George Floyd. Forgotten In The Orgy of Violence.
On the 25th of May - Memorial Day - George Floyd, a 46-year-old man who’d reportedly lost his job due to Minnesota’s lockdown, was suspected of passing a forged $20 bill. Minneapolis police arrested him but after he fell several times and balked at getting into a police car, Floyd wound up on the ground with an officer’s knee jammed into his neck.
Cellphone footage - that’s so horrific it’s almost impossible to watch - show more than seven minutes of masochistic behavior by Officer Derek Michael Chauvin, as other officers stood by and did not stop him.
Police brutality. There is no other word for it.
George Floyd died shortly thereafter. Chauvin was arrested and charged with murder.
I have not heard a single person say that Floyd’s treatment was justified. Not one. It was a gruesome attack by a violent, out-of-control cop. On that, it seemed, almost all Americans agreed.
The protests and demonstrations that followed Floyd’s death were predictable and justified.
It didn't take long for the peaceful protests to turn ugly. As they spread across the nation it was clear that a well-organized and well-financed army of anarchists had seized upon Floyd’s death as an excuse to unleash mayhem in major cities from coast to coast.
In the orgy of violence, George Floyd was forgotten.
These criminals burned buildings, looted stores, attacked police officers, store owners and bystanders. There was cellphone footage of a man being beaten almost to death in Dallas that was as hard to watch as George Floyd’s torment.
On Sunday, U.S. Attorney General William Barr announced that members of Antifa participating in violence would be treated as domestic terrorists. Excellent and overdue. These punks have been allowed to run wild for too long.
As I write this on Sunday night, the chaos continues. It’s spread to Virginia Beach where police in riot gear are launching tear gas at an unruly mob. Most of the decent protesters left earlier in the evening. Left behind are troublemakers, throwing projectiles at police and smashing windows on Atlantic Avenue.
Ironic that these anarchists chose to vandalize a city that’s worked so hard at race relations and that collaborated with Pharrell Williams to make the Something In The Water festival a phenomenal success. That was just last year. Watching the violence playing out on local TV news, it seems a very long time ago.
What’s happening in America has nothing to do with the death of an unarmed man in police custody in Minneapolis.
It looks like an insurrection.
