It is 10 days after the murder of a handcuffed and colored American, George Floyd. The murder was committed by a group of four white police officers. One of them squeezed the neck of the lying detainee with his knee for more than 8 minutes. He begged that he couldn’t get any air and was motionless for the last 2 of those 8 minutes. The whole was filmed by a bystander with a telephone. The clip was published on the Internet. A protest movement started that led to demonstrations. Colored Americans are fed up with living under the risk to be arbitrarily targeted, abused or murdered by white police officers and / or vigilantes.
It has been an open question for millennia how a national government gives shape to its monopoly on violence such that it is tolerated by the people. In the USA, there has been a constitution for several hundred years that gives citizens the right to protest against the government. Moreover, that constitution places the government in the hands of an elected president who is in charge of both the administration and the army.
A problem arises when the elected president does things that are not tolerated while elections are too far away. Then only the protest of the people can send a signal. That is why peaceful demonstration in the USA is a powerful weapon.
And that is what we are currently seeing. We are on the 10th consecutive day with nonviolent demonstrations in all major cities in the USA. The President’s statements about the deployment of the military have led to open criticism from the military leadership. This is the kind of process that in China is related to the crumbling of the “Heavenly Mandate”.