The first is the militarization of American police forces and the rise, especially after September 11, of what Radley Balko called “warrior cops.” An important period to remember is one in which America became significantly safer, but law enforcement agencies still lacked weapons and equipment, tactics and training, and even an outward-facing “thin blue line.” It has also become far more combative in its rhetoric.
The second is the recent movement by law enforcement and the general public against all forms of protest, following the massive climate marches in 2019 and the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020. Over the past five years, there have been significant legal restrictions on protests. It is legalized all over the world. Almost half of U.S. states also have restrictions in place. Several states have even passed laws that would give immunity to drivers who hit protesters, and New York Democrats have proposed a bill that would define roadblock protests as “domestic terrorism.”
However, a growing number of critics say that protests that simply cause trouble to others cross the line and become counterproductive or offensive. President Biden reprimanded a college student who pitched a tent on his quadriceps last week, warning that “dissent must never lead to anarchy” and insisting that “order must prevail.” The House of Representatives just passed a bill that would limit criticism of the state of Israel by labeling it anti-Semitic, and Nancy Pelosi has previously asked the FBI to investigate protesters, and such an investigation There are some indications that it is underway.
And third, the relationship between the liberal establishment values ​​of this country’s institutional elites and the progressive values ​​that advocate social justice in this country has remained relatively strong for about 15 years. The ideological alliance that had existed has collapsed. This strange and unstable coalition of center-left groups and organizations was founded first by the Barack Obama administration (which seemed to many to embody a new kind of “radical establishment”), and then by It lasted more than a decade and a half under President Donald Trump’s administration. He inspired a desperate alliance of liberalism, a mass resistance movement. This alliance has always seemed a bit hypocritical to some skeptics on the left and many critics on the right, but it also symbolized the basic grammar of liberal power throughout the long 2010s. . In 2013, or in 2019, if he was in charge of, say, Harvard University, Facebook, Creative Artists Agency, or even Pershing Square Capital Management or the New York Times, he knew he was more than just holding a job. You’ll want to believe it. Not only is it a force for self-advancement and elite reproduction, but it can also enable social justice in your work, affirming and furthering the progressive arc of history.
With the arrival of an “anti-woke” backlash among certain segments of the American elite following the coronavirus pandemic and the election of Biden, that ideological alignment has begun to split, and now these two values ​​are It has become much more difficult to pretend that they are naturally complementary, or even half of liberal cultural hegemony. Late last year, the nation’s elite universities faced this challenge. As criticism of how campus administrators responded to anti-Israel protests evolved into a larger debate about diversity, equity, inclusion, and the structure of a self-proclaimed meritocracy, the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University; Either MIT chooses to behave as a self-styled elite institution, primarily concerned with advancing its own status and the privileged position of its students, or alternatively, it chooses to act as a self-proclaimed elite institution, or alternatively, It is choosing to act as a democratic force dedicated to realigning American leadership toward standards. On the SAT?
