Are we all Stephon Clark?

I voted for Donald Trump because America was at a perilous crossroads. We faced a choice as a country- between an independent destiny as a nation-state with a free market economy and a denigrated limited-sovereign entity beholden to the whims of collectivist internationalists.  Electing Donald Trump was, therefore, an existential choice for Americans, and, in essence, a minorty-turned-Electoral College-majority of us choose to continue to exist.

It's increasingly obvious to me that this choice, however, has come at an incredible cost.  For nearly three years, I've been oblivious as people - particularly people of color - told me through the media and pretty much to my face that Donald Trump terrified them.  I was dismissive of their concerns and thought that, surely, the era of racial injustice and violence must be over.

Then Charlottesville happened and civilian, citizen counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed, allegedly by an insane person, linked to white supremacist groups, in a vehicular attack.  Donald Trump's bizarre response to this incident was to condemn Antifa and say that there were "very fine people on both sides."

Very fine people?  I've now had the time to gather my thoughts and I've done a moment or two of research, and the hog's feast of white supremacist lunatics who made up the Unite the Right rally do not fit that description by my definition.  And again, I was almost willfully blind to the fact that Trump himself seems to be a thinly disguised racist lunatic. 

On March 18, police officers in Sacramento, California, killed a young man by the name of Stephon Clark.  At this time, we still do not have all the details of the attack, although we do have many details.  I understand that police officers operate under a great deal of strain, and that the job is extremely challenging.  I understand that people who serve in law enforcement have volunteered to risk their lives to defend our society and our lives, and I respect that fact.  I do not pretend to be judge and jury of the police officers who undertook this action.  In this moment, the police officers themselves are not my core issue.  To my profound regret, the core issue, once again, has to be President Trump's response.

President Trump, through White House official communications, has called the Stephon Clark's killing a "local matter."  This would be a perfectly reasonable statement if American history had begun on March 1, 2018.  The Constitution does seem to place certain limits on the ability of Federal authorities to intervene in cases like this.  But American history didn't start a few weeks ago.  Oppression of black people goes back more than four centuries at this point. 

The least problematic this statement could possibly be is that it demonstrates a staggering and presumably willful ignorance of the plight of black citizens within the United States.  In 1967, black people were killed by Detroit police officers at the Algiers Motel, an incident chronicled in the film "Detroit".  There have been untold other incidents of police violence against black people.  For President Trump to not even address the issue in the context of a headline incident today is staggering and a breach of his duty as President of the American people.

President Trump seems to look at black citizens of the United States with much the same, if not even worse, eyes that he looks at the unlawful invaders who exploit America's easily-breached borders.  Few if any people of the United States have earned a place in America more than the descendants of the enslaved.  If such a thing can be earned, it was earned by generations of unpaid sacrifice and another century of legalized discrimination.

For the President to ignore the systemic and historical racism that has been so prevalent in the United States, and the ongoing issue of young, unarmed black men being killed by police, is unacceptable.  This is not a 'local issue'.  It is something that happens in many states, in a repeat pattern of behavior by law enforcement agents around the country.  America deserves better.  America should have a national consensus that the killing of unarmed black men by law enforcement is unacceptable.  We should have Federal response, an impartial investigation, and leadership that is responsive to the outcry of its people.

I now do not know if I can, in good conscience, vote for President Trump when he runs for re-election in the year 2020.