In a nation where the crack of gunfire has become a grim and familiar chorus, a peculiar noise emanates from the White House.
While American cities from Cambridge to Buena Park bleed from a plague of shootings, the federal military has been dispatched not to confront the shooters, but to stand watch over the city halls of Democratic mayors.
It is a curious brand of security theater, where the stage is set for political confrontation while the audience in the streets remains unprotected from the very real violence in their midst.
Just yesterday, the tapestry of American life was again torn by bullets. Tomorrow will bring more of the same.
A driver lies in critical condition on an Aurora interstate; a university campus in Cambridge cowers under a shelter-in-place order; a family in Syracuse mourns a life taken by a suspect who was, astoundingly, out on bail for another shooting.
This is not a sporadic outbreak but a relentless epidemic.
The ledger of pain from this month alone is a numbing testament to a national failure: a 12-year-old girl in Minneapolis, shot in the head at a church, finally goes home; seven are dead in Leland after a homecoming celebration turned into a massacre; four are killed at a bar on St. Helena Island.
The locations change, but the story of chaos and loss remains the same.
And yet, the administration’s response to this clear and present danger has been a masterclass in misdirection.
The full force and authority of the presidency, it seems, is reserved for the political opponents within our borders, while the daily war on our streets is met with little more than thoughts and prayers.
The very real problem of everyday gun violence, like a teenager killing another teenager, is treated as a normal, unsolvable thing.
Well, maybe not the full force. Fishermen and recreational sailors are being blasted beneath the seas in an unlawful massacre that is likely to provoke a war of conquest. A bloodthirsty and tyrannical president is on a killing spree.
One is left to wonder if the definition of “law and order” has been quietly rewritten to mean the orderly protection of power, rather than the lawful protection of people.
It is a strategy that addresses the specter of political dissent with bayonets, while the very tangible problem of a teenager charged with killing another teenager is treated as an unavoidable fact of life, like bad weather.
In this new America, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness appears to be secondary to the pursuit of political grudges.
The U.S. government is ignoring a national crisis of gun violence while focusing its power on punishing political rivals.
While American citizens are being killed in a constant wave of pointless shootings, our government is doing nothing meaningful to stop it. Instead, the Trump administration is using America’s power to fight political battles and start conflicts abroad.
President Donald Trump has twisted ‘law and order’ to mean protecting his own power, not protecting the people he is supposed to serve.