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Nothing To Prove
The previous six chapters came with references, to support claims and conjectures. This chapter is different. This chapter comes with no references, no claims of fact-checking. My memory may be faulty, my perceptions subjective. Everyone is like that. This chapter is just my opinion.
Lucky for everyone, I'm not a leftist, so my opinions aren't binding on other people. Faced with the exact same facts about George Floyd, different people will make widely different value judgments. That's the cool thing about being a conservative: nobody gets to tell you how you have to feel about something. Nobody gets to tell you what or whom you have to believe, or what you have to say. What other people believe and feel and say about George Floyd is none of my business; I leave them to it.
The Narrative
The body of George Floyd barely cooled to room temperature before people started fighting over it.
Early on, the mainstream media took a proprietary interest in Floyd. For their narrative purposes, this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, and they wanted to make a martyr of Floyd: a lasting icon. They had two problems:
Floyd's death wasn't showy enough. Sure, he was tortured, but only for a few minutes, and the worst part wasn't bloody or noisy. As all-causes mortality goes, George Floyd was not a prodigy of suffering; he suffered a normal amount. People on the left found this frustrating.
Floyd wasn't a choirboy. He had a criminal history.
Leftists who wanted to amplify the cruelty and brutality of it all, soon ran out of news to report. Everyone saw what Chauvin did, and there wasn't much more to say at first. Then the Lane video came out and they pounced. Floyd sobbed in terror as officers advanced with guns drawn! Lane threatened to execute Floyd! Lane jerked Floyd out of the car! Lane dislocated Floyd's shoulders! There was no pushback against these claims.
They tried to minimize Floyd's criminal past. When George Floyd was involved in that home invasion circa 2007, the victim got Floyd's license plate, make and model. The police picked Floyd up in that car. Floyd matched the description of an extra-large black male individual in the car. The police conducted a cursory investigation including a photo lineup, which may not have met strict, modern investigative standards. To top it all off, Floyd didn't even own the car! This was supposed to have raised a reasonable doubt: The real extra-large black man in that car might still be at large!
Leftist media sold subscriptions and advertising; guilty white liberals flogged themselves in the streets; politicians postured on the body of George Floyd, and it only went downhill from there. For some reason they talked non-stop about George Floyd and very little about Derek Chauvin. They even called Chauvin's trial the George Floyd trial, and referred to Chauvin as “the officer accused“, to keep his name out of headlines and lead paragraphs. When the trial was over, they stopped talking about Chauvin at all; they put him down the memory hole. In mainstream America today, most people don't even know who Derek Chauvin is. Many still remember George Floyd.
We on the right have our narratives too. When the left deployed white-murders-black, we used to have good success with a narrative of self-defense. The great thing about the self-defense narrative is, when it works, you don't even have to say anything. You just wait a few days, the facts come out, and the problem goes away by itself. In cases where charges are brought, the story might have legs. The narratives of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown both stumbled on too far, but in neither case did an innocent man go to jail. The legal safeguards for use of force in self-defense are robust.
Some on the right tried to cobble up a narrative along the lines of self-defense, to explain the death of George Floyd. Somehow, Floyd’s death had to be justified, unavoidable or even needful. Wasn't this basically the same thing as Trayvon Martin or Mike Brown? Sadly, not so much.
In the cases of Martin and Brown, the defense showed that a reasonable person could regard the attacker as a deadly threat. Both Martin and Brown were in their teens. Both were precociously criminal, with proven histories of violence; both self-identified as gangsters; both advertised their antisocial natures on social media; both were physical specimens; and both ran more than halfway to meet their fates. Martin in particular wanted to be known not merely as a gangster, but as a sadist; a dangerous person.
That's the real criminal type. They come out early, escalate quickly, leave a trail of destruction, and become wards of the state if they're lucky. That kind of criminality is a developmental trait of the organism and it shows early in life. Nobody knows how to fix it; it doesn’t “rehabilitate“. An extreme example of the type is the recidivist: a criminal who does hard time, and once paroled, commits an atrocity and is back in custody within days or even hours. This shows a fundamental lack of future-orientation: tomorrow is just some other time.
