“Kneeling is both an act of defiance and resistance, but also of reverence, of mourning, but also honoring lives lost,” said Chad Williams, the chairman of the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at Brandeis University. “It is also simple and clear. Its simplicity gave it symbolic power, and as we see now, its power persists.”

In the face of two overlapping crises that are defining his presidency, Trump has not only demonstrated an astonishing degree of incompetence and narcissism. He has also — and for all eyes to see here and around the world — displayed a profound moral emptiness and indifference to the loss of life, especially Black lives, as well as a manic and reckless compulsion to polarize the country, blame “enemies within” for the crises that we are passing through, and, with no discernible reluctance, smash constitutional norms, unleash the military against young protesters, and assume dictatorial powers.

But here’s the thing. More and more people are catching on. Recent polling shows a president sinking in popularity. Even former military leaders, in what is unprecedented, are speaking out against Trump and their successors in the Pentagon who would turn cities into a “battlespace.” And most tellingly, the sustained protest actions of young people and others across the country protesting the gruesome murder of George Floyd at the hand of 4 policemen are gaining the sympathy of other Americans.

And yet, as encouraging as this is, vigilance and sustained action are imperative . A weaker Trump could easily become a more dangerous and reckless Trump.

El Duce’s staged event is meeting blow back from many quarters. Instead of looking like he is in charge and in command, Trump looks small, vindictive, reckless, and dictatorial. Anything but presidential.

The protests, denouncing the murder-execution of George Floyd, have gone global. People are marching far beyond our shores. The world for many reasons has become smaller and more interconnected. Information and images travel at instantaneous speed to a global audience. In the first of his magisterial books on 19th century Europe, Eric Hobsbawm, one of the great historians of the 20th century, remarks that the citizens of Seville only learned about the French Revolution 6 weeks months after the event. How different the world is today!

Life is, if anything, humbling, revealing how much we got wrong in the past and how limited our knowledge is of the present, and the predictability of the future. If we have any doubt about that, the events of the past few months should have convinced us otherwise.