It was less than five years ago that the worst of all years, 2020, gave us the Summer of Floyd, when cities burned, historical monuments were destroyed, whites groveled by the thousands, and corporations shoveled billions of dollars to the rioting barbarians to help them.
This misbehavior was occasioned, ostensibly, by the death of George Floyd in police custody. It was an ugly scene, recorded by the cell phones of the locals who surrounded and menaced the police. Officer Derek Chauvin had Floyd pinned down by holding his knee on the back of Floyd’s neck, a hold taught to officers in their hand-to-hand training. His fellow officers stood by in alert stances, keeping the crowd from rushing them and Chauvin — a very dangerous possibility.
The coroner’s report showed that Floyd died of a heart attack due to Fentanyl and exerting himself while resisting arrest. There was no evidence of neck compression (for, indeed, that pinning technique does not apply pressure to the windpipe). The crowd and the video, however, insisted otherwise because it looked like Chauvin choked poor old George to death. The coroner was threatened with the loss of his reputation, career, and peace if he didn’t change the report, so he went back and added “neck compression,” knowing full well that it wasn’t true, and sent Chauvin and the other three officers to prison.
This strange plague of cowardice and suicide on the part of white Americans still baffles me, but my point presently is to show that the Summer of Floyd hasn’t gone away. Its effects linger.
1. The Floyd Effect on Policing
A man here in town told me just a couple of weeks ago that he has a relative who is a patrolman, and the general attitude of the police now is that they will avoid all possible calls that could expose them to combat. “I got two more years to retirement. I ain’t goin’ to prison for some perp who’ll be bailed out and back on the street in an hour.”
2. The Effect on Police Recruiting
I asked a recently-retired police officer “What would you say to a guy who wants to become a policeman?” He responded, “I’d ask him, ‘Are you out of your mind?'” News articles about the nationwide shortage of officers refer to numbers before and since “the Floyd killing.” Well, yeah, call us killers a little more and maybe you can get us to work for you, ya reckon?
3. White Flight
This is actually the flight of anyone, whites and others, who has the wherewithal to relocate. Nobody wants to live around people who won’t behave. The exodus means that businesses close. The utter decline of Selma is no accident. Its experience has been repeated in countless major cities across America.
4. The Sanctification of Rioting
In 2020, day after day, whites watched TV and got madder and madder as they saw Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland (Oregon), Kenosha (Wisconsin), and other cities get set afire, looted, and “occupied” by anarchists and black activists surrounded by signs saying that white America was, well, unappreciated. Nobody stopped them. Nothing was done to them, for the most part. In my opinion, this was the primary factor in the subsequent riot at the U. S. Capitol building in January of 2021. Those who participated in that mob action had a deep-seated belief that nothing would happen to them because rioting was now legal in America. The Summer of Floyd lowered the standards.
If things in our society are ever put to rights, it will be on a foundation of truth. The forces of destruction (the Left) live by lies and have been increasingly successful in destroying or muting those who remember the truth. But they cannot change the facts. It’s still the truth.