Most of us know Trevor Noah as a commentator who filled Jon Stewart’s spot as moderator of The Daily Show. Like Jon Stewart, he has a keen intellect and a sharp sense of humor.
In this monologue, Trevor Noah is reflective about connecting the dots that brought us to the present moment.
He connects Amy Cooper, the white woman who falsely complained to police that an African American man was threatening her in Central Park, when the man in question complained that her dog was off-leash in an area reserved for bird watchers.
He connects the coronavirus, which has disproportionately harmed African Americans.
He connects the economic collapse, which has impoverished many who were already in dire straights.
And he connects the murder of George Floyd.
All of these events send a message to black Americans that the social contract that underlies society has been severed, forcc c them.
A brilliant presentation.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Brilliant.
Teacher Tom is also on target: http://teachertomsblog.blogspot.com/2020/06/this-is-america.html
I agree with you, Dianne. I found Trevor spot on in his understanding.
Trevor Noah, at 3:30 — “Amy Cooper had a distinct understanding: […] I know that as a white woman I can weaponize this tool against you, and I know by the time we have sifted through who is right or wrong, there is a good chance that you will have lost in some shape or form. So for me, that was the first domino.”
There, you have it. “Lost.” As in, lost the competition. Amy Cooper aimed to win and to make Christian Cooper lose. All else Trevor comments on is powerful but nonetheless surface-level reflection on consequences from “racism.” I will continue to offer that “racism” is but a vicious, insidious, inhumane (Bob Sheppard might help with adjectives, here) emergent aspect of structural competitiveness operating at deep levels of unawareness. So until we become conscious at the deep level of structural competitiveness, we will keep trying to solve “racism” at a surface level, and therefore will continue allowing “racism” to just keep on showing up in whatever new “shape or form.”
Why would anyone believe competition rooted in one shape or form won’t emerge in any other shapes or forms?
astute
Trevor also on YouTube for those who aren’t on facebook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4amCfVbA_c
Noah mentions that the people at the top set the tone for how people are expected to conduct themselves. The tone this administration has set is that racism is acceptable. Trump has a long history of racist controversies from his bias during the Central Park Five to how he treats people today. His attitude and actions have emboldened the police, and there has been a string of black deaths at the hands of white officers of the law. Laws have also been crafted that officers generally walk when someone is killed in the line of duty. This incident is different. The officer murdered Floyd while onlookers watched in horror. This death was unnecessary and unjustified. No wonder there is rage in black communities. Black people are tired of being victims of the police.
yes: it is the fact that Trump’s racist/misogynistic tone was not only heard but then got him elected — and has kept him adamantly ‘loved’ — which so shocks the larger society
Noah nails it.
From a book I’ve been working on:
Every actor has had The Actor’s Nightmare. You find yourself on stage, with a set and properties and another actor, but you haven’t any memory of how you got there or what play you’re in or who your character is, much less what your lines are. The other actor turns to you and says, “What the hell do you think you’re doin’, Matt Friedman?” and you think, Talley’s Folly, Lanford Wilson. Great play, but what the hell? Did I audition for this? I never studied those lines! Did I study the script? How come I can’t remember any of that? WTF? The other player looks at you. The audience looks at you. A looooooooooong half second goes by, and panicking, you wake up.
Like the amnesiac of The Actor’s Nightmare, you didn’t choose much of the play you were cast into at birth. It was already there—the set, the costumes, the characters, and a very great deal of the script—all worked out in enormous detail without your participation or consent, but you were not yet mature enough to say, WTF?, and both fortunately (for some reasons) and unfortunately (for others), you were too young and accepting to panic at this. Nor did you question the ontological commitments already made for you (ontology: the study of being, of what is). Some people never do. (Black and brown people in America don’t have that luxury. They are reminded, moment by moment, by our racist culture, that the fix is already in, that there is a set of rules already in place, a social contract, that they weren’t privy to and that doesn’t protect their interests.)
A contract cannot be binding when some are forced to live by it without ever being asked if they agree with it.
And Trump’s call to use brutality to enforce that contract now that there have been protests and riots is evidence that someone else wrote this contract and forced it on the rest of us.
Did anyone ask you if you agreed with that unwritten and unsigned contract? I do not remember anyone asking me, ever.
Who created that contract – I think the wealthiest most powerful 1-percent did, and they do not care what the rest of us think. Like Trump, too many of the rich and/or powerful think and sometimes say, like Trump already has, “Obey or suffer and maybe die!”
