TheGeorge Floyd video went around the world. It became the centrepiece of a new political movement. Political actors harnessed the emotion over that video and over Floyd’s death, to control the country and change it forever, and then —and this is the key and the thing that we should think a lot about — in the last month, some of these same people went further than that. They worked to change the outcome of Derek Chauvin’s trial.
That is the one thing that we can never allow, no matter how we feel about a specific case. Civilized countries have impartial systems of justice, that’s the hallmark of a civilized country. It is what separates the country you want to live in from a place you don’t even want to visit.
Civilized countries demand, above all, that every citizen is held to precisely the same standard under the law as every other citizen is and that applies, no matter how popular or unpopular a particular defendant might be. It applies no matter the alleged crime.
In America, it used to strive hard to be like that. And yet, just yesterday, we saw the President of the United States throw his backing behind Derek Chauvin’s prosecution, and he did that even as the jury in Minneapolis was still deliberating the case.
And then least noted, but most ominously of all, we saw thugs threaten a defence witness with death. They smeared pig blood on the door of what they thought was his house, and then get away with it. No one in authority seemed especially interested in catching them.
These were terrifying acts, and it doesn’t matter whether you think that Derek Chauvin was guilty and deserves what he got. It doesn’t matter who you voted for. It doesn’t matter what you think about anything else. Seeing mobs trying to influence this trial should shock and horrify you at least as much as the George Floyd video did.
This is a picture of a country moving backward at high speed, but the strange thing is that most people didn’t seem shocked or upset by any of this. They seem relieved by the verdict.
They believed that a conviction, whether it was justified or not, would buy the country peace. Many people thought this, not just cynical people, most people, including many Republicans, Some of them said so. If we obeyed Maxine Waters and ignored the pig blood, hopefully, the chaos would end, and you can see why they felt that way.
After 11 months of violence and intimidation from BLM, mostly unrestrained, Americans just decided to pay the ransom. They understood Derek Chauvin as a sacrifice for the sins of a nation.
A wise country stands on its principles. It puts down mobs. It does not obey mobs. Mobs are never sated. It doesn’t matter what demands you follow, they demand more.
And now they are demanding more, not surprisingly. So people with the wrong skin color now have to leave New York City, they’re not allowed to own restaurants. That’s what they just said.
Everyone, of course, pretended not to notice that they said it, but they did say it. The point is, people didn’t used to talk like this in public. And when they did, they were scolded, at the very least. You can’t have a multi-ethnic nation hold together if people are going to scream stuff like that on the street without anyone disagreeing with them.
So why are they doing it now? Well, they’re doing it for one simple reason.
It gets results.
Radicalism works, violence works. That’s the lesson. We’ve taught them, being the mob, that lesson.
Rioting does work. When you burn cities, you get what you want. You get rich from corporate handouts. You can buy four homes. You get the jury verdicts you have demanded.
Rioters know this very well, even if the rest of us will not admit it. By allowing Wendy’s to be torched and Macy’s to be looted and police stations to be destroyed, the rest of us have relinquished our power as citizens and instead handed it to the most violent, unreasonable and least productive people in the country.
Why would we do something like this? Maybe historians will be able to explain it.
In the meantime, prepare for the next phase.
But once again, don’t kid yourself, Derek Chauvin’s conviction did not settle accounts, it merely increased the debt.
You may roll your eyes at Ibram X. Kendi, or the President and Vice President or at Bree Newsome and the many like her. But be assured that the Biden administration does not roll its eyes, it takes every word very seriously and that means your neighbourhood may soon see reforms like this one.
