Is Police Reform Enough?
by John Lawrence, June 10, 2020
The people in power, the status quo, thinks they can contain the Black Lives Matter movement to just police reform. They just don't want any profound changes to the system that go beyond police reform. So let black football players kneel all they want, but they just need to keep playing so the profits keep coming. Remove a few Confederate statues, rename a few military bases, but don't challenge the trillion dollars a year spent on the military. Defund the police, but, whatever you do, don't defund the military. Don't remove any of the US military bases that exist in almost every country of the world. The United States maintains nearly 800 military bases in more than 70 countries and territories abroad. Do we really need military bases in Germany and Japan?
So pass a few laws about police reform, but don't threaten the power structure in this country. Throw black people a few bones, and maybe the whole BLM movement will quiet down and just go away. Then we can get back to business as usual and rich people can get on with the job of getting insanely richer. Inequality will remain the same. Those in power will stay in power. Legal bribery in terms of lobbying will remain in effect. That's the way business is done in this country. Needless to say poor people can't afford to hire lobbyists. Political reform will be off the table as will economic reform.
The American version of capitalism will continue to reap rewards for the billionaires while the Chinese version of capitalism will continue to bring people out of poverty and build infrastructure in many parts of the world. While the US polices and sanctions, the Chinese are winning friends and influencing people, much as Dale Carnegie suggested. It's no longer a question of capitalism vs communism. Every country in the world, including the US is some combination of both. Some countries just implement their version more effectively. The US implements its economic system in such a way that it favors the rich and condones the rest to debt servitude including middle class people strapped with student loan debt which they don't have a prayer of paying off. Don't worry payday lenders are only reaping 400% interest.
So will the BLM movement just die away satisfied with the result of police reform - no more chokeholds, no more no knock warrants, a few other things if Republicans go along which they probably won't at the Federal level. The Democrats can pass all the legislation they want. It is meaningless if it never passes the Senate and gets enacted into law. It is just spinning their wheels. It's gridlock; it's not democracy. It's democracy hamstrung; it's democracy rendered impotent. It's a political system which will patronize the BLM movement and give it a few ineffectual reforms, more lip service than anything. The real profit making infrastructure will not change. Perhaps they will absorb a few black people into the power structure by giving them a few more positions on corporate boards, but the power structure itself will not change. Poor and homeless people will stay poor and homeless. even if a few escape their dire situations. The media will highlight some black person who escaped poverty and made a million dollars. See you too could do it if you only had the gumption. This is the message they will send. Just pull yourself up by your own bootstraps as so many others have done. Systemic inequality will still remain even if systemic racism doesn't. The only mistake the recent looters made was not forming a hedge fund before they started looting.
