Did Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter Make the Crooked Places Straight for Donald Trump?

A few years ago, Americans watched a protest movement take shape designed at getting rid of Wall Street and the injustices surrounding it. According to one on-line outlet:

Occupy Wall Street is a people-powered movement that began on September 17, 2011 in Liberty Square in Manhattan’s Financial District, and has spread to over 100 cities in the United States and actions in over 1,500 cities globally. #ows is fighting back against the corrosive power of major banks and multinational corporations over the democratic process, and the role of Wall Street in creating an economic collapse that has caused the greatest recession in generations. The movement is inspired by popular uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, and aims to fight back against the richest 1% of people that are writing the rules of an unfair global economy that is foreclosing on our future.

Then came Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown and a protest movement that aims to do something about police violence (and more):

When we say Black Lives Matter, we are broadening the conversation around state violence to include all of the ways in which Black people are intentionally left powerless at the hands of the state. We are talking about the ways in which Black lives are deprived of our basic human rights and dignity.

One way of reading that is to challenge the state’s use of force (which in the science of modern politics is the most important legitimate means at the nation state’s disposal for self-maintenance).

So we have two protest movements that object to major institutions in our current society — the finance industry and the executive branch of government. Combine this with the United Kingdom’s recent vote to leave the European Union and we have major evidence of discontent with the institutions now responsible for bringing a modicum of order and stability to humans trying to live together (which is no easy thing as any married couple sometimes understands).

Now throw into the mix Donald Trump and the discontent that he represents. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee stands in the minds of his supporters for opposition to federal policies as we now experience them on immigration, free-trade, foreign policy, and regulations of all kinds. These are policies that draw the United States’ government away from its people and into a web of responsibilities that hurt the nation’s citizens.

In other words, lots of Americans are tired of the post-World War II institutions — with nation-states at the center — that U.S. officials created in part to restore order to the world and give the United States the means of protecting and maintaining that order. I am convinced that we are seeing the passing of one political system, though what will replace it is hardly apparent.

What is hard to understand, though, is an affinity between #NeverTrump and #Blacklivesmatter. If opponents of Trump want to preserve the existing order, defending law enforcement (no matter how flawed) is crucial since society depends upon it. It’s time for those who oppose Trump to rally to the police and Wall Street.

Or, just blow the whole @!#$%#$ thing up.

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