THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN CONTROL AND MURDER:

[F]or some, George Floyd being a uncooperative, drug using suspect changes everything for them.

Rob Dreher, writing in The American Conservative a piece that has already had a title change, several apologies, and -- as of this writing -- 12 updates added to it by the author, came right out with the sentiment that George Floyd killed George Floyd:

George Floyd did not just resist arrest. He spent at least eight minutes gasping and shrieking and carrying on like a lunatic, all the while refusing frequent, entirely legitimate orders by police. I had been under the impression that they had brutalized him from the beginning, throwing Floyd to the ground and kneeing him in the neck. That's not remotely what happened. What happened is that these police officers gave Floyd chance after chance to obey. He was high on fentanyl and meth, though he denied twice that he was on anything, but his behavior was completely bizarre. Was it because he was high? Maybe. It might also be because he had four previous criminal convictions, and had done a prison stint for assault and robbery. What brought the cops in Minneapolis out that afternoon was that he was attempting to pass counterfeit bills in a local store. Floyd must have known that given his criminal record, he was going to be in a world of trouble over the fake currency...

George Floyd is dead today almost entirely because of George Floyd. (emphasis original to Dreher's piece) Watch that bodycam video above (it ends just as he is on the ground with Chauvin's knee in his neck), and tell me how there is any other reasonable conclusion? All he had to do was obey the police, who gave him chance after chance after chance. They did not come down on him hard, with the neck restraint, because he was black. They came down on him because he hysterically resisted arrest, for at least eight minutes.

The media's narrative is false. All the George Floyd riots, all the George Floyd protests, have been based on a lie. That lie, though, has become so fundamental to the left's narrative that disbelieving it will be impossible for countless people.

Watch the video. It really is shocking to realize how badly we have been misled by the media, by politicians, by celebrities, and by activists.

It's a nice neat package to use such reasoning. George Floyd had it coming, you see, and all the priors that were straining against the collars of restraint about the events surrounding his death can now break free. All the uncomfortable questions can now be safely put back in the box of status quo, with the lid sealed shut with a dismissive side eye at the media and others for stirring up an otherwise peaceful society. As long as the drugs, and bad decisions, and troubled mind of an individual is to blame, then the rest of us can remain content that it is someone else's problem. The facts have all now changed, the events were all wrong, all must go back to how it was before.

Except for the most important fact: George Floyd still died underneath three police officers, one of which was on his neck. They continued to hold him down for two minutes and fifty-three seconds after he stopped breathing with no urgency whatsoever to render aid. Somehow, we are to believe that the officers knowing he was clearly out of sorts is exculpatory when it is actually damning. Police officers were responsible for George Floyd from the moment they put their hands on him, and suspecting him to be high and behaving erratically should clue them in that a medical event could be imminent. Pre-existing conditions, drug use, erratic behavior, and resisting arrest did not lessen George Floyd's rights or the police officer's responsibility to protect them.

Tweet   @brothersjudd