Preface
As frustration boils over, in this essay we'll accept the premise that most protesters basically are nonviolent, and most cops essentially are good people. Plus, the current situation goes way beyond a Racial Crisis and misdeeds by Law Enforcement.
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In the USA and much of the rest of the world, decades of neoliberal policies implemented by the State-Corporate-Financial Complex (the Corporatocracy) have fueled the fires of---
1. a racial crisis,
2. a socio-economic class crisis,
3. an economic crisis,
4. a health crisis,
5. an ecological/environmental crisis, and
6. an ethical crisis.
They are all interrelated.
The policies to which I refer include: austerity (except for the war & police machinery), the militarization of law enforcement, privatization, deregulation, wage stagnation, an inadequate healthcare system, a gross distortion of "conflict of interest", an ugly conversion of our educational system to one which produces compliant robots, bizarre financialization (which produces little to no employment), so-called "free trade", the almost complete destruction of labor unions, ditto for decent retirement plans, and more. In addition to all that, too many private & public Powers-That-Be have demonstrated a blatant disregard for both common people and the environment. Equity seems to have become a long-forgotten concept. Inequality (including income inequality) is the flavor of the day. Nature is unimportant. And so it goes, ad nauseam.
Meanwhile, the ecological crisis of the century--- Climate Disruption ---appears to have been put on the back burner. On top of that, the gross degradation of necessary biodiversity, the interference with crucial ecosystem functioning, pollution, corporatist propaganda, the suspension of enforcement of EPA regulations, etc., are all ongoing.
In short, neoliberal policies have failed utterly... except for people in the Upper Crust. The current eruption of violence isn't about only racism toward people of color. [The response to it has been multiracial.] It isn't about only a few very recent murders. This situation has been building for decades, and almost everyone is frustrated and fed-up to the gills. It's not just about Race, or economics, or police, or inequality. Perhaps more than anything else, it's also about ethics.
As the Harvard Professor, Cornel West, stated today on Democracy Now, "The American Empire is imploding.". West also had a telling opinion piece in The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/01/george-floyd-protests-cornel-west-american-democracy
The time is ripe for a global paradigm shift to ecoethics, ecoliberalism, ecological economics, common sense, and equity.
Not only my opinion. Be Well
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