The Cake That This Country Baked

by

Abby Zimet, staff writer

Iconic moment in Baton Rouge. Photo by Jonathan Bachman/ Reuters

A year after Sandra Bland's arrest and death, America's streets are filled with righteous rage. Surfacing on social media are surreal videos of mass arrests - including the live-streamed one of Black Lives Matter activist DeRay McKesson, now out on bond - and hordes of jumpy, chanting, goose-stepping, assault-rifle-wielding robocop stormtroopers in seemingly unlikely places like Rochester N.Y. facing off against stately, placid protestersdemanding only what this country blithely continues to insist it believes in: equality before the law, and not being shot down for breathing while black.

 Meanwhile, even as Baton Rouge threatens to become a sinister new flashpoint - likened to Ferguson, Syria, Tiananmen Square - there is growing recognition, even on the right, that Dallas and all that came before had a sorry historic inevitability. Given our abundant guns, our modern-day racism, our murderous, militarized police, and the "violent and deeply unethical founding and growth of this country," Shaun King argues, Micah Johnson was "the cake that this country baked."

Livestream arrest of McKesson

http://www.commondreams.org/further/2016/07/11/cake-country-baked