Tom Cotton and White America’s Unwillingness to Risk the Status Quo

Tom Cotton, a Republican senator from Arkansas, ran a dangerous piece in The New York Times. He argues it has become necessary to send the U.S. military to impose order in the wake of rioting following the murder of George Floyd. The piece is old news in our current cycle, but a response seems worthwhile given the argument’s deceptive framing and historical prominence. Time and again many white Americans favor the safety of the status quo over addressing racial inequality.

The opening three paragraphs allow Cotton to establish two crucial points: America has seemingly fallen into anarchy and the police are the noble victims of this chaos, overwhelmed despite their heroism. “This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy…” the piece opens. How many cities? Just many so that your mind can run wild, until it has subsumed America in the mind of the reader (Cotton only specifically mentions New York, St. Louis, and Las Vegas). Who bears the brunt? Police. The third paragraph lists off a string of assaults against police to firmly establish them as the victims. In case a reader maybe thought the anarchy was still driven by the downtrodden, this truly bizarre sentence is thrown in: “Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements”. Everybody bad was at these riots because these riots were bad.

It sounds like Cotton is pitching a new idea for a television series about a heroic police officer…