Lately, so much has been happening that scarcely a day goes by without a portentous event so serious that the normal Facebook frivolities seem senseless. ‘Tis a spring and summer of disrupted lives due to authoritarian reactions to a virus and viral videos being exploited for revolution.
The tension has been building before Trump. Riots have been roiling since the ludicrous attempt to turn Michael Brown into a hero in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014. Parts of Portland has been occupied Isis-like by Antifa for the last few years. Now, we are experiencing viral videos exploited for more revolution by one Marxist group birthed in Ferguson – BLM – and another gaining prominence after a Democrat temper tantrum for losing the 2016 election – Antifa.
The truth in both the George Floyd (Minneapolis) and Jacob Blake (Kenosha) cases is getting murkier by the day. The crown jewel in the uproar over police brutality is the death of George Floyd, and, as it turns out, he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill him nearly four times over. And I quote Hennepin County Medical Examiner Dr. Andrew Baker: “If he were found dead at home alone and no other apparent causes, this could be acceptable to call an OD. Deaths have been certified with levels of 3 [he had 11 ng/mL]”. One side effect of overdose is swelling of the lungs, which might explain Floyd’s cry while in the back seat of the police cruiser, “I can’t breathe”, and this before his escape from the car and the officer’s knee to the neck – something missing from the truncated, mob-inflaming version of the video.
As for Jacob Blake, he’s no Boy Scout. He had an outstanding warrant for sexual assault and this was relayed to the officers by the dispatcher according to department recordings. More importantly, why did he continue to ignore officer requests to stop and walk to the front door of his car, open it, and reach in, all while apparently holding a knife? I wouldn’t doubt the stories of prior convictions in his background.
And then we have the case of 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse in Kenosha this past Tuesday (Aug. 25). The circumstances of his shooting of 3 people is a huge fog bank. I suspect that more will come out both for and against the shooter.
One lesson from the ubiquitous use of smartphone video is the unreliability of them. They’re great for mob and vigilante justice. Too much is left out before the moment “play” is hit or the footage gets to the hands of a zealot. And then, beware, board up your business and flee the city.
That’s where we are at … until the fever breaks in our partisan media or a clear, unmistakable injustice is about to be inflicted that even Anderson Cooper can’t ignore.
I’m reminded of 14-year-old Bobby Fijnje who was charged with multiple counts of child sexual assault in a church child care center in 1989. He was hounded by Dade County DA Janet Reno – yeah, that Janet Reno, later to be Clinton’s AG – as a sexual fiend in a case based on “repressed memories” of children ferreted by a couple of buccaneer child therapists. The brave kid, rather than cut a deal, chose to go to trial and was finally acquitted of all charges. It broke the fever for any more jihads against phantom day care center child abuse – only to leave Reno to prove the Peter principle at Waco and guilty jurisdictions to pay millions in damages to the unjustly convicted.
Will something like that rescue us from our current mania? We’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, if you live in a city or state under Democrat control, keep your options open by preparing to jump in the car at a moment’s notice as if a category 5 hurricane is bearing down on you.
RogerG