Unlike Trayvon Martin, George Floyd never disrupted classes or assaulted anyone when he was in high school. Floyd was bred to be polite and to treat authority figures with respect. He got a college sports scholarship, but dropped out after two years. Then his hands were idle for a while and the Devil found work for him. Some people say that Floyd's life wasn't fair, he had no opportunities, etc. so he had to turn to crime. They’re right when they say George Floyd wasn’t a natural criminal. But crime is crime; making excuses for crime isn't pushing in the right direction. Floyd’s debt to society was assessed at five years; a heavy penalty but not enough to ruin him. After that Floyd didn't re-offend, and by the time he died he was a nice person. For all his fearsome appearance, he was no physical threat to anyone.
For the death of George Floyd, all manner of justifications, unavoidablenesses, and necessities have been proposed. In speaking of these things, Derek Chauvin is rarely or never mentioned. At this point, the right talks about George Floyd more than the left does.
Never mind whether what they say is true or false. Whether it comes from the left or the right, all this talk about George Floyd is suspect. Any time you talk about George Floyd, you're not talking about Derek Chauvin.
The left don't talk about Chauvin, because for them Chauvin's individual guilt doesn't matter. Collective guilt, a general American guilt is what matters to them. For some reason, there's a market for that; but that market would decline if too many people paid too much attention to Chauvin. Normal people would notice that Chauvin's not normal. The claim that Chauvin is somehow typical or representative of American society would evaporate. There's no reason to have collective guilt over the actions of someone who is not like anyone else.
Some people on the right still bitterly cling to this idea that Chauvin is somehow innocent. They never talk about Chauvin, only Floyd. Some of this talk has been notably creative; at the fringes, some of it may even be psyop/false flag material. It is all highly suspect.
It doesn't matter what kind of person George Floyd was. When something doesn't matter, it does not matter. Believe the most lurid tales about Floyd's criminal past. For the sake of argument, stipulate that Floyd had multiple warrants for armed robbery with shots fired, and he tried to flee and ran down an officer before crashing into a school bus, causing injuries to several children.
It doesn't matter. When George Floyd met Derek Chauvin, Floyd had been in handcuffs for six minutes and was sitting peacefully. The danger, if there had been any, was over; the duty of care was in full force. What Chauvin did after that is illegal in all times, places and cases. Physical force is justified if the suspect is a threat; a lesser degree of force may be justified is the suspect is a nuisance. Punitive force, proactive force, abandonment of the duty of care: these things are never legal. There are no exceptions just because the suspect is acting strange, might be on drugs, did something bad and/or used to be an asshole.
In the cases of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown, there was no direct documentation of the event. Jurors were helpfully informed that both Martin and Brown had track records of violence. The more the jury learned about the supposed victims, the more credible the claim of self-defense.
In the Chauvin case, the most recent evidence of Floyd’s criminality was thirteen years gone, and even if it proved something, there would be no need to refer to it. You can see for yourself what George Floyd did, the day he died. Beyond that, the more complete, up-to-date information you have about Floyd, the more sympathetic he appears.
You can also see what Chauvin did.
If enough people talk about Derek Chauvin, the left's narrative about George Floyd will collapse. If everyone agrees to just argue about George Floyd, the left's narrative about George Floyd will endure, mostly on the backs of those seeking to debunk it.
Floyd's Body
It has been mentioned that the ambulance crew who transported Floyd, first drove the ambulance to a safe location, notified the Fire Department, and then attempted to resuscitate Floyd on the spot while waiting for further assistance to continue the transport. Between the ambulance and the Emergency Room, every possible measure was taken to resuscitate Floyd. The medical examiner found intravenous lines in one wrist and one side of the groin (with failed attempts on the other side in both places), intra-osseous needles in both shins, bilateral thoracostomies, and an endotracheal tube. There was also minor chest trauma consistent with CPR.
