Floyd

Why this article should never have been written

  It's a bit too early to do this. I am sure no one in their right mind would want to display any non-positive words about George Floyd at this moment for fear of reprisals. But I feel like that is exactly what must be done. If Floyd was an innocent victim, a hero that overcame his background only to be brought down, literally, by the heavy boot of law enforcement, then what chance do normal people have?

  I didn't want to be writing about this. I think that the entire thing has become grotesque and the only thing that could now bring these Whites and Blacks together, corrupt police and gangstas, racists and anti-racists... is me! I am sure that if I were to enter the argument, all these people angrily hating each other would come together in trying to murder me. Because while I understand both sides, I can't fully endorse any of them. Racists are just dumb. What the hell does race matter in anything? But I do understand anti-anti-racists, the ones that hate being put together with assholes because of the color of their skin. Anti-racism protesters are dumb. Well, maybe. I am sure all of this protesting is finally going to have an impact, and this is good, but have you seen some of these people? Manicaly jumping on toppled down statues and roaring in megaphones about how great they are because they oppose evil. In this whole discussion, again, normal people are left out. They are boring, they don't clump together, they don't stand out, each one has their own slightly different opinion. Well, this is mine.

The gentle giant saint versus the black monster

  Something happened today that pushed me to write this post. I saw a Facebook post that detailed the criminal record of George Floyd. Cocaine dealing, two armed robberies, one which held him back four years, addiction and, when he was arrested, metamfetamine and fentanyl in his blood and the incriminating fake twenty dollar bill. Was it true? It is a very important question to ask, because many of these things are complete bullshit. So I googled it. And the result was actually worse: almost nothing!

  There are just two websites that actually advertise Floyd's criminal record: Great Game India - self titled "Journal on Geopolitics and International Relations" and sporting articles like "Coronavirus Bioweapon - How China Stole Coronavirus From Canada and Weaponized It" and "How A Pornstar & Sci-Fi Writer Influenced WHO Policies On Hydroxychloroquine With Fake Data" - and The Courier Daily, which seems legit. Funny though, when you search for "George Floyd criminal record" you get Game India first and not The Daily Mail, which is linked in their article and who actually did the research and published the court documents attesting to that. They are fifth on the search page. More, during the writing of this blog post, the Courier Daily link disappeared from my Google search and Game India was demoted to second place, with a "gentle giant" story on top instead.

  Either way, other than Game India, no other news outlet even phrases the title as to indicate George had been a criminal. The few who tackle the subject: The Star, The Daily Mail itself and even The Courier Daily, just portray the man as a flawed individual who nevertheless was set to change, found religion and even moved to Minneapolis to escape his past. And I agree with this viewpoint, because as far as I can see, the armed robbery had been many years before and the man had changed, in both behavior and intent. But hiding this doesn't really help. The Daily Mail article was published on the 26th of May, one day after Floyd's death, and the information therein is either not discussed or spun into a "gentle giant" narrative. He was a bouncer before the Coronavirus hit and he lost his job. George the gentle bouncer?

  One thing is certain, when you search for George's criminal record, it's more likely you get to articles about the criminal records of the arresting officers or Mark Wahlberg's hate crimes than what you actually searched for.

How did George die and why it doesn't matter

  But there is more. How did George die? You would say that having a knee on their throat while they gasp for air saying "I can't breathe" would be enough. But it's not. Several different reports say different things. The first one preliminarily portrays Floyd as a very sick man: coronary artery disease, hypertensive heart disease, even Covid-19. There were "no physical findings that support a diagnosis of traumatic asphyxia or strangulation", but instead they diagnosed it as a heart failure under stress and multiple intoxicants. Finally, two days later, the report admits "a cardiopulmonary arrest while being restrained" by officers who had subjected Floyd to "neck compression". But Floyd's family would not have that, so they commissioned their own autopsy. The result? Floyd died from "asphyxia due to compression of the neck", affecting "blood flow and oxygen going into the brain", and also from "compression of the back, which interferes with breathing". The medical examiner said Floyd had no underlying medical problem that caused or contributed to his death.

  So which was it? It doesn't really matter. He died with a knee on his neck, which should never happen to anyone, and both reports admit it was a homicide. But ignoring all of these other data points doesn't help. People just vilify the policeman and raise George to saintly status. You want to solve something? Start with the truth. All of it. Now both sides have the ammunition required to never change their minds.

  I have not found any article that makes a definitive claim on which report is the good one, if any. They all lean on believing the second, because it fits, but if the first one was a complete fabrication, why wasn't anyone charged with it?

Wikipedia v. Facebook

  So of course I would find about Floyd's criminal past from Facebook. It makes so much sense. It is a pool of hateful bile and rank outrage that brings ugly right up to the surface. But this time it pointed me towards an interesting (albeit short) investigation. Without it, I would have swallowed up the entire completely innocent victim narrative that is pushed on every media outlet. So, once in a blue moon, even Facebook is good for something.

  As you may have noticed above, I took some information from Wikipedia, which has an entire article dedicated to George Floyd's death. It is there where the information about his two medical autopsies is also published. On George Floyd's page, his early life consists of: basketball, football, his family calling him a gentle giant. Then he customized cars, did some rap and was an informal community leader. Only then did he get arrested a few times then put in jail for five years. He was charged in 2007, went to jail in 2009 and was released on 2013. It's just six years and it does not define a man, but try to say that to a police officer who has just read the fact sheet on his cruiser's terminal and has to arrest a 1.93m tall intoxicated man.

  And you may want to read the entire chain of events. The police didn't just put him on the ground, they talked to him, they put him in their car, they fought, they pulled him out, all while being filmed and surrounded by a crowd.

You will never gonna get it

  How much of this is truth and how much of it is spin? You will never know. There are so many people that have to justify their own shit using carefully chosen bits and pieces from this that there will never be a truthful image of who George Floyd was and what happened to him. He is now more than a man and also much less: he is a symbol, rallying people to cry out against injustice, as they see it. The greatest thing George Floyd ever did was die and after that he stopped being human. How sad is that?

  In truth, he was a flawed man. He was not perfect. He was your everyman. A policeman casually killing him while getting filmed doing it hurts on so many levels because that could be you. That was you or your friend or your relative somewhere. But no, they had to make it about being black and being the gentle giant and being killed by the bad psycho cop and his cronies. It sounds like a Hollywood movie because it is scripted as one. You can be certain that at this point several documentaries and movies are in the works about this. And when you'll see it, a big time celebrity will be interpreting Floyd and the cop will be played by that actor who plays psychos in every other movie because he has that face. Once you go black, you can never go back.

  I am not defending anyone here. As I said in the beginning, I am on nobody's side in this. I just hope no one will knee me or my friends to death while everybody films it down.

The world has spoken

  I find it amazing that the protests in Minneapolis have spread to the entire world. It makes me hope that they will slowly turn into protests about things that matter even more than the color of one's skin, like our responsibility as a community to carefully choose our guardians, like having to think for ourselves if something is right or wrong and maybe doing