…a cynical, dishonest, politically-motivated exploitation of an otherwise meaningless arrest gone wrong, fueled by a Machiavellian party, irresponsible journalism, and a biased justice system. The ethics train wreck was a disaster for race relations, law enforcement, and the nation as a whole.
I would typically say “Good job, everybody!” at this juncture, except I refuse to take any blame for this one. I saw Black Lives Matter for what it was from the beginning, and identified the phoniness of the George Floyd riots immediately. Too bad so few people read Ethics Alarms.
There should be accountability, but there won’t be.
Despicable progressives like Kamala Harris called for supporting rioters by donating to bail-out funds. Grandstanding, virtue-signaling fools “took a knee.” Pandering corporations, politicians, celebrities, artists and sports teams grovelled at Black Lives Matter’s metaphorical feet. A lifetime low-level street punk hooked on drugs, Floyd was sanctified and wailed over, celebrated with statues and murals, given four funerals at taxpayer expense, and earned his family $27 million in a settlement from the sucker city of Minneapolis, all because he resisted arrest while he was over-dosing on fentanyl. Floyd was an almost worthless human being and a blight on his community, but his accidental death was manipulated to justify destructive race-based employment and promotions for millions, a collapse of urban law-enforcement, and a fake Presidency. Brilliant.
My favorite part of this debacle is that there was never any evidence that the incident was motivated by racial prejudice or animus…except on the part of the protesters.
574 violent riots occurred across the nation. At least 20 people were killed in the rioting; many more were injured. The idiotic defund the police movement led to an increase in crime (Duh!). There were 2,385 looting incidents, 624 incidents of arson, including 97 police cars burned. In Minneapolis and St. Paul about 1,500 properties sustained severe damage; 80 were completely destroyed. Estimates of paid insurance claims are between $1 billion to $2 billion. Worst of all, however, was the failure of the justice system, with the four officers involved punished after rigged trials where guilt was predetermined because juries were convinced that not-guilty verdicts would set off more riots and more violence. Public figures made jury-tainting comments, and a competent, fair, courageous judge would have declared mistrials, but no competent, fair, courageous judges could be found. It was so much easier to sacrifice Derek Chauvin and his colleagues to the mob…so that’s what happened.
It all began five years ago. The nation hasn’t recovered yet.
Ethics Alarms 
Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, George Floyd, et al. When are these Grade A fuckups going to be condemned rather than lionized by all the lefty leadership, both black and white?
“It was so much easier to sacrifice Derek Chauvin and his colleagues to the mob…so that’s what happened.”
A couple of months ago at Ethics Alarms the conclusion was reached that it would not be good to pardon Derek Chauvin, as this would not be good for the nation. I was one who agreed with that position, but I think it is still jarring that we need to continue an injustice for some for the greater good of the nation.
https://ethicsalarms.com/2025/03/05/ethics-quiz-the-symbolic-pardon/
My first observation is that as long as Derek Chauvin is in prison the George Floyd Freakout is not a historical event in the rear view mirror.
My second observation is that the quest for ethical perfectionism is futile. Ecclesiastes 7:16 may hint at that “Do not be overrighteous, neither be overwise— why destroy yourself?” That means that sometimes you have to follow the politics of the smallest evil. This approach is a rich topic for ethical exploration.
My third observation is that the race issue today is still alive and well because it is kept alive for one political party’s electoral interests. I do not know how the Democrats were able to present themselves as the party of civil rights and portraying the GOP as party of racism, when looking at American history up to the passing of the Civil Rights act in 1964. This can only be overcome by the GOP successfully making the case for their politics and philosophy to the black electorate, without any apologies.
Believe me, Jack, a lot of us here agreed with you from the start. I think it’s telling that even during Obama’s day the jury acquitted George Zimmerman of any crime against Trayvon Martin, who attacked him and tried to kill him, and the justice department concluded that there had been no civil rights violations with the death of Michael Brown. There was frankly no need for the Democrats to gin up riots then, because it was their guy in the White House and if they did, it would make him look bad.
The death of George Floyd, who was pretty much a worthless human being and did very little except commit crimes all his life, happened while their guy was not in the White House and, on top of the pandemic, gave them the chance to bring him down. So Mayors and governors looked the other way or outright sided with the rioters, and let America’s cities become lawless reversing a lot of the revivals that happened in the 1990s. A lot of cities became essentially ruled by mobs, the same as in early Soviet Russia, feeding and destroying whatever they disagreed with. All the while you had the media cheering them on and justifying their actions. You even had them interviewing Stockholm syndromed business owners who had had their businesses burned to the ground who said to just let them riot, it was justified.