When a patient dies with an endotracheal tube in place, the medical examiner must verify the installation, so the tube must be left in place. The tube is secured by a clamp-and-strap apparatus that goes over the patient's mouth. Sometimes, when a patient dies at home, the family want the tube removed so they can properly view the body. The tube must be left in place.
The medical examiner thoroughly dissected Floyd's torso, neck, and cranium. He took Floyd's heart out and weighed it. He took sections of Floyd's brain.
I'm sure, all the medical professionals who worked on Floyd's body treated the body with respect. I'm sure they all did just what they had to do. And I'm sure George Floyd didn't mind.
It still bothers me.
There's an unavoidable element of desecration, and none of it did any good. Resuscitation failed; dissection did not reveal the cause of death. The medical examination did turn in important evidence, almost all of it superficial: scrapes, cuts, bruises, the bullet scar. The only internal finding of any interest is the damage to Floyd's left wrist where Chauvin sprained it. Even that was essentially superficial; the wrist must have been deformed or the ME wouldn't have looked into it.
Feelings
The death of George Floyd is highly charged with negative emotions. Anybody who cares about it, no matter the point of view, is likely to be somewhat upset.
Apparently I care about it a lot. For some reason, I'm not all that upset. I've experienced strong feelings from time to time, but they pass in a moment. I can't work up a sustained sense of powerful outrage or anything like that.
The strongest feeling I have is pity for George Floyd. Not sympathy, not fellow-feeling, not horror or outrage or guilt. Pity.
Pity isn't supposed to be a strong feeling. It has condescension in it; it's not supposed to be soulful.
Tragedy
I didn't write the transcripts of the videos, I just typed them. Somebody else could maybe type them better.
They turn out to be literature. No, really: the transcripts conform with the traditions of classical and Shakespearean tragedy.
A tragic protagonist is a character who combines some exceptional strength or significance, with a tragic flaw that leads to the undoing of his greatness. It is not far to look, to see this template in the persons of both George Floyd and Thomas Lane. Events in the transcripts proceed as events do in the first acts of a tragedy, with an escalating series of unfortunate coincidences, chance events, and misunderstandings.
It's tragic, because neither man wants to hurt the other; they both want to get along, but they can't figure each other out. For all their good intentions, somehow everything just keeps inching along in the wrong direction. Then, in the third act, Nemesis shows up and kills everyone. But wait, where's Hubris? Oh, there it is, wearing Kueng's uniform. Chorus? Right there on the sidewalk. Deus ex machina? The ambulance.
A classic Greek production of The Death of George Floyd, complete with masks, might be worth putting on.
On My Understanding And Belief
George Floyd didn't have a bad life. He was an American citizen, and lived most of his life in freedom. Within his social milieu, Floyd had status; women loved him and he made friends easily. He was extroverted and social, with a wide circle of acquaintances.
Floyd, who was raised to be a good boy, did lose his moral compass for a while. At his worst, Floyd shoved a woman around, with a handgun in her belly. The woman wasn't pregnant as some have claimed, and Floyd didn't utter any sadistic threats. But it's still reprehensible, and worse, the victim's little girl witnessed it. On the other hand, Floyd never physically hurt anybody, at that or any other time. He never mistreated his own girlfriends or children. He was very close with his mother.
Floyd served five years in medium-security confinement in Texas. If he had gangster inclinations, he surely would have been welcome to join a gang. He did not. Instead he joined a prison ministry and learned to study the Bible. People who knew him aver that he came out of prison, reformed.
When Floyd was paroled, he joined another ministry aimed at turning young black men away from violence and crime. He would keep this up for the rest of his life. Floyd had aspired to be a professional basketball player, and gave it up. Floyd dabbled in rap music, but gave that up too. Christian ministry was something Floyd could stick with, and his core message was always non-violence and universal love. That sounds fluffy, but it really is what Floyd did with his time, and it really is what he preached. It's nice to think he might have changed someone's life for the better.
