Baton Rouge, the Convention and the Trump Show

I was interested in Benjamin Lowy’s Instagram shot for TIME of an African-American police officer in the convention arena. She’s watching an early CNN report of the targeted killing of police officers in Baton Rouge by an apparently deranged black vet.

The photo seems to be doing a couple things.

Of course, it speaks to the tragic irony and interconnection of racial violence and peace enforcement, of black and blue. It’s especially the case given that one of the officers killed by the shooter in Baton Rouge was also black, and had been doing his own soul searching about his role, the tension in the city and the events in Dallas.

It also anticipates the convention as a call-and-response between Cleveland, Baton Rouge and Dallas by a baiting, newly-themed “law-and-order” Trump.

The photo also reminds us how much our experience in this very sensitive moment is mediated by the (profit-seeking and hysteria-infused) cable news environment. It’s Trump’s medium.  The photo (and the banality beyond the screen) also recalls the first photo of Hilary’s campaign after clinching the nomination:

Claiming a numerical lock on the nomination and awaiting returns from a handful of states, including California, the Clinton campaign delivered this into the Twitter-sphere. How we read it: I’m running against a show. (photo: Barbara Kinney/Hillary for America.)

A photo posted by Michael Shaw (@readingthepictures) on Jun 8, 2016 at 7:28am PDT

Trump promised us a show and the impending four days, given the tension in the country, threatens to place America and the GOP into a racially-charged “apprentice mode.”

(photo: Ben Lowy @benlowy/via TIME @timelightbox. caption: Cleveland, OH | July 17, 2016. A police officer working security at the Cleveland Convention Center watches the news of a fatal shooting  of police officers in Baton Rouge, LA.)