Right now, I think we have to concentrate on the contract that is far too often ignored in minority communities, particularly the black community. Yeah, there are plenty of white people that don’t share much of the pie, but no matter how you cut it, the white share is far more substantial than that shared by the black community. Let this moment be about black lives. I hope the outrage will extend to all marginalized people no matter what their race or ethnicity, for social and economic justice.
I live 40 miles east of San Francisco, and the community I live in is multiethnic with all colors represented and that includes the street I live on.
I think that readers of this blog should hear what Trump and Barr said to governors in a conference call. He called on them to use force and dominate the protesters. “If you don’t dominate, if you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.”
He urged governors to call out the national guard…”to use the military.” “You gotta arrest people…then you’ll never see this stuff again.” “Most of you are weak.”
From the Washington Post: “At the call’s outset, Trump noted that Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also present and that the president had ‘just put him in charge’ of managing the unrest in dozens of cities nationwide.’” There was no clarity about what Trump meant about putting General Miley in charge of managing the protests, now present in almost every state. r
This call clearly reveals Trump’s impulse to be strong-arm dictator aided by the military and judicial system. There are several brief glitches with silence, but the rant continues as he seeks questions from and replied to a few governors.
This is a long link but it should work even if you are not a Washington Post subscriber.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-governors-george-floyd-protests/2020/06/01/430a6226-a421-11ea-b619-3f9133bbb482_story.html?pwapi_token=eyJ0eXAiOiJKV1QiLCJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiJ9.eyJjb29raWVuYW1lIjoid3BfY3J0aWQiLCJpc3MiOiJDYXJ0YSIsImNvb2tpZXZhbHVlIjoiNTk4YWMwZWVhZTdlOGE2ODE2MjVhMTdlIiwidGFnIjoiNWVkNTVhZGRmZTFmZjY1NGMyZWNmZjI5IiwidXJsIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2FzaGluZ3RvbnBvc3QuY29tL3BvbGl0aWNzL3RydW1wLWdvdmVybm9ycy1nZW9yZ2UtZmxveWQtcHJvdGVzdHMvMjAyMC8wNi8wMS80MzBhNjIyNi1hNDIxLTExZWEtYjYxOS0zZjkxMzNiYmI0ODJfc3RvcnkuaHRtbD91dG1fY2FtcGFpZ249d3BfdG9feW91cl9oZWFsdGgmdXRtX21lZGl1bT1lbWFpbCZ1dG1fc291cmNlPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXImd3Bpc3JjPW5sX3R5aCZ3cG1rPTEifQ.1QKy-juOqCsuualoqQBdvDKkCliotgy1OdhfOn3CKMA&utm_campaign=wp_to_your_health&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&wpisrc=nl_tyh&wpmk=1
If Trump responds with military force, the country will EXPLODE like it never has before. Even the Revolutionary war will be a shadow of this Civil War.
I am confident that in the end Trump and his supporters will lose and he will probably end up hanging from a lamp post alongside his children hanging from other lamposts on the same street, but the damage and deaths in the United States will be extreme.
Sez the little man cowering in the White House bunker. Hope they have a few cans of gasoline. If I were a betting man, I’d give less than half odd that there will not be a national election in November.
Trump is hearing that he is “weak” from far right media: he won’t be able to back down
What the right side doesn’t realize is that the times for strongmen are gone.
Mate,
My greatest fear is that Trump will declare martial law and suspend the elections. He knows he is behind in the polls. This may be his Reichstag fire. He once mused on how great it would be if he could be “president for life” like his beloved friend Kim of North Korea.
Since no president has ever declared Martial Law and used that power to suspend or stop a national election, we do not know what the U.S. Supreme Court would do. Would the court rule Trump’s action unconstitutional?
Nothing has ever stopped a national election in this country before, even world wars.
Seriously, can you guys imagine Martial Law in this country?
“Martial law has been declared nine times since World War II and, in five instances, was designed to counter resistance to Federal desegregation decrees in the South.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martial_law_in_the_United_States
There were other more reputable sites I could link to, but this Wiki entry covers it all. Only Abraham Lincoln used Martial Law for the country. The other times, Martial Law was declared states or cities. I hope the reason Trump keeps comparing himself to Lincoln isn’t because he is dreaming of declaring Martial Law for the country.
“On September 15, 1863, President Lincoln imposed Congressionally authorized martial law.[14] The authorizing act allowed the President to suspend habeas corpus throughout the entire United States (which he had already done under his own authority on April 27, 1861). Lincoln imposed the suspension on “prisoners of war, spies, or aiders and abettors of the enemy,” as well as on other classes of people, such as draft dodgers. The President’s proclamation was challenged in Ex parte Milligan, 71 US 2 [1866]. The Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln’s imposition of martial law (by way of suspension of habeas corpus) was unconstitutional in areas where the local courts were still in session”
We know exactly which four of the nine on the Supreme Court will kill the nation. We have to pray for the health of four of them and hope Roberts understands what’s at stake.