To call George Floyd a career criminal is an insult to anyone who has made successful investments in illicit activity. Floyd did commit crimes, but he was never good at it. The one time Floyd went to raid someone's home for drugs and money, he hit the wrong house and failed to murder the witnesses.
To call George Floyd a junkie, might seem questionable to anyone with real junkie friends. He was a bit of a wastrel, but nothing like Rodney King, Hunter Biden or Elvis Presley.
Floyd was not medically fragile. His heart disease would have told on him eventually, but he was basically healthy and had at least a decade or two to live.
The fake bill Floyd passed at Cup Foods was essentially a personal IOU to the owner, Mr. Adam, a man who knew Floyd well. It wasn’t meant to defraud anyone.
Floyd was taken from his reverie and killed, in the course of about a quarter of an hour.
Thomas Lane, the first officer to contact Floyd, wore a blue paper covid mask and reflective cop-shades; George Floyd never saw Lane's face.
George Floyd did resist arrest. Drunk, entitled white girls on Spring Break also sometimes resist arrest. It's not hard to find video of Spring Break girls putting up resistance which is far more prolonged, obnoxious, and dangerous than anything George Floyd did. That's not being facetious; it's really true. It's not that drunk, entitled white girls are especially dangerous; it's just that Floyd wasn't dangerous at all.
Floyd was not violent. He wasn't even impolite. He never raised his voice, never uttered defiance, a threat, imprecation or insult. Floyd took a carpet-F-bombing from Thomas Lane and remained meek. At no point did Floyd cross the line into aggressive resistance by so much as a fingernail.
Floyd was killed. He doesn't seem to have expected that. He kept trying to say he wasn't a criminal.
Floyd was not a martyr. He didn't die for what he believed in, or even for anything he did. He died for no reason.
Floyd's body was evidence in a potential criminal proceeding, so it was surgically prepared for anatomical exposition without his or his family's consent.
Waxy politicians said all kinds of stupid, irresponsible things about the killing. George Floyd did not endorse their statements.
Floyd did not license his name or likeness to Nancy Pelosi, Maxine Waters, or BLM. They and others used Floyd's filleted carcass as a doormat, to make their own standing more virtuous and galvanize their fundraising.
Floyd never owned a newspaper. It's not Floyd's fault there are guilty white liberals, or that a greedy, irresponsible, ill-intentioned media caters to them.
The shrines, murals and other memorials to George Floyd may partake somewhat of political opportunism or guilty white virtue-signaling. But that's not all they are. Lots of people, especially in Minneapolis and Houston, knew George Floyd and were personally affected by his death. Others, rightly or wrongly, were sincere in their sympathy for George Floyd's plight. Again, this is a point of contrast with the cases of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown. Floyd was a member in good standing of his community. He was loved and respected, and not just by his mother.
Someone passed legislation with George Floyd's name on it, which by default is stupid. “Chauvin violated every conceivable rule, so let’s make dumb new rules and name them after the victim.“
George Floyd was never a rioter or a looter, but he gets to have the riots named after him.
George Floyd was never a public school administrator, but he gets to have the institutional collapse of inner-city secondary education named after him.
George Floyd didn't cause the breakdown of the public order or the sustained surge in violent crime, but he gets to have that named after him too.
George Floyd was not a community organizer, racial agitator, or crooked poll worker. He didn't know who Ibram X. Kendi was. Yet Floyd's is one of the most reviled names in American politics.
George Floyd didn't deserve to die, and he didn't kill himself. He's not to blame for any of it.
I am not on a moralistic crusade to rehabilitate the name of George Floyd; leave it to future historians. After all this, my personal priority is to stop writing about Floyd at some point. I have further ideas, some of which concern Chauvin, Minneapolis, or law enforcement in general. It's not easy to avoid Floyd in those contexts.
But the worst is over. At some point, maybe soon, I can leave George Floyd behind, turn to other things. It will be a relief. I feel so sorry for him sometimes; I just wish the poor bastard could get some rest.