COPS Gone Wild (Barely Legal! . . . Actually NOT Legal!)

The thing that shocks The Omnivore most about the George Floyd protests--and the reactions to them--is just how uniformly badly the police seem to be behaving on a nation-wide basis. It isn't that The Omnivore is shocked that police often use excessive force (especially against black people) or that they are willing to engage in that at times on camera (see: "body or dash cameras left on when the cop, in question, really would have wanted to turn them off") but that in a mass protest environment these guys are going full on "I'mma prove you guys totally ass right about us" when put to the test.

There's civil unrest for sure, yeah--but cordoning protestors (not rioters) on a New York bridge and then not letting them leave when curfew comes on seems like the sort of thing that you do when you know you've already lost the public and now it's time to roll the dice on pure police state.

Of course, maybe that is what happened: it looks like the military is right now in a struggle for its soul when it comes to whether it'll be bent to Trump's will and Trump, for his part, has built a giant cordon around the White House and is hiring correctional officers as anonymous mercenary-style forces to control the capital. This could still maybe go either way.

It may also be that police forces and local governments are relying on Fox News not to pump pictures of policemen beating young (white) women for no obvious reason into people's homes--this is probably a good bet--but they should know they can't control social media so folks are going to see it.

What gives?

Of Course The Omnivore Blames Trump

If you guessed that, suffering from Trump derangement syndrome, The Omnivore would blame Herr Trumperdonk, you are 100% correct. Certainly this is not all the fault of Trump and there were numerous abuses under every administration since administrations began (and before)--but it is a rare president who says "there exists a rift in our country . . . let's widen it!"

This is what Trump did both in rhetoric (which means something--yes it does, you just want to pretend it doesn't) and in policy. There was a natural synergy between Police Unions (which reliably protect police from being fired or, if fired, get them re-hired down the street) and Trump which expressed itself in their endorsement of Trump (and their recent rejection of Biden as "off the deep end" in calling for reform).

Trump didn't create the problem of self-sustaining police unions that enable really bad behavior by officers--he just embraced it.

Of course there are other explanations for this which Trumpersters will likely quickly jump. For example:

But there's also the "Thin Blue Line" flag--you know, the black and white American flag with a blue line across it?

What does it mean? Well, look at some of the flags it's surrounded by:

There are a few theories here--but they're not good at all. If the White Nationalists want to signal to police that they're "on their side" with the flag? Well, it seems to be working. If the white nationalists see the police as a force that racially polices the skin-colors they don't like? Well, it seems to be working. If the flag is just there because these guys like law enforcement the same way they like The Confederacy? Well, that seems to work too.

The Bible Stunt
When it comes to police-behaving-badly, Exhibit A is police using NOT-TEAR-GAS to expel  a pastor from her own church steps so Turnip could hoist a bible for a photo-op. Yeah, The Omnivore said "Turnip."

Amazingly--astonishingly--this seems to have created some degree of actual discomfort in the ranks of the evangelical movement. Usually Turnip can go far by estimating that his base will swallow whatever he gives them and ask for more. What happened here?

The Omnivore isn't certain--but has a few theories:

1. Trump's botching Coronavirus has made it hard to fill up the mega-churches the evangelical power-brokers rely on for income-streams. This probably isn't the case entirely but The Omnivore, let us say, he suspects. These people know that while they say whatever they want--and Trump can re-open the country--until something is actually done their pews will not be filled again. Trump has given up "actually doing anything" and they know it.
2. It went too far. The people who are involved here have very tight social bubbles. They don't care what the commoners think--they care about their peers--but while Franklin Graham (a waste of human skin) defeded Turnip for it, Pat Robertson (aslo a waste of skin) scolded Trump for his reactions to unrest and racial tension. When the "two corinthians" don't agree on how this is going there's probably other conversations getting people nervous.
3. The state of the horse-race. Trump's show of strength should have nailed it. It had all the elements that he could have asked for--he looked scowly. He marched with a general wearing BDUs (the cameo-battle-dress-uniform rather than the Oval Office dress uniform they usually wear) and he stompled over to the church and touched a bible--all without getting burnt or hit by lightning. The problem came when the news focused on those dern protestors who were gassed to remove them from his shoot-location. The Omnivore suspects that evangelicals who counted on God to provide them 4 more years of leverage are beginning to get worried that they might have to face-up to their Trumpism before they were ready to. After all, if America substantially disintegrated culturally over 4 years they might "get away" clean--but if Biden is elected--and it looks more and more like he might be--they could, in theory, be held to account. That's gotta make them nervous.

Whatever the case, this stunt didn't work and even the military--usually cowed by Trump--pushed back hard enough to leave a little mark. Now he has to come up with something else. It looks like, for now, it's hiding deeper inside the bunker and yelling "DOMINATE" to his governors.