On May 31, as protests and looting hit large cities and the airwaves filled with talk about the great need for racial reconciliation, I happened to be in Checotah, Okla. The city of 3,481 is the “Steer Wrestling Capital of the World”—and 3½ miles northeast of it lies the site of the most racially diverse battle ever fought on U.S. soil.

Protesters camping out in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle are passing the time by listening to speeches, handing out free snacks, and watching the criminal justice documentary 13th.

“All right we are two nations,” John Dos Passos concluded in his 1936 novel about wealth and poverty, The Big Money. Events during the two weeks concluding on June 8 showed that’s true about the disunited states today, although the divide at street level is not so much rich vs. poor but protected-from-consequences vs. exposed, and tired-of-harassment vs. tired-of-chastisement. 

The week that demonstrators around the United States displayed outrage over the police-instigated death of George Floyd, Camden, N.J., resident Brenda Antinore got an email from a captain in the Camden County Police Department. 

Despite curfews and mass security deployments, demonstrators in several cities across the country continued to set fires, throw rocks, and break into businesses on Sunday night. Police have arrested at least 4,400 people nationwide since the unrest began on Tuesday. Among the arrested is a driver of a tanker truck who drove toward demonstrators on a highway in Minneapolis, where the protests began after African American George Floyd died in police custody there on May 25.

Mayors and governors across the United States declared states of emergency, deployed National Guard troops, and set curfews Saturday, but people still took to the streets in fury over the deaths of African Americans in police custody. By Saturday night, police had arrested at least 1,400 protesters in various cities, some of them for attempted murder of police officers. Rioters and bystanders sustained injuries in the chaos.

The coronavirus pandemic has unified Congress in a way few other things have. The first three economic aid bills sailed through both chambers with huge majorities.

But the gulf between parties began to reopen during negotiations for a fourth supplemental package to replenish small business aid. Now Republicans and Democrats appear poised to resume an all-out war as a fifth COVID-19 legislative effort gets underway on Capitol Hill.