Liberal Forum

 

In the final week of August, the United States saw its biggest deterioration in societal norms and steps towards outright fascism since President Donald Trump came to office four years ago under a mantle of barely veiled authoritarianism. The troubling developments of the past week are almost too many to count.

 On Tuesday, 17-year old Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly crossed state lines with his automatic rifle and murdered two demonstrators at a protest of another horrific police shooting of a Black man. Local police did not arrest Rittenhouse or other armed white men—who went to Kenosha following the “call to arms” of a group calling itself the Kenosha Guard—for violating curfew, or even as suspects in the immediate aftermath of a murder. Instead, officers supplied them with water, thanked them for coming, and allowed Rittenhouse to walk away after allegedly murdering two men and seriously wounding a third. Kenosha’s chief of police responded by blaming the victims for having violated curfew while nearly exonerating Rittenhouse by describing the murder in the passive voice.by describing the murder in the passive voice.

 Meanwhile, the day prior, Ammon Bundy and dozens of other armed white and unmasked protesters pushed their way past police in Boise to pack the gallery overlooking Idaho’s House of Representatives. The gallery had been restricted for social distancing, but after the confrontation, which resulted in the shattering of a glass door, protesters were allowed to fill every seat.

 It was also the week of the Republican National Convention, which culminated with a grand and illegal presidential acceptance speech with the backdrop of the taxpayer-funded White House decked out in Trump-Pence 2020 propaganda.