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Local authorities across the nation ordered their police to stand down. State authorities refused to deploy the national guard. Innocent people were victimized en masse and without recourse by organized political violence with clear, bidirectional ties to both the Democratic party and to Blue Tribe institutions generally. Those few who tried to defend themselves were subjected to nakedly political prosecutions on the flimsiest of pretexts and in defiance of the facts.
Blue Tribe, both its elite leadership and its general population, accepted, endorsed and supported these crimes. They collectively encouraged and enabled rampant, lawless political violence with the explicit goal to secure political and social power for themselves and their own interests, and they coordinated overwhelming retaliation against anyone who resisted or objected. Many of the Blue commenters here did the same. One of them argued at length and quite explicitly that it was better for people like myself and my family to accept beatings at the hands of a mob rather than defend ourselves with lethal force, because criminal mob beatings were statistically less likely to kill people than lawfully justified gunfire. That's the sort of conversation that leaves an impression.
Given those circumstances, the military would have been the correct response. It would have been an entirely reasonable response in the face of far less severe violations of the peace. The government's failure to deliver the appropriate response lingers, and the debt to justice will need to be repaid at some point in the future. It manifests, here and now, in markedly reduced trust in our social institutions, and a reduced willingness to expend efforts and make sacrifices for the preservation of those institutions. Every dispute is now conducted in the knowledge that Blues, speaking generally, are the sort of people who will happily endorse our victimization without apparent limit, and think themselves virtuous in the process.
You couldn’t be more wrong. Almost everyone who was ‘victimized’ by BLM / Summer of Floyd riots voted Democrat. Red tribe suburban and exurban neighbourhoods were almost never targeted and their residents suffered minimal deterioration in QoL compared to inhabitants of big cities.
Showing these people what the logical outcome of what was previously considered harmless hippie justice reform activism actually is was a necessary and important move, even if it led to the unfortunate deterioration of some American cities. The idea that the army was necessary to control the riots is laughable. A few dozen police officers could have controlled even the absolute worst of them. It was state and municipal elected officials who were responsible for what happened.
If Trump had sent in the military to crush the riots, the violence would have been solved, the blue urban governments would have grandstanded against the racist, oppressive, anti-black hijacking of the federal government by colonialist forces in collaboration with the brutal right wing military that oppresses PoC at home and abroad, and their constituents would have loved it, even as intervention saved their cities.
Rising crime, homelessness, and lawlessness had to be blamed by blue tribe citizens on their own elected officials with no convenient scapegoats or excuses. Sending in the military would have guaranteed no negative repercussions for the justice/police/bail/etc reform movement whatsoever.
As the saying goes "could've, would've, should've". The point is they didn't.
The Insurrection Act specifically takes that into account (or Eisenhower couldn't have used it). From 10 USC 253: "the constituted authorities of that State are unable, fail, or refuse to protect that right, privilege, or immunity, or to give that protection"
Sure, but it doesn’t matter; Trump sending in the troops to control the riots would guarantee Democratic controlled cities remain shitholes for decades because local government can swing to the left with zero backstop, safe in the knowledge that if things get really out of hand the federal government will rescue them and provide a convenient scapegoat for any excess heat generated in trying to solve the problems caused by leftist policies.
OK, so where's the downside for the Republicans? They send troops in and stop the riots. Democrats let their cities go to shit, and every once in a while they burn until the Republicans send in the troops to stop the riots. Looks to me like a nationwide advertisement to oppose the Democrats.
Swing voters don’t think there’s a huge problem with lawlessness if it’s just a little one-day thing and then quickly shut down by the feds. They do if it goes on for months/years, then some go Red.
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