After Baton Rouge, Minneapolis and Dallas, signs of passionate sanity

IN THE DAYS AFTER THE DALLAS POLICE massacre, American civility took a few small steps forward. A good part of this was attributable to the relative silence of the usual suspects, the partisans, the politicians, the professional protesters, the talk-radio blowhards. Donald Trump canceled his rallies and tweeted an unobjectionable call for national unity. Hillary Clinton, who cannot be compared to Trump as an incendiary force in American life, canceled her rallies too, but showed her limitations by making an entirely banal statement on the need for a “national conversation” about race.

At that very moment, a sophisticated and sensitive conversation about race—to my mind, the most thoughtful one we’ve had in years—was already breaking out. It was visible on cable television, where a succession of journalists interviewed a succession of Dallas citizens and civic leaders who expressed neither hate nor anger nor intemperance, but sadness and