Divided America afflicted with grievances and grief

US President Donald Trump holds a Bible while visiting St John's Church across from the White House. Picture: AFP

The killing of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of police officers is an American tragedy, of a kind that has played out too many times in the life of the great republic. As before, people have taken to the streets in solidarity and sorrow. Many are demanding justice with the resolve Martin Luther King Jr described as a “whirlwind of revolt” in 1963 at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC. But in that “sweltering summer” of “legitimate discontent”, Dr King urged restraint. “We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence,” he said on the steps of the memorial. “Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.” The orator’s dream of racial equality remains elusive, from the streets of the capital to the shore of Santa Monica, while the nation is besieged by pandemic, joblessness and civil unrest.

Like it or not, US President Donald Trump has a moral duty to be a healer, a seeker of common ground in times like these. Even for fine speakers such as Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama, this fractious moment of death and disunity would have tested the limits of their empathy and precision. Mr Trump has tried to convey poise and a higher purpose. At the Kennedy Space Centre on Saturday, the President spoke of the “grave tragedy” in Minnesota and the nation’s feelings of “horror, anger, and grief”. “I stand before you as a friend and ally to every American seeking justice and peace,” he said. “And I stand before you in firm opposition to anyone exploiting this tragedy to loot, rob, attack and menace. Healing, not hatred; justice, not chaos are the mission at hand.” These consoling words were lost in the real-time images of conflagrations and warp-speed social media contagions. They were lost, too, because Mr Trump cannot help himself on Twitter, where he is troller-in-chief.

Mr Trump launched attacks over the next few days, with his telltale stream of overkill and invective, mixing reason with rancour, firing up his support base and taking no prisoners among his registered foes, including Democrats, mainstream liberal news outlets and left-wing fringe groups, such as Antifa anarchists. His threats of “when the looting starts, the shooting starts” and deployment of “the most vicious dogs and most ominous weapons” against protesters serve only to raise temperatures. As well, Mr Trump berated the nation’s governors, describing them as “weak” in the face of growing racial unrest. If they didn’t take back the streets and use force to confront protesters, he scolded them, they would look like “a bunch of jerks”. Mr Trump is right to call out thugs and vandals and these state and city leaders, a diverse group, should be his allies in containing the mayhem.

Yet in an election year, few in the political class are dialling down their biases. At a debate in February, one of the Democratic presidential hopefuls cut through the animosity at large in the body politic. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang said progressives were making a mistake when they acted like Mr Trump was “the cause of all our problems”. The President was “a symptom of a disease that has been building up in our communities for years and decades”. Mr Yang was talking of the decline of manufacturing. But the current occupant of the White House, an outlier in the Republican Party, is both a symbol and beneficiary of the capital’s dysfunction, plunge in voter trust and hyper-partisanship. Congressional Democrats, led by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, are fanning the flames of division at every juncture — from the various medical and fiscal responses to the pandemic, to the rolling turmoil in cities.

Again, Democrats see electoral advantage in November by fomenting disorder, entrenching a view Mr Trump has lost the plot and ceded control. Presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden has been low-key, seemingly absolved from the national interest challenge of easing tensions. As Washington correspondent Cameron Stewart points out, the vast majority of protesters taking to the streets during the day are not “far left”. They are African-Americans, whites and mums and dads angered by racial inequality, injustice and the handling of the pandemic, in which African-Americans have died at three times the rate of white Americans. But many in the media are misrepresenting the violence and swirl of issues, laying blame directly at the door of Mr Trump while downplaying the role of extremists, opportunists and criminals running wild during curfews, looting and razing buildings.

The US is in treacherous territory. But this is a nation that has seen turmoil on its streets before. Yes it is home to the highest number of COVID-19 deaths and 40 million have lost jobs. American prestige has been dented, its leadership in abeyance in global affairs, as focus turns inward — not just because of the poll in five months. Some will try to spin a narrative of inevitable US decline and the triumphant rise of inferior systems.

America’s elites must realise short-run politicking may inflict lasting damage to its institutions. Mr Trump will rightly focus now on law and order to preserve lives, property and the social fabric. But to stop the bleeding and the burning, to heal the grief and grievances, he’ll have to be better than his opponents. It’s a daunting assignment, one he is not suited to by temperament or record to date. But Mr Trump occupies the world’s most powerful office and if he can’t reach the civil rights preacher’s “majestic heights” he must do whatever he can to keep America’s dream alive.