This day in history: RFK shot

June 5, 1968, Robert Kennedy was shot:

Senator Robert Kennedy is shot at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles after winning the California presidential primary. 

Immediately after he announced to his cheering supporters that the country was ready to end its fractious divisions, Kennedy was shot several times by 22-year-old Palestinian Sirhan Sirhan. He was pronounced dead a day later, on June 6, 1968.

The summer of 1968 was a tempestuous time in American history. Both the Vietnam War and the anti-war movement were peaking. 

Martin Luther King, Jr. had been assassinated in the spring, igniting riots across the country. In the face of this unrest, President Lyndon B. Johnson decided not to seek a second term in the upcoming presidential election. Robert Kennedy, John’s younger brother and former U.S. Attorney General, stepped into this breach and experienced a groundswell of support...

Rob's comment:

Both JFK and RFK had to die before Richard Nixon could become president. He was elected in November, 1968, after a campaign based on the racist Southern Strategy.

The US attack on and invasion of Vietnam was not in fact "peaking" in 1968. It continued for another seven years thanks to Richard Nixon and the Republican Party.

See also The assassination of JFK: Case not closed and James Fallows comparing 1968 to 2020: Is this the worst year in modern American history?

Trump encourages police violence

From the Atlantic:

Trump Gave Police Permission to Be Brutal

...“Please don’t be too nice,” Donald Trump told an audience of police officers on Long Island in 2017, in a speech largely focused on the MS-13 gang. The audience laughed. “When you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in rough. I said, ‘Please don’t be too nice.’”

Floyd’s killing has sparked nationwide protests, despite the fact that the coronavirus outbreak, which has killed more than 100,000 Americans and left 40 million without work, is still killing about 1,000 people a day in the United States. 

Those Americans who were disproportionately dying from a plague came out in force to protest being murdered by their government. 

Trump, who ran as the “law and order” candidate, now presides over the very “American carnage” he vowed to end...

See also First, Trump dumps Obama's police reforms.

Who are those guys?

Back outside the White House. Today the perimeter has been pushed back another half block. Federal law enforcement of some kind, but they won’t identify themselves, and all insignias and name plates have been removed. pic.twitter.com/q5dmdMgkLV

— Garrett Haake (@GarrettHaake) June 3, 2020

See also Michelle Goldberg: Tom Cotton's fascist op-ed.