Reflections on the American Race Riots
When George Floyd was killed, seemingly with deliberation, by a policeman in Minneapolis, MN, almost universal condemnation followed. This censure came from both sides of the American ideological divide. Yet, despite this unusual agreement between Right and Left, their responses to the race riots that followed are very different. The progressive Left wants to treat the race riots as a continuation of the peaceful daytime protests from which they morph. The Republican Right, on the other hand, sees the violation of law and order as a threat to the welfare of all, no matter what their race.
A Different Kind of Race Riot
What started as peaceful protests to the Minneapolis atrocity quickly devolved into very violent, destructive race riots. However, these were very different race riots from those of the past. The participants were not black protesters against white oppressors. Rather the rioters were both whites and blacks uniting against everyone and everything that stood in their path. It did not matter that all public officials on the local, state and federal levels were moving as fast as they could to get justice for George Floyd. Everything that stood in the demonstrators’ path had to be destroyed to satisfy their rage.
Below is a limited selection of images of riots in major cities. These images were taken as screen shots from YouTube videos. From left to right, top to bottom, the images and their sources are: Minneapolis (CBS 8 San Diego), Washington DC (MSNBC), NewYork (The Hill), Chicago (ABC 7 Chicago), Los Angeles (ABC 7 Los Angeles), and Seattle (King 5 Seattle).
Nominally, the riots were race riots because the murder of a black man by a white policeman was the cause. Racial justice was what the protestors wanted. Yet, on both sides of the riots (rioters and law-enforcers), one could find people of all races. What separated the two sides? Was it ideology, or just emotion?
The answer, of course, depending on the individual rioter, is that both kinds of motivations moved the protesters. Yet, what kind of rage, what kind of ideology can justify the burning of a historic place of worship? Below is a YouTube video of the burning of St. John’s Episcopal Church, built in 1816, just a short distance from the White House. Beginning with James Madison, every U.S. president has attended services there at least once. Luckily, damages were confined to a few rooms.
The following video gives more of the atmosphere of the riot close by St. John’s on the same night.
Left-Wing Agitators
Accusations have been made by a number of sources that left-wing agitators have inflamed peaceful demonstrations into violent riots. For example, Minnesota’s Gov. Tim Walz (Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party) blamed growing mobs of outside agitators from other states. He asserts they are attempting to “break the back of civil society.” Gov. Walz said that the Pentagon is providing his state with intelligence assistance on the agitators.
The AP on May 31 reported,
As demonstrations spread from Minneapolis to the White House, New York City and overseas, federal law enforcement officials insisted far-left groups were stoking violence. Meanwhile, experts who track extremist groups also reported seeing evidence of the far-right at work. . . .
President Donald Trump, Attorney General William Bar and others have said the left-wing extremist group antifa is to blame. . . .
An antifa activist group disseminated a message in a Telegram channel on Saturday that encouraged people to consider Minnesota National Guard troops “easy targets,” two Defense Department officials said. The message encouraged activists to steal “kit,” meaning the weapons and body armor used by the soldiers. The officials were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
As time goes on, one gets the inescapable impression that the peaceful demonstrations against the murder of George Floyd have been hijacked. Instead of seeking police reforms to remove racists from among the police, leftists are doing their very best to bring down American civil society. They want to transform it into something very different.
Economic and Political Fallout
Meanwhile, the COVID-19 epidemic has not gone away. And as I look at videos and photos of the demonstrations and riots, I detect no “social distancing” whatsoever. The obvious conclusion is we should expect a breakout of coronavirus among the rioters in about two weeks time.
That is not the only consequence we should expect from the interaction of the riots with COVID-19. One is an indirect interaction through business activity, especially small business operations. American businesses have been brought to their knees already because of the state “lockdowns” of most businesses. The reduction in GDP in the second quarter has been estimated by Morgan Stanley to be as much as 30 percent. The large scale destruction of businesses in the major cities by the riots will only deepen the coming recession. Not only that but the reduction in economic output will increase the probability of high inflation, perhaps even hyperinflation.
There are other secondary effects with both economic and political significance. The states that started relaxing their COVID-19 shutdowns first were red states. The ones that clung to their shutdowns the hardest were blue states. Interestingly enough, the places hardest hit with the riots were major cities in blue states. If you are the owner or CEO of a company hit double-hard by both COVID-19 restrictions and riot damage, will you want to continue business in a blue state? Or will you want to move your business to the more salubrious economic environment of a red state?
Even before Trump, many businesses were fleeing states dominated by Democrats for the more healthy economic climates of red states. I wrote about this phenomenon in the following posts: The Progressive Disaster That Is Illinois, Another Great Progressive Disaster: California, and New York: Another Great Progressive Embarrassment.
Then came the Republican-pushed Tax Cut and Jobs Act of December 2017. That law limited federal tax deductions for state and local taxes to $10,000. Now, Democrat-dominated blue states generally have much higher taxes with greater progressivity than Republican-dominated red states. This provides middle-class and upper-class families and individuals a tremendous motivation to move from blue states to red. The twin blows of riot-caused business destruction and COVID-19 business restrictions might be the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Especially for owners of small businesses that totally fail under blue state rule, fortune might look more certain in a red state. If a riot in a blue state destroys a small business, the owner could be excused the belief he could find a better place to start over in a red state.
The riots could then be a contributing cause to a vast flow of people, wealth, and companies from Democratic states to Republican. If such flows occur, political power will follow.
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