I spent most of 2020 and a fair amount of 2021 keeping my gas tank full in case I needed to bolt for rural Pennsylvania, where my father and I had weapons close at hand. Black lives matter expected us to value their cause more than our lives. What’s more, this nation bought the idea hook line and sinker. The election of Biden was a direct result of all of this even though I think we all knew but wouldn’t admit that he was not up to the job, but a lot of us just wanted Trump gone because we blamed him, unjustifiably, for all of this.
The rest is history, Biden was a failure and a puppet of the far left who put in far left policies that were guaranteed to create ridiculous inflation and cause the cost of living to go up significantly with no benefit. He was worthless on the world stage and let two wars start on his watch, then bled this nation of money helping the Ukrainian people hold the line, but not win. He bled us not only of money but of lives in Gaza by trying to help both sides, creating a pier that humanitarian aid would flow to Gaza through. That’s roughly the equivalent of sending humanitarian aid to Germany as well as the UK during the Battle of Britain. Finally things really got out of control and the same leftist idiots who had already done all this damage became outright anti-semites and started targeting people just because of what they were, not anything they’d done.
It sort of reminds me of the fate of Michael Collins, who relied on violence and guerilla tactics to ensure Ireland would break away from rule by the British. However, when he dared to say enough with the violence, let’s take the treaty the British offer as a first step, his own allies turned on him, murdered him, and set off the Irish civil War, which ended up killing many more of their own people. A lot of people who are violent are not violent because they are so passionate about a cause that they get violent, they are violent because they are violent people and just want an excuse to hurt and kill others and break things. When black lives matter started to fizzle because people grew tired of cities being destroyed, they found another target and another cause.
Because of this, or at least partially because of this, Biden and later Harris failed and went the same way Trump had gone in 2020. The United States does not like being in chaos for an extended period of time, and they elected Biden in the hopes that things would stop. Unfortunately, they had lit a fire that was going to burn out of control.
The almost-entirely overlooked detail in the story is that George Floyd and Derek Chauvin had some personal history, long before Floyd’s death.
Did fear of additional riots discourage crucial election-oversight officials from objecting to irregular procedures during the 2020 election vote counting? Was that the PURPOSE of the riots?
The purpose of the riots was to destabilize the United States in order to:
1. Gain the short-term advantage of blaming Trump for it which, along with the crashing pandemic economy, could cost him re-election.
2. Convince people the system didn’t work in order to replace it entirely with a Marxist-style state.
I’m reading a book right now – Woman Behind the New Deal: The Life of Frances Perkins, FDR’s Secretary of Labor and HIs Moral Conscience by Kirstin Downey – that contains an apt observation: “”In her experience, Communists fomented unrest but often avoided workable solutions to problems. Their goal, after all, was to overthrow the system, which usually required breaking the system so that people believed it had ceased to function.”
I think a little talked about facet of the BLM™ movement is how purposefully ineffective they are. Almost all the names on that mural have something in common: A story and a general lack of cameras. Someone was high and resisting arrest, breaking the law and fighting the cops, caught by crossfire in a drug bust, kidnapping a kid, or some other fact pattern that was just awful. The best way to make sure the BLM™ movement forgets about you is to be a normal person that actually got blatantly fucked over by the police while on camera, because in cases where basically everyone agrees that there was police misconduct, even if the police get off, the story dies because everyone agrees. But instead of taking that agreement and using it to produce positive change, BLM™ hyper-focused on fringe cases to try to drum up donation dollars and personally enrich themselves. This movement lived on controversially and bad cases, where policy that may have saved the life of one of these glowing examples of incarceration-in-waiting was unpalatable to people because they generally wanted to control against that kind of criminality.
Take for example the story of John Crawford III. Where’s his name on the wall? He was shot in a Wal-Mart for shopping while black. He was carrying a bb gun that he was going to buy from the store when Ronald Ritchie, a massive Karen, called the cops because he thought the gun was real and said that John was pointing it at customers. For the record: This was a lie – John was on camera the entire time and at no time did he point the barrel of the bb gun at anyone. More, even if it was real, Ohio is an open-carry state, so it could have been legal to carry.
