The bills for America’s long-term complacency over racism have finally come due

Trump, an ill-tempered businessman and reality TV personality with authoritarian tendencies, is the spawn of America’s lack of vigilance in safeguarding its democracy, says Borzou Daragahi

Jamela J Pettiford sings during a protest outside the Hennepin County Government Centre, Minneapolis, on 29 May (Getty)

Between the moments when reports of the videotaped 25 May extrajudicial murder of George Floyd by a white cop emerged and fiery nationwide riots and unrest broke out across the United States, there was a 24-hour window.

During that time, a national leader with stature and empathy could have seized the moment. He or she could have read the mood of frustration and despair after months of lockdown and record US unemployment caused by the coronavirus pandemic, and sought to calm the country.

The gravity of the moment was clear. Yet another black man was strangled to death while begging for his life and pleading that he could not breathe, just a few years after a similar incident in New York.

Anger has been mounting. African Americans make up 13 per cent of the US population but 25 per cent of all Covid-19 deaths. African Americans and other vulnerable minorities have the fewest financial resources to survive an economic meltdown that has caused 15 per cent unemployment.

It would have been a good moment to rise to the occasion. Bill Clinton, the former president, was gifted at showing an affinity for the hardships of others, including African Americans. Barack Obama was even better at coming up with oratory meant to assure Americans that justice would be done. Even George W Bush and his more talented handlers knew when it was time for the president to put partisanship aside and speak as the leader of all Americans.

But the United States now has Donald Trump as president.

He spent that precious 24-hour window on Twitter trashing “do-nothing” Democrats, boasting about his administration’s disastrous coronavirus response, and falsely claiming he never called the pandemic a hoax.

As word of Floyd’s death first began to spread across the world, Trump was lauding World Wrestling Entertainment, an outfit that stages fights between prancing men in tights.

“I don’t use insulin. Should I be?” the president blubbered during an appearance announcing funding for diabetes patients, just hours before the first riots began in Minneapolis. “I never thought about it. But I know a lot of people are very – very badly affected, right? Unbelievable.”

The bills for America’s long-term complacency have come due.

America’s troubles are deeply rooted in its history, especially the legacy of slavery and the apartheid-like systems of control that replaced it.

Years ago, municipal authorities bowed to powerful police unions and right-wing politicians in state capitals and mostly set aside promising experiments in community policing. They allowed for the rise of militarised police forces, often recruiting poorly educated white men from the outside city limits to torment and harass minorities. More than 90 per cent of cops serving in Minneapolis, for example, don’t even live in the city.

But America’s problems cannot be explained without underscoring the apathy of an electorate that largely declines to engage in civic life and vote in midterm and local elections. Nearly half of eligible voters stay away from participating in national elections. The result is a gerrymandered electoral map rigged by far-right special interests, and a profoundly corrupt political class beholden to billionaires and conglomerates.

Trump, an ill-tempered businessman and reality TV personality with racist and authoritarian tendencies, is the spawn of America’s lack of vigilance in safeguarding its democracy.

But despite what his Republican allies and enablers in corporate media and even certain elite Washington think tanks insist, he’s far outside any political norms and a special menace in and of himself, both to his own country and to the world. His threats of violence against protesters, and his unsubtle calls for his armed fascistic militia allies to intervene in urban uprisings across the country, mirror his impulsive and unmeasured approaches on foreign policy on matters such as Iran, China and participation in international organisations and treaties that safeguard peace and security.

The United States now finds itself a broken country, mired in multiple overlapping social, political and economic crises. Trump’s political “base” remains a coalition of neo-fascists, white supremacists, oligarchs and well-funded operatives for foreign powers. They’re betting on him as a conduit to promote their own narrow interests.

But Trump is also dangerously incompetent and uniquely dangerous. With crucial elections coming in November that could grant him another four years, the world must take heed.