlessly disseminated by the corporate media, the neoliberal intelligentsia, the culture industry, and countless hysterical, Trump-hating loonies, the Russians put Donald Trump in office with those DNC emails they never hacked and some division-sowing Facebook ads that supposedly hypnotized Black Americans into refusing to come out and vote for Clinton. Putin purportedly ordered this personally, as part of his plot to “destroy democracy.” The plan was always for President Hitler to embolden his white-supremacist followers into launching the “RaHoWa,” or the “Boogaloo,” after which Trump would declare martial law, dissolve the legislature, and pronounce himself Führer. Then they would start rounding up and murdering the Jews, and the Blacks, and Mexicans, and other minorities, according to this twisted liberal fantasy.
I’ve been covering the roll-out and dissemination of this official narrative since 2016, and have documented much of it in my essays, so I won’t reiterate all that here. Let’s just say, I’m not exaggerating, much. After four years of more or less constant conditioning, millions of Americans believe this fairy tale, despite the fact that there is absolutely zero evidence whatsoever to support it. Which is not exactly a mystery or anything. It would be rather surprising if they didn’t believe it. We’re talking about the most formidable official propaganda machine in the history of official propaganda machines.
And now the propaganda is paying off. The protesting and rioting that typically follows the murder of an unarmed Black person by the cops has mushroomed into “an international uprising” cheered on by the corporate media, corporations, and the liberal establishment, who don’t normally tend to support such uprisings, but they’ve all had a sudden change of heart, or spiritual or political awakening, and are down for some serious property damage, and looting, and preventative self-defense, if that’s what it takes to bring about justice, and to restore America to the peaceful, prosperous, non-white-supremacist paradise it was until the Russians put Donald Trump in office.
In any event, the Resistance media have now dropped their breathless coverage of the non-existent Corona-Holocaust to breathlessly cover the “revolution.” The American police, who just last week were national heroes for risking their lives to beat up, arrest, and generally intimidate mask-less “lockdown violators” are now the fascist foot soldiers of the Trumpian Reich. The Nike corporation produced a commercial urging people to smash the windows of their Nike stores and steal their sneakers. Liberal journalists took to Twitter, calling on rioters to “burn that shit down!” … until the rioters reached their gated community and started burning down their local Starbucks. Hollywood celebrities are masking up and going full-black bloc, and doing legal support. Chelsea Clinton is teaching children about David and the Racist Goliath. John Cusack’s bicycle was attacked by the pigs. I haven’t checked on Rob Reiner yet, but I assume he is assembling Molotov cocktails in the basement of a Resistance safe house somewhere in Hollywood Hills.
Numbers, budgets, charts and graphs about government finances. That’s what we do here. We try to understand where public money should be spent and what it accomplishes.
Through that lens, it’s difficult to know where to begin on what has befallen the Chicago area and most of the country.
For now, this simple observation seems paramount:
The most fundamental element of the social contract between government and the people is cracking.That’s the obligation of government to keep its citizens safe. For that, we surrender a portion of of our freedom and wealth to government for the collective good.
That arrangement has been recognized as a foundational philosophy of civil society since Thomas Hobbes articulated it over 300 years ago.
Citizens expect government to protect their lives and adhere to to a civil process even when being arrested, just as they expect to be protected from riots and looting. Both expectations are now broken.
“The sight of looters and arsonists pillaging stores at will has shaken the confidence of many that law enforcement is capable of maintaining the peace. It has also tainted the very real grief felt over the tragic loss of life.”
That’s not from a source that’s unsympathetic to George Floyd or protesters. It’s from an editorial in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.
What will be the consequences breaking the social contract? Speculate if you want, but know that it may extend far beyond George Floyd’s murder and the resulting violence.
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