Officials and “responsible” leaders of almost every stripe are calling for unity in the aftermath of a gruesome week that sparked national outrage over back-to-back killings of two African American men by white police officers in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and an African American ex-soldier’s revenge shooting of white police officers in Dallas, Texas, that killed five and wounded seven of them, and also wounded two civilians.

It is customary for leaders to sing rousing choruses of the “We-Are-One-America” anthem at times like this—when public thought and action must be managed and controlled. The “unity” plea achieves this through distraction—by changing both the nature and dimension of the national crisis and limiting the people’s power to do anything about it.

Leid Stories discusses why, amid the clamor for unity, clarity about the current crisis is taking a lethal hit.