Glenn Loury, is an economist, academic, and author who holds the Merton P. Stoltz Professor of the Social Sciences and Professor of Economics at Brown University. Since he is tenured, Loury doesn’t feel constrained by the lock-step ideological conformity so many of his race (he’s black) hew to in the wake of the George Floyd Freakout. In his latest newsletter on substack, Loury writes in part,

Poetic truth “thri[ves] more by coercion than reason,” accusing all who dispute it of complicity with the ineradicably racist system that governs and has always governed the country.

That Darren Wilson executed Michael Brown is one such poetic truth; that Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd is, I believe, another. Despite the aptness of Steele’s term, poetic truth is no truth at all, nor is it particularly poetic. It is power masquerading as fact, brute force in the guise of knowledge. The cities that burned across the country following Floyd’s death were expressions of such a truth, as was the incarceration of the police officers convicted of a crime they did not commit. The scramble to implement race-based policies and quotas, to elevate self-appointed gurus of “antiracism,” and to proclaim, against all evidence, the unreconstructed nature of American society were all tendrils of the same truth, which still threatens to assert itself whenever an incident emerges that fits its preferred pattern.

The cost in life, limb, and property incurred by this particular poetic truth would be bad enough. But I fear that, in the aftermath, when the embers have cooled and Chauvin’s name has been forgotten by everyone save his family, the true danger of the poetic truth of George Floyd will come to fruition.

Later in the piece, Loury quotes John McWhorter, the New York Times pundit:

“What they were trying to do was take him somewhere to get treatment, because the drugs were severely addling his mind and he wouldn’t get in the car. And he starts saying, breathing air, standing up, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe,’ when nobody is anywhere near his neck or anything else. George Floyd was extremely high on fentanyl and meth to an extent that could have killed him sitting in a chair. If you’re on fentanyl in particular, you get something called ‘wooden chest,’ where you can’t breathe if you’ve got that much in you. That’s how high he was.”

That the conviction of Derek Chauvin for murder was a frightening political act that trampled multiple constitutional rights of a single hated ex-cop (and later his three fellow police officers at the scene) has been increasingly undeniable. The justice system, the news media, the political system and the nation as a whole have apparently decided that Chauvin isn’t worth the effort to provide him with the basic rights and fair treatment that has been accorded to scores of murderers and thieves, and that is supposed to be the birthright of every citizen regardless of class, color or character.

The U.S. Supreme Court, in a decision that I have to believe was dictated by public relations rather than law or justice, recently turned down Chauvin’s last ditch appeal, based on his claim that he was denied his right to a fair trial because of pretrial publicity and public safety concerns in the event of an acquittal. Of course he was. Public figures had declared him guilty during the trial. A mass outbreak of race-based rioting (and “mostly peaceful” demonstrations) across the country had been triggered by Floyd’s death, though no evidence was ever offered at trial that Chauvin was motivated by racism. The specter of the Rodney King riots that erupted in L.A. after the police accused in his beating were acquitted had to loom large in the jury’s minds, as well as the likelihood of potential alienation from their friends, families and colleagues if they allowed an arch villain, in the already clear verdict of the media and the mob, to escape mob justice.

Shortly after SCOTUS threw him to the wolves because it can’t take much more negative publicity and carefully planted suspicion from the howling political Left, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times by a prison inmate attempting to show his fealty to Black Lives Matter. Chauvin’s lawyers had urged prison authorities to keep their client out of the general population, and have suggested that the state wants him dead, and as soon as possible. I’d say that’s a fair assumption. Officials didn’t bother to inform Chauvin’s family after he was nearly killed: they had to read it in the news. He is a convenient sacrifice to racial guilt among whites and aspiring political power among blacks. Facts are irrelevant.

The contrast between how Chauvin has been treated and the wall of protection erected around the black Capitol Hill cop who shot and killed an unarmed January 7 rioter in 2021 is striking. From the beginning, the case against Chauvin lacked convincing intent, causation, or proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. I keep seeing in various documentaries regarding other “true crime” stories rote statements by lawyers, prosecutors and judges about how in the United States, all citizens are presumed innocent and treated equally. If this equal treatment can be withheld from Derek Chauvin, and it has been, then it can and will be withheld by others who are deemed sufficiently unpopular. As Loury writes, the result tells us that “the deep epistemic corruption at the heart of the affair will become, if it goes unchallenged, imperceptible to future generations, simply more evidence that the world is as the poetic truth has determined it to be.” Who will challenge it now? Who has the integrity and courage today to stand up for justice a “racist” who was profitably used as the excuse to advance such marvelous revolutionary movements as critical race theory and “diversity, equity and inclusion”?

John Adams (William Daniels) sings that song from “1776” at the point where he sees his Continental Congress colleagues losing their determination to risk everything for democratic principles. But it must be remembered that Adams also was the only lawyer brave and principled enough to defend British soldiers accused of murdering his neighbors in the Boston Massacre. Adams would have fought for Derek Chauvin.