Russia and China are conducting multiple probing operations intended to test President Biden’s administration as a whole and, to be frank, directly target Joe Biden as the septuagenarian human being who ostensibly leads what China’s communist propagandists ritually deride as the U.S.-led “Liberal International Order” but recently scorned as “U.S.-led anti-China cliques.”

In a nation that was not broken along seams of race, a nation where you could trust the police to actually protect and serve no matter the color of your skin, Chauvin’s conviction would have been a foregone conclusion. But in this nation, it was anything but. That’s why I forgot to breathe. And why, after the verdict, what I felt was less exultation than simply relief.

We live in a violent culture that does not honor the sacredness of human life. From abortion to shootings in the streets of our major cities, life has become cheap and easily disposable.

Corporations that defend the democracy are seeing to their own interests. But they may save us all.