When the cops arrived, they immediately shot him center of mass. Their story is that John refused to comply with commands to drop the weapon. This was also a lie – The store video doesn’t have audio, but whether or not a command was even uttered, he wouldn’t have had time to comply before he was dead.
Ritchie eventually recanted his story, but was not charged. The cops were charged, but a grand jury didn’t determine charges could be brought, and the city paid the family 1.7 million in damages.
John was actually innocent. He was 22. He had a wife and child. He had a great smile. His death was a tragedy. It was unnecessary. It wouldn’t surprise me if it was racially motivated. But it wasn’t controversial enough for the BLM™.
Say his name, you fucking vultures.
I don’t know about John Crawford, III, so I won’t comment on the case.
As for your assertion that Black Lives Matter was/is ineffective, I beg to differ. The organizers of the supposed group and its movement are committed (well, that remains to be seen . . .) Marxist black separatists interested in ginning up donations for the organization. They couldn’t care one iota about positive results or social/systemic change. It is pure grift and the more the merrier. The 2020 riots served two purposes: Defeat Orange Man Bad and give tons of cash to BLM leaders. Was anyone really shocked that the leaders made off with mountains of greenbacks to fund their well-deserved lifestyles with expensive houses and cars? If not, someone is not paying attention.
jvb
If anyone hasn’t had a chance to see this documentary, I’ll link it here: The Fall of Minneapolis | A Crowdfunded Documentary.
As some longtime readers here may remember, I am from Minneapolis and grew up literally at ground zero, where the Third Precinct, Auto Zone, and Minnehaha Lake Wine and Spirits were burned to a crisp. For three days and nights I watched others livestream on multiple cameras everything I knew from 4-14 years old go from vandalized to looted to burned from May 25th-28th. The first building they burned, was ironically, the last place I ever saw my black father work (it was a Snyders Drug Store then). I’d wait for him on the sidewalk in front of our four-plex, watching as he would step out the door of the building and head a half block home. Now that memory is infused with flames.
Then the riots went global.
What so many forget is that it was quite literally a war zone in Minneapolis. The documentary linked above illustrates what I witnessed. Areas were under siege and neighbors were trapped in their homes for days. It wasn’t just that crime increased, it was that the police could not help anyone. There were neighbor reports of rioters putting accelerants around neighborhoods, so people had to patrol their areas while putting themselves at risk for being attacked physically. I spoke with friends who had to flee in the early morning to get their families safe. And those who thought their BLM or Biden yard signs would save them were met with the same violence as everyone else.
The many businesses that were permanently lost or took a longtime to recover were often owned by working-class minorities and immigrants. The liquor store was owned by Jewish Americans who had family members die in the Holocaust, for example. Some store owners even put signs up saying they supported the cause but were ignored and their businesses were burned anyway. In the aftermath, many citizens had food deserts in their areas and had to travel to St. Paul, suburbs or much further than usual just to buy groceries. This was a bigger challenge for those who primarily used public transit. Many still have burned out buildings near them and live in fear to this day. My extra gay friend and his hubby live only blocks from Cup Foods and say they don’t feel safe inside their own home and there aren’t enough cops to help should they need it.
The media called it “fiery but mostly peaceful” which only drove home the message to those left to deal with the fire and violence that what was happening to them didn’t matter, even if they were black or any other minority. Day after day I watched the legacy media coverage go from whitewashing to non-existent. While January 6th is all the partisan left want to focus on, May 25-28 is what truly damaged our country. Some citizens came to understand what false justice and false peace look like. We also got to see how the media will try to tell you what you’re seeing is a lie and that a lie is all you should see.
My life and my psyche have not been the same since that horrible summer. My heart still aches for the city I used to know and the citizens who still feel like they can’t speak honestly in public.
I pray to forgive the rioters, the media, the “supporters” in and out of government, and those who still refuse to see the pain and sheer terror that was caused, first in Minneapolis, and then in so many cities. Not because they didn’t know what they were doing, but because they did not care while pretending to care, which is one of the sickest kinds of evil.
And it was all for NOTHING. The unethical and chaotic behavior didn’t result in anyone “rising up” or having more equity or more financial success or emotional well-being. No one cares about black men (hint…they never did) or black lives in general anymore. They were the cause of the moment, like the whales or the environment or Palestine or Ukraine. All that money BLM got barely went to the families they claimed to advocate for. No one is better off and no one is any wiser. It was all bullshit. But at least it was fiery but mostly peaceful bullshit.
Outstanding account!
PWS