Ken Resnick co-hosts Wrestling with History streaming live every Wednesday night on VOC Nation.  Ken is from Minneapolis, where the horrific death of an unarmed person took place this past week.  Here is some of what Ken had to say about that incident, as well as the politicization of the coronavirus outbreak:

On law enforcement in general and his background in the Justice Dept:  “I’m sure most people have seen what happened here in Minneapolis…let me preface it by saying what’s really upsetting to me, and way way back I worked in the justice department…98.5 to 99% of law enforcement are great people who are willing to put their lives on the line to save the public, whether the public is black, white, blue, green, yellow, or brown.  They are literally there to protect and serve.  It’s the 1% that gets all the headlines.”

On there being no excuse for what happened in this situation:  “Law enforcement are trained that if you fire your weapon, it’s either to protect yourself or the life of an innocent (person).  They’re taught to shoot to kill; they’re not taught to try and wound someone…A lot of these police shootings, the decision has to be made in a split second.  Sometimes it’s a horribly wrong decision…sometimes when you are faced with a split second decision, you may come down totally unintentional on the wrong side.  But what took place here in Minneapolis was taking place over 3, 4, or 5 minutes of the officer literally choking the life out of an already restrained, handcuffed person.  So this was not a split second decision.  He continued to do this while the victim was pleading and saying that he can’t breathe, bystanders were saying that (as well).”

On the escalating violence:  “The cold hard facts are, if you or I had done that…we would have been booked on suspicion of murder.  No questions asked.  Yet while these officers have been fired, they’re still walking around.  And that to me is what is so bad (about this)….Now there are these protests, as there should be, over what happened.  But now they are breaking into neighborhood stores and looting…all that does is make a horrible situation even worse.”

On the coronavirus deaths in the US:  “To me, what’s even more troubling…without question, we’re facing the greatest health and economic crisis in the last century.  Politics can’t come together and it’s more tribal than ever.  If they can’t put it aside for this, they never will… This country, the United States, we have between 3.5% and 4% of the world’s population – – that’s a cold hard fact; but yet we have now almost close to 30% of the world’s deaths in this country, and there are political leaders literally trying to take a victory lap off of that.”

On the tribal nature of current politics:  “We have become so tribal that you have a President that just – – all science, everything says that wearing a mask helps…there’s no question of that.  You can argue how much, but it helps – – and he just makes a mockery of it so those that are on the far right, it’s not a health issue, it’s a partisan political issue and it just shouldn’t be.”

On the economy vs safety of citizens:  “The economy is very, very important…but any of those now over 100,000 people that have died in this country of the coronavirus, they don’t give a damn anymore about the economy.  If you don’t have your health, or you’re one of the now over 100,000 that have died, whether the economy is good or bad (doesn’t matter).  I have someone that was part of my extended family that passed away from (coronavirus).  It’s to the point now that it’s almost impossible to find someone that hasn’t either passed away or been seriously ill from it.”
 
Link to the episode here:
https://www.podomatic.com/podcasts/vocnation/episodes/2020-05-27T20_34_02-07_00