If corona virus cases spike in the next two weeks, you know Trump is going to blame the protestors. No wonder he is calling for military action. Creating more chaos makes it easier to blame others.
Creating chaos and everything else, and I mean everything, is straight out of the fascist playbook. The Constitution is meaningless, as we see in the use of the military, as we see with the Supreme Court, as we see with the Republican cult. And the military will back him at every step. This is part of the totalitarian playbook. The military gets preferential treatment, their families are first in line for everything, their pay will go up. See all countries behind the Iron Curtain, China, and North Korea for confirmation. This country is dying right before our eyes. And too many Americans are oblivious to what’s going on. For those of you who, “this will never happen here,” ask yourselves how many times you have said that in the past four years only to be proven completely wrong. It’s one minute before midnight right now. It may be too late in November.
This is Trump’s Reichstag fire.
TOW, you are right on. One of the most captivating books I’ve read in the last year is Julia Boyd’s Travelers in the Third Reich. I put it right up there with Nicholson Baker’s Human Smoke. What both books do is look back at the historical record of what people wrote and said, to quote Boyd, the don’t cover history “with the clarity of post-war hindsight.” They look at actual words. Therefore Churchill doesn’t seem as wonderful as we think he should. Chamberlain doesn’t looks so bad. In fact, many of the iconic figures we revere are quite human and the most committed and brave have been forgotten. As I wrote here last week, I spend two weekends ago going through the posts on this site between August and December 2016. I wish more of you would do it. As wonderful as this site is, there is a great dearth of memory; it’s hard to search things, go back at what we wrote, thought and felt at the time when we din have the clarity of doing post mortems. So your comment prompted me to do a few Google searches. And here’s a good selection that demonstrates we knew what was coming. My comments aren’t on all them, nor are they the most important or relevant. But we knew what was coming. Many of used the term “Reichstag fire,” perhaps I’ll write more about that in future posts, because I don’t think most understand the true significance and consequences that came with it. But here’s a good selection. And as I searched, the last link might interest and remind you, TOW, of just how the event we are experiencing now are not random or spurred by a murder in Minneapolis. Take some time, read through them. This country is on life support and in danger of dying sooner rather than later. Are you (the collective you, not you TOW) ready to give your lives if the worst comes true? Or are you satisfied with being smug, being right, and saying I told you so when the death knell comes?
https://dianeravitch.net/2019/12/18/trump-impeached-trumpism-prevails-in-gop/
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/11/24/never-thought-i-would-see-this-in-my-lifetime-fascism-in-america/
https://dianeravitch.net/2018/10/24/donald-trump-encourages-promotes-and-condones-domestic-terrorism/
https://dianeravitch.net/2016/12/17/can-our-democracy-survive-trump/
https://dianeravitch.net/2019/02/20/why-don-trump-jr-s-loser-comment-struck-fear-in-the-hearts-of-teachers-around-the-world/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2019/05/26/utah-judge-michael-kwan-suspended-donald-trump/1246607001/
My response is in moderation, TOW, will be interesting to see if it gets through.
Greg,
We have only one chance to change the trajectory of our country, and that’s Election Day in November.
I thought Biden would win easily even if he never campaigned. The current chaos makes me wonder if independent voters will rally around the “strongman” (#BunkerBoy) in search of calm. If Trump is re-elected, this country will be finished as a democracy. He would interpret his victory as an endorsement of fascism and use of the military to stifle not only protests but dissent and criticism.
We have only one (peaceful) chance to change the trajectory of our country, and that’s Election Day in November.
Pray that the election will be held, Trump and the GOP soundly defeated, and peace prevails.
And VOTE!
I agree with you 100%, Diane. This November will decide if this country will have a chance to endure or if it will die. I recognized the Idiot as a fascist from the first day of his campaign. It’s so sad that it has come to this and so many people are just now waking up to it and others couldn’t be happier. I did not make the Weimar analogy lightly.
This is international. Jordan Sancho, England’s best young player, makes a statement after scoring a goal for his club Dortmund, Germany:
https://sportbild.bild.de/bundesliga/2020/fussball/bild-kommentar-zu-trikot-botschaften-weg-mit-diesem-verbot-70998230.sport.html
The civilized world understands what is going on here better than we do.
Jadon
John Locke used the idea of Social Contract, borrowed from Thomas Hobbes, to justify the Glorious Revolution. Thomas Jefferson used his logic to justify the American Revoltion.
You made me think about the word ‘liberty’. Jefferson and his contemporaries used that word a lot. It meant independence from tyranny. Today, the word ‘freedom’ has replaced liberty for the most part. Freedom doesn’t mean independence from tyranny; it means freedom to be tyrannical.
I’ve posted too much here today, but I encourage you to read Isaiah Berlin’s Liberty which includes his classic Four Essays on Liberty and read his treatise on the differences between positive and negative liberty.
Thank you.
I completely agree with Noah. I agreed with everything he said, and when he discussed things that I had previously seen differently, he changed my mind. Thank you.
Well I’ve got people smashing windows on my block at this moment, so that’s great.
I live about miles 40 east of San Francisco and so far all day and last night, not a sound, not a shot, no smoke from fires. No Mobs. No looters. But who knows, anything can happen. At home, I always have a loaded shotgun close by. My next-door neighbor has an AR15. The 1,000-acre cattle ranch behind my house has its own shooting range and sometimes on weekends I can hear the pop of their firearms as they are practicing.
I have no idea where you live.
I’m in Manhattan. No guns allowed here. Block has quieted down for the moment, but it changes by the minute and the police are standing off. Going to be a long night.
Firearms are allowed inside our homes. If we take our firearms outside, that would be illegal without a carry permit that is almost impossible to get near any of the major cities.
It’s just great, isn’t it.
It’s still true:
Art and humor will get you through.
https://www.theonion.com/sweatshop-worker-devastated-to-hear-jacket-she-worked-s-1843834363
Heh, heh 😀 Good one.
What’s also broken is the military. Can anyone explain to me why they would fire tear gas on peaceful protestors in order to create the propaganda of a photo op for their Dear Leader, The Idiot? Do we not prosecute military members of war criminals for just following orders? The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs allows himself to be manipulated for a fascist political agenda? Are not the people who did this violating their oaths of defending the Constitution?
Even in the military it takes courage to stand up to authority. The My Lai Massacre during March 1968 in Vietnam is an example. It took one courageous officer to stand up and refused to play along.
“The coverup of the My Lai Massacre continued until Ron Ridenhour, a soldier in the 11th Brigade who had heard reports of the massacre but had not participated, began a campaign to bring the events to light. After writing letters to President Richard M. Nixon, the Pentagon, State Department, Joint Chiefs of Staff and several congressmen—with no response—Ridenhour finally gave an interview to the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh, who broke the story in November 1969.”
https://www.history.com/topics/vietnam-war/my-lai-massacre-1
Someone like Ron Ridenhour wouldn’t have anyone to write to today because the president and his staff including the Attorney General of the United States are corrupt lying monsters just like all the officers and men who went to prison because of the My Lai Massacre.
What if the only way to stop Trump and the Republican Party Trump controls through Moscow Mitch is a bloody Civil War?
The image that will stay for me for the rest of my life from yesterday’s Hitlerian scene near the White House was on of a man who was being pushed along as a woman next to him fell. As he bent over to help her up, one of the guards violently shoved him over. Civil war within the ranks of the police and military is fomenting.
And all so Trump could walk across the street and hold a Bible for a photo op?! It makes cringe to think that there are people who will see that display in a positive way. Disgusting.
It strikes me that the people who will see this display in a positive way likely have never read the Bible. Those of us who are non-believers and have read it would normally take great glee in the irony if this were not such an ominous time.
Having read the Bible is no guarantee of understanding what it says, believer or not. You can find support for lots of horrid acts and if the contradictions don’t make you wonder…
And, all the while, WH it has been hiding in a bunker.
Just like everyone knows who else did.
Maybe we’re seeing/will see what you said in your last paragraph, Lloyd.
While it continues to hide in a bunker.
“it” is the proper reference to refer to Trump. Trump is not human.
I wonder how we are going to get out of this mess, the causes of which are so deeply rooted. Even if law would limit any expression of racism in public media, it would take at least a generation to make it disappear.
“at least a generation” I love your optimism!
Please watch John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf4cea5oObY&feature=share
A condensed version of history of the Police, learning about the unions/culture of police and what to do about it. A nod to Trevor Noah’s social contract. The end is spot on…
I agre, we can always rely on John Oliver’s evaluation of the situation. He also advises to start talking about mail in voting.
On the social contract.More brilliance.
We seek reforms to policing. But something even deeper needs repair. – The Washington Post