Portland: Stop the violence

     "I support the authorities doing what it takes to stop the violence."

                Michael Trigoboff, happy to live in a Portland suburb

The unrest in Portland is getting old. Democrats are at risk of misreading the public's patience.

Police tweet last night

The death on camera of George Floyd awakened White Americans to racial injustice in policing.

It came at a good time for Democrats. Trump represented White insensitivity and resistance to the concerns of Black Americans. Colin Kaepernick and his friends were "sons of bitches." Maxine Walters was "Low IQ." Immigrants should come from Norway not "shit-hole" countries. Trump was defending Confederate flags even South Carolina, Mississippi, the NFL, and NASCAR were removing them. Trump was exposed as being a holdout, behind the curve. Sure, he had his base, but he was shrinking it on this issue.

Plus there was the celebration of John Lewis, who represented the struggle against Jim Crow. This reminded White news viewers that overt, celebrated, legal racial prejudice and segregation was part of recent history. The John Lewis story added to the tide of change, and Trump looked guilty by association. Trump was George Wallace.

Now the backlash to that tide.

The "defund the police" slogan gave opponents an easy target. Worse for Democrats is that the protests for racial justice became co-opted by hooligans and young men fueled with testosterone and a desire to act out, with no clear political or other agenda. We see fires on TV and, as of last night late, images of Molotov cocktails and loaded magazines for assault rifles. The constituency of voters who want guns better controlled--those moderate suburban swing voters that are presumed to determine the election outcome--are repelled by images of this kind. They associate AR-15 gun magazines with uncontrolled violence in the hands of  unaccountable people.

Trump overplayed his hand with the federal officers in camouflage, but Democrats are at risk of overplaying theirs as well. Democratic officeholders need to show that they can bring order to the places they govern or else on balance this issue will become a good one for Trump, notwithstanding hid errors.

Cartoon Trigoboff suggested to illustrate his Guest Post

Michael Trigoboff teaches Computer Science at Portland Community College. His point of view might be a minority one in bright blue Oregon in 2020, but voters with concerns like his may well tip purple swing states back into red, notwithstanding current polls. At 2:00 a.m. swing voters want to be secure in their homes and beds. They sympathize with the police up at that hour, facing young people wearing black who throwing rocks and setting fires, some of whom might be carrying the rifles that will use those magazines filled with bullets.

Guest Post by Michael Trigoboff

The situation in Portland's "mostly peaceful" protests is that there are perpetrators of violence (black bloc, Antifa, etc) embedded in crowds of non-violent people. This is by design on the part of the perpetrators and also by some of the non-violent protesters. The idea is that the violence (e.g. large dangerous fireworks thrown at the police, lasers capable of eye damage shined at them, general vandalism) will cause a police reaction that will inevitably affect the non-violent protesters.

This allows the protesters to accuse the police of unreasonable actions. But the willingness of crowds of non-violent protesters to tolerate the presence of the violent among them leaves the police with little to no way of preventing the violence without also affecting those who are non-violent.

Michael Trigoboff

Tear gas, for instance, is a way to clear a crowd out of an area without injuring them severely. In the absence of tear gas, physical force would have to be used. That would almost certainly cause more injuries. Those who are opposed to the use of tear gas should consider what the alternatives are.

When violent acts emanate from a crowd, the choice is either to disperse the crowd or continue to allow the violence. Complaining that the police are attacking non-violent protesters obscures this fundamental fact about what's going on. The crowd is enabling the violence.

The protest movement even has a name for this. They call it, "diversity of tactics," which means that they will not criticize anything that any demonstrator does, regardless of how violent it may be. "Non-violent" protesters who protect the violent ones embedded within crowds of them are complicit in that violence.

I support the authorities doing what it takes to stop the violence. I am not sympathetic to supposedly non-violent protesters who defend or make excuses for or enable that violence.

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[Tomorrow: Comments by two college classmates who caution that the politics of Portland violence helps Trump enormously--and say that Biden needs to get in front of this promptly.]