You Cannot Put Out a Fire With Smoke and Mirrors

In every nationally scaled event -- as the protests most assuredly are -- there is a complicated matrix of causes and effects, of victims and victimizers, of economic and political impacts and responses. That is undoubtedly true today, as we see the anger and dismay of so much of the country on the streets and airwaves. What we, as caring and involved Americans, must always try to do is to peel away the distractions, however loud and bright they may appear, and to focus on the critical core.

The streets of America are burning, and someday later we will determine whether those fires were lit by protesters, vandals, or deliberate agents of chaos and discord. The likely answer will be all three, and that will remind us only that it is good and evil in a complex world, and that generalities will almost always be false.

The actions of the police, in lighting this particular match and in their response to the protests, will show some very bad men and women in a brighter light. That is necessary for those few, but the real problem is in the underlying system, not the guilty (or at least, the discovered) individuals. Again, we will discover that there are good and evil people in every profession, and we will be unsurprised.

There are many voices being elevated, magnified by the moment. Some of them are inspiring, insightful, and meaningful... some are inciting, divisive, and crass. From this, we may glean the faces of those who we will follow more closely going forward. We will also note those failing us, those who we must look to reject, rebut, and ignore, and there is some small help in that.

What we have to take from this moment is that every pervasive imbalance, every systemic inequality is destined to break down and fail. The most recent portion of the history of racial inequality in our country belies any happy talk of sufficient progress. It demands that we commit more energy, more clarity, and more specific action to dealing with its legacies.

The pandemic grossly revealed the disparities in health care, wellness, access, and in fairness within our country and economy. These must be addressed as a priority and must be solved. It has shown that the nation relies on a class of forgotten workers that is too often invisible, too easily underpaid, under-protected, and underrepresented, and we can and must change that as well.

For us to ignore the foundational and justifiable elements at the base of the anger and frustration that is spilling out onto the streets is to actively perpetuate them. For us to do nothing of substance, to speak without action, to care and then, after those streets have been cleared, care not, is to intentionally and directly cause what will surely come again tomorrow.

Violent Aspects of Anger Unleashed

In lamenting the violent aspects of anger unleashed, and likely cynically exploited, there is the constant danger that we are distracted from the meaning of millions taking to the streets in the first place. We must fight that temptation with every tool that we have. We must focus on the realities that plague us and the endemic diseases that predate the pandemic.

When a child shows a rash, we put on an ointment... but if we don't treat the underlying cause of the rash, we've failed the child. So it is with our society today, our culture, our laws, and our systems. We see the rash, and we treat is as we are forced to, but we must have a dedication to uncovering its root causes, and to curing what we find. It is always simpler to resolve problems symptomatically, always easier to postpone deeper and more costly treatments, but it always is to the detriment of the patient when we do.

Pandemic and Affiliated Economic Collapse

There is an interesting reveal in the actions of our government to the pandemic and affiliated economic collapse -- the powers that be have had little hesitation in unwrapping trillions of dollars to fix what ails the stock market and our financial institutions, stating over and over again that their capacity to cure them is unlimited. The excuse that solutions to income inequality, disproportionate resources, and opportunities in education, health care, and support for our most vulnerable are too expensive for our country to consider has been exposed as a lie, never again to be taken seriously.

What we care to cure, we can cure... what we need to do, there exist the resources to do them. There are always excuses not to do what is needed, what is right, but in the long arc of truth, we always find them proven false and weak.

We are about to rebuild our economy. We are about to reconstruct a shattered health care system. We are about to deal with the priorities of our newly recognized essential workers as well as our first responders when the states and cities of our country reconcile their broken budgets. We are being forced to do these things.

A Critical Layer of Priority and Recognition

As we address these urgent issues, we can -- we must -- apply a critical layer of priority and recognition that we have a concurrent opportunity and obligation to incorporate our acknowledgment of the unfairness that has never been cured, the division that has never been bridged, in the solutions that we adopt.

As we recover from the tragedies of the moment, what will give the deaths and sufferings of the national cause and value is if the moment is used to make serious and lasting progress on the long and difficult road to equality and balance. Then, and only then, will the deaths of a 100,000 plus to the virus, the struggles for tens of millions to survive the collapse, find meaning. Then, and only then, will the visceral pain and anguish of so much of the country in the latest horrific example of an uninterrupted chain of horrific examples of injustice begin to heal?

The commitment to progress is what must be believably stated now, and systemically pursued, for America be finally become what it has always believed that it is, and what it has the unique capacity to become.