A Nation in Flames
All throughout these United States, a festering sore has erupted into full sepsis, and its poison is coursing through the veins of our very fabric as a nation. Long teeming in the hearts of those who purportedly seek justice, all that was needed was a spark to set ablaze the passions of those who have never been taught to quell such passions, and the spark that ignited this passion came in the form of a single encounter between George Floyd and Derek Chauvin.
George Floyd, a man arrested for passing a counterfeit $20 bill at a Minneapolis delicatessen on Memorial Day, ultimately died at the hands of the arresting officer, Derek Chauvin. In a video of the incident, Chauvin was shown kneeling on the side of Floyd’s neck, after Floyd was lying on the street with both hands cuffed behind his back. Chauvin maintained this restraint on Floyd until, after several pleas that he couldn’t breathe, Floyd asphyxiated and died. As soon as the video became public, there went outcries for justice and demands that Chauvin be charged with murder. Four days later, Chauvin was arrested and was taken into custody on third degree murder and manslaughter charges, following his firing a few days prior to his arrest. Also fired, were three other officers on the scene who failed to come to Floyd’s assistance. (Since the initial arrest, the charges on Chauvin have been increased to include second degree murder charges, and the three other officers present have been arrested and charged with aiding and abetting second degree murder, while each of the four has been placed on a $1 million bond.) In addition, the U.S. Department of Justice, on orders from the President and Attorney General William Barr, is investigating the incident and further federal charges may soon result.
Protests in Minneapolis, demanding justice for George Floyd, led to the looting of several stores, as well as further acts of vandalism, arson and even the destruction of police cars and ultimately setting that city’s third police precinct ablaze. In an all-too-often repeated scenario (i.e. Ferguson, Baltimore, etc.), police were ordered to stand down and allow the riot to intensify, unabated. Finally, a parade of police vehicles was seen abandoning that precinct, effectively surrendering to the mob violence taking place and leading to its destruction. Similar outbreaks have taken place in several cities throughout the United States since, and this trend has become more widespread in the two nights which have followed.
The mainstream media, always quick to misrepresent the truth of what is taking place across the streets of our nation, conveniently lays the blame of this outbreak on the “systemic” racism endemic to law enforcement. While it is without question that there are many examples of young black men and women dying at the hands of white police officers, there is just as much evidence of young white men and women dying at the hands of black police officers. There are as well many instances where young men and women are killed by police officers, of their own respective races, and far too many police officers have also been killed by people of all races.
That’s the ugly truth that the media does not like to acknowledge because it flies in the face of their narrative that a “systemic” bias against young black men exists across police departments nationwide. This narrative has been taken up by politicians, eager to prove their own politically-motivated and politically-expedient civil rights bona fides. While there is no question that abuse of police authority takes place, and all-too-frequently, the idea that this is a “systemic” problem affecting the nation’s law enforcement community is complete and utter nonsense. We do not live in a “police state” as some on the political left would have us believe, and chanting oft-heard phrases like “black lives matter” and “no justice, no peace” doesn’t make it so, either.
To get to the truth of urban unrest in the United States, we must divorce the looting and violence taking place in our cities, with the tragic death of George Floyd and the criminal actions of former Officer Derek Chauvin. Neither of these two individuals have much to do with what is now taking place on the streets of our country. To be clear, this is because we have seen this scenario played out again and again in Ferguson, MO, in Baltimore, MD, and in dozens of other American cities, ever since the advent of Black Lives Matter, Antifa and other such radical leftist movements during the early months of Barack Obama’s second term as President.
It was Obama who dragged out and rekindled the horrible history of Selma, Alabama in the early 1960s, the Watts (Los Angeles) riots in the late 1960s, the rioting which took place in multiple cities following the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Los Angeles riots, following the police beating of Rodney King in the early 1990’s. Following these L.A riots in 1992, we mistakenly thought that the worst of race relations in these United States were at long last put asunder, but sadly it only took one man- a President of the United States- to rekindle the fires of racial hate and resentment and that president was Barack Obama, following the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in 2003.
This time, however, things are very different.
Stoked by more than two months of imposed social isolation and social distancing, with people largely being confined to their homes, the natural urge to break free from such constraints only added to the frustration of all Americans yearning to venture outdoors and resume their normal activities. The insistence by state governments, on the mere recommendations of the White House Coronavirus Task Force that we all wear masks venturing out, legitimized the wearing of masks most often seen on paid radicals, who are bussed into potential “hot spots” and tasked with stirring up trouble and causing mayhem. The coordinated tactics of these incendiary malcontents is not accidental, but rather by design, and it is no accident that staffers of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign are funding the actual release of rioters who have been arrested, before federal charges can be brough against them.
This begs the question as to whether or not this latest upheaval has more to do with the elections coming up in November, than anything to do with either civil rights or justice. To suggest otherwise, as politically incorrect as it may seem, can only be answered within the hearts of each one of us.
As for Derek Chauvin and the other officers who stood by while George Floyd died, the ultimate verdicts of guilt or innocence by a jury of their peers remain to be seen. Regardless, these verdicts- and all of the attendant implications of these verdicts- will no doubt hang with all of the rest of us for the foreseeable future.
At the end of the day, our “race to the end”- that “end” being the color-blind society that most all of us truly seek- will never end until we reach an end to “race,” in terms of the way each of us, white, black, Asian, Hispanic- view ourselves and our neighbors. Until that day comes, we are all screwed.
-Drew Nickell, 31 May 2020
© 2020 by Drew Nickell, all rights reserved.
author of “Bending Your Ear- a Collection of Essays on the Issues of Our Times”
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