I wonder if Trump is entering a zone of unpopularity and illegitimacy where there is nothing he can do or say to change his standing among a broad swath of people. In this zone, everything he says sounds hollow, insincere, duplicitous, self serving, not to be trusted. He is, it seems to me, increasingly becoming the embodiment of an emperor with no clothes and not just to long time anti-Trumpers.

At the urging of my daughter and thanks to a birthday gift from one of my closest friends, I began reading,”How to be an Anti-Racist,” authored by Ibram X Kendi, last night. So far my daughter is right: Great book! And is there a better time to read it than now?

One objective of protest action is to speak truth to power, but another is to win the sympathy and support of people who aren’t yet actively engaged and may never become activists. In the unprecedented protest actions over the last two weeks (they were on a scale most of us didn’t imagine), demanding justice and accountability for the police murder of George Floyd, both objectives were achieved. If you have any doubt about the latter one, check out new public opinion polls.

Barr would like us to believe that the problem of policing can be explained away by a “few bad apples” in police ranks. It’s not “systemic,” he says. This poor excuse for a human being is an ideologue and enforcer of right wing , white nationalist, democracy breaking, constitution breaking authoritarian rule. Like Trump, he still hopes, even if his hopes are fading some, that the November elections give them an opportunity to consolidate this form of rule for the long term.

“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.”