You know what angers me?

It’s not the broken glass on the streets. It’s not people taking electronics from Target or looting leggings from Lululemon. It’s not people marching down the street with signs and bullhorns. It’s not people blocking highways. The looting is disheartening and counterproductive, but it doesn’t keep me up at night.

What angers me is some police officers—certainly not all, but any number doing so is alarming—shooting tasers at kids through car windows, driving police cars through crowds, and firing paint canisters at people sitting on their porches while saying “light them up.” It angers me that police officers are firing rubber bullets at journalists so the journalists can’t tell the world what they’re seeing. It angers me that one officer pulled down the surgical mask of one black man, who had his hands up, and pepper sprayed him in the face. It angers me that police pushed an old man to the ground and gave him a head injury. It angers me that so many police officers are responding to protests over police brutality with more police brutality, and that they’re doing so knowing that a powerful institution has their backs no matter how they behave. What angers me is the presence of uniformed police in Washington, DC who will not say who they work for and who will not display names or badges. Most police (like most protestors) behaved well but we need to call out those who didn’t.

What angers me is that when we need a leader like never before, America is led by a man who scurried to a bunker and turned out the lights at the White House. Who tear-gassed peaceful protestors before curfew so he could walk to a church that he has only attended once so he could hold up a Bible like a prop. Who did not read the Bible or pray. Who did not speak to anyone in the church or the community to hear of their concerns or try to solve the underlying problems. Who did not seem to care that his administration’s tear gas affected the church’s rector, who was trying to help the protestors. Who did all that and then dared to invoke Christianity.

What angers me is that the president of the United States invokes a dog whistle like “When the looting starts, the shooting starts” and threatens to invoke the Insurrection Act and send in the military. It angers me that a senator calls for “sending in the troops,” giving protestors “no quarter” and sending in the 101^st Airborne (I guess to bomb the protestors?) and gets a platform in the op-ed section of the New York Times.

What angers me is that with all of the above, it feels like the United States of America is spiraling down closer into fascism than ever before in my lifetime. When militarized police attack protestors and journalists in other countries, the U.S. condemns it. Now other countries are appalled. The warning bells are ringing.

What angers me most is that there are only so many talks and so much advice and so many survival tips you can give your kids, and eventually they will go out into the world and crash up against some ignorant person who never got a talk of his own on the right way to behave, and badly needed one.

Maybe “angers” doesn’t encompass everything. I’m sickened and angry and ashamed and flabbergasted by what’s been happening in this country since George Floyd was killed in the street. And it scares me too, but not enough to paralyze me. Certainly not enough for me to just sit here and take it.