Pleading with their feet

All they want is for someone to listen. That's what this comes down to, really.

They want the President of the United States to take his fingers out of his ears, quit playing footsie with racists and criminals, quit babbling about "law and order" long enough to understand that law and order doesn't spring from brute force but from listening to one another.

They want America to slip into their shoes and walk around for awhile. To feel that bolt of fear that jitters up their spines when the red lights flash in their rearview. To wonder if this is the night when Driving While Black turns into Dead While Black.

I'm a 65-year-old white man, and because of that I'll never experience those things. I'll never have to bury my son because he reached for his license and registration the wrong way -- the wrong way being a way that somehow made a police officer hinky enough to yank his piece and go all Dirty Harry.

I'll never know any of that. Neither will the president or the vice-president or any of the president's gangster family or Nitwit Bonnie and Clyde, the two St. Louis vigilantes who became Republican heroes this week for waving guns at Those Scary Black People.

I don't know what they'll do with the 17-year-old white vigilante who drove to Kenosha, Wis., from Illinois to play army with an AR-15, and wound up charged with killing two protesters and wounding another. Probably make him the keynote speaker at the 2024 Republican convention or something.

Hell. If he'd killed a couple more he'd probably be looking at a cabinet post in this administration.

And, yeah, OK, so that's the cheapest of cheap shots. Or is it?

After all, the vice-president of this administration didn't utter a word of condemnation last night about the 17-year-old shooter and his fellow GI Jethros who were allowed to wander around all geared up in an extremely volatile situation. Didn't utter a word of regret about the Kenosha police officer who chased an unarmed black man back to his car and ventilated him in front of his children, which is what sparked the protests to begin with.

Instead he condemned the protesters' violence, while ignoring the only violence that's resulted in two dead, one wounded and one likely paralyzed for life. Gee, why is that?

We know why.

And so people took to the streets again and there were more clashes with police, and the fringe element that's only there to create mayhem created mayhem. And across America, NBA players and WNBA players and MLB players and NFL players sat out their games or practices yesterday, because all the Black Lives Matter T-shirts and all the signage and all the symbolic kneeling haven't gotten people to listen yet.

So they took America's games away for a night. And maybe for more than a night.

It's the only card they have left to play at this point, and, yes, because America isn't listening, we'll get the usual bloviation from the usual suspects. We'll get "shut up and dribble." We'll get how dare these entitled (black) rich (uppity) athletes inject themselves into this, even though they weren't always rich and the color of their skin injected them into this a long time ago.

"What good will boycotting the games do?" some people will ask.

I don't know. Maybe it is, like the kneeling, just symbolic. But symbolism has its uses. It focuses attention on an issue and gets it in front of people who would ordinarily pay it no mind. And maybe it gets those people to start listening -- or at the very least to start being appalled by what decent people should be.

The first part is easy. The second, especially in a nation so poisoned by lies and case-hardened worldviews, is the Everest in this equation.

"It's just so sad," Clippers head coach Doc Rivers told the Los Angeles Times the other night. "What stands out to me is just watching the Republican convention, viewing the fear. All you hear is Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear.

"We're the ones getting killed. We're the ones getting shot. We're the ones that were denied to live in certain communities. We've been hung. We've been shot. All you do is keep hearing about fear. It's really so sad ...

"We've got to do better. But we've got to demand better."

A better country. Better human beings in charge of it. But most of all, better listening.