The Democrats ought to be celebrating the three guilty verdicts the jury handed down in the trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin Tuesday. Chauvin faced three serious charges in the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, and was found guilty on all three. Two of the charges are degrees of murder.
Instead of acknowledging justice, Democrats from Joe Biden on down instead described it as “accountability” and insisted that it wasn’t enough. They pushed for the Senate to pass a set of federal changes to police law — I won’t describe the bill as “reform” until I’ve read its particulars myself, as most Democrat inititiatives deform under the guise of “reform” — that the Democrat-controlled House has already passed.
The most insane reaction to the verdict belongs to Nancy Pelosi, who literally thanked George Floyd for getting murdered. As if he intended to get killed that day. As if his murder has led to some sort of good outcome.
More than two dozen Americans, mostly minorities, were killed in the riots that followed his death. Rioters did billions of dollars of damage to cities all over the country. Our national fabric has been torn asunder, and Pelosi has done precisely nothing to bring it back together. She divides at every single opportunity. It’s long past time for the divisive, always enraged Pelosi to depart the political scene.
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris engaged in the usual COVID theater — they’re both vaccinated, but wore masks and had a gentleman wipe the podium down between their speeches anyway. Both reacted to the verdict by pushing a bill they want passed, an opportunistic leap back from tragedy and criminal justice straight into politics. There is no pause on that anymore, ever. Not even for a second.
Biden delivered remarks on the verdict that veered from the reasonable, when he noted that most law enforcement officers do their jobs with honor, to the surreal, when he said last year’s “protests” served to “unify” the nation. The widespread riots that he did nothing at all to even slow down never earned a mention. Neither did the lives lost or the damage done.
Joe Biden went on to describe an American that sounded more like a war zone.
To the extent America’s cities have become war zones, it’s because Democrats have unleashed crime hell on the nation with malice aforethought. Defunding the police was a predictably awful move that was always destined to get innocent Americans killed, and it has. Violent crime is spiraling out of control nationwide. Democrats defunded police with an assist from the media but absolutely no involvement whatsoever from Republicans anywhere. Democrats own the defunding move — they coordinated it, they led it, they made it happen — and they therefore play a part in every single death that results from it.
Biden stepped to the podium in the White House with the guilty verdict he sought, and which the jury delivered. It could have been a moment to praise the criminal justice system. It could have been the moment of unification this nation so badly needs.
He described an America that does not exist outside his imagination, the fevered dreams of his fellow extremists on the left, and America’s most violent cities — all of which are run top to bottom by Democrats.
Move ahead to about the 8-minute mark in the video, to hear Biden say “We can and we must do more to ensure that tragedies like this never happen again.” If he had stopped there, he would have had the whole country on board. But he didn’t stop there.
“To ensure that black and brown people, or anyone, so they don’t fear their interactions with law enforcement. That they don’t have to wake up knowing that they can lose their very life in the course of just living their life. They don’t have to worry about whether their sons or their daughters will come home after a grocery store run. Or just walking down the street or driving their car or playing in the park. Or just sleeping at home.
“And this takes acknowledging and confronting, head-on, systemic racism.”
Was the fatal interaction on May 25 really the result of “systemic racism”? The confrontation between Chauvin and the other officers and Floyd stemmed first from the drugs Floyd had chosen to ingest and his decision to resist arrest following his attempt to pass counterfeit money. Did he deserve to have his neck held down, did he deserve to die, for that? Certainly not. But he had agency in the situation, too. He made choices that led to that day. To fail to acknowledge this is to fail to acknowledge Floyd’s humanity. Chauvin and his fellow officers had agency. So did Floyd.
Coincidentally, I made a grocery store run the afternoon before the verdict came down. As I was walking into the store, a well-dressed black man off to my left got out of a minivan, nicer than my car, and headed toward the store. About halfway to the door, as we were walking parallel, he clapped his hands and bopped his forehead and spun around to walk back to his van. He’d forgotten something. We made eye contact and smiled like guys who’ve been there and done that before, we’ve all forgotten some little thing and had to retrace our steps. If we don’t we’ll be in trouble when we get back home. So he turned back and I kept going. Inside the store, it was the usual mix of people — black, Hispanic, Asians, all shades and backgrounds, men and women and families, just shopping. No one was living in fear, no one was cowering, everyone was just shopping and staying out of each other’s way as always. When I went to buy my things, the young black woman who ran the register could not have been more friendly. She must’ve been 25, maybe younger, it’s tough to tell with the masks. What wasn’t difficult to tell was that she was smiling and cheerful. I could see the happiness in her eyes. She was practically singing as we chatted and she finished ringing up my goods and bagged them for me. She brightened my day. Our brief interaction was as pleasant as could be.
That’s not even the planet Biden describes. He must see all of America as gangland Chicago. There, sure, people of all backgrounds do have reasons to fear. So do too many Americans who live in our cities. But it’s not the police they primarily fear.
They have reason to fear because the most violent criminals have been unleashed in our cities and face little if any resistance from Biden’s Democrats. They have systemically demoralized the police. Defunding the police is a stimulus for crime. Biden says he opposes defunding when pressed, but has he done a single thing, as president and leader of the Democrats, to actually stop it?
No.
He agitates against law enforcement. His rhetoric demonstrates disdain for America and reveals that he wants the national moral panic that started last summer to continue — forever.
Or at least as long as he believes it serves his political purposes.
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