Here’s a simple question: A police station in a major American city was occupied, looted and burned on Thursday night. Most of us assumed we’d never live to see something like that happen here. But it did happen.
So the question is, has anyone been arrested for doing it? Will anyone ever be arrested?
No one in authority seems especially interested in apprehending the people who did it. All of it happened on camera, but the perpetrators just walked away. And it’s, maybe likely, that most of them will never be punished for it.
That’s striking.
It’s a very different experience from the ones most Americans have living here.
As Minneapolis burns and crowds grow in the streets of Atlanta and many other cities, the rest of us are continuing on as we always do — dutifully following the rules. There are many of those.
Every year, there seem to be countless new rules to follow. They multiply like insects.
We do our best to keep up. We get our permits, apply for our licenses, put on our reading glasses to check the latest regulations on the internet.
We wear our little masks.
We keep our dogs on leashes.
We drive sober.
We don’t eat on the subway. We never litter.
We make orderly lines and patiently wait our turn.
In airports and government buildings, we remove our shoes and submit to body searches from strangers. We lose our dignity every time we do this, but they tell us we must, so we accept it without complaint.
In public, we hide what we really think.
We bury our natural instincts. We keep our deepest beliefs to ourselves.
We know the boundaries. We understand we will be punished for telling the truth.
This is the America the rest of us live in.
For the privilege of citizenship in a country like this, we work as hard as we can.
We never stop sharing what we earn with others.