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Stephen Gottlieb: The Killing Of George Floyd

After practicing law, it’s hard to stick to stereotypes about people, whether the police, the looters, whites, presidents or anyone else. Lawyers see the best and the worst, Mother Teresa and Jack the Ripper. The good and bad aren’t predictable.

We have lots of stereotypes about African-Americans. I’ve worked in and for the Black community but I’ve never met the stereotype. Instead I’ve gotten to know a lot of wonderful people at all levels of American society.

Police? Actually I think the police are like rest of us in all other walks of life, comprised of everyone from the best to the worst. We stereotype the police. Since they’re brave, we stereotype them all as good people. Americans don’t like to call people they despise brave, but if risking death is brave, the cops share that honor with lots of the people they pursue – gangsters, gang members and terrorists. So it’s pretty obvious that I don’t see the connection between bravery and decency. There are police who heroically track down dangerous people and rescue the innocent. But there are other police convicted of everything from fraud to the murder of women and children as well as unarmed and peaceful African-Americans.

Presidents? It had to happen that we would have one who’d try to preserve his power against the wishes of the American people. He fans the flames and encourages chaos so that he can gather the military and pretend to put out fires that he fanned, using the military against domestic dissent. He stripped many of the finest military men from command to quote “work” in his White House, and when they discovered they could not behave intelligently and patriotically they resigned. Monkeying with military leadership is dangerous. And Trump is using his die-hard armed supporters with their “Second Amendment rights” as Storm Troopers in disguise. It couldn’t be clearer that he wants to become dictator. That’s the route they take – encourage violence, create chaos and then pose as the savior.

The men who created our country knew that power corrupts. They made no assumptions but tried to create checks and balances to counter against the certainty that it would happen. They didn’t figure out how to control the Senate before it made a mockery of the impeachment process. Yes, he’s guilty of lying and a cover-up, but no matter, that’s not serious enough. Is abandoning world leadership to the Russians and Chinese disloyal enough? Is a daily string of lying to the American people and making up fake quote “facts” serious enough? Is threatening insurrection with what he refers to as “Second Amendment rights” serious enough? Is there a Second Amendment right to storm state houses and threaten governors with their weapons? Is that serious enough? Is trying to poison Americans with fake so-called “cures” serious enough? Is the slaughter of a hundred thousand Americans because he dithered in dealing with disease serious enough?

Yes, along with decent and heroic officers, there are some who are intoxicated by the power of their weapons, corrupted by their stereotypes of African-Americans, and protected by a culture of silence and solidarity. But their faults are encouraged by a pretender in the White House for whom nothing is too much to keep him in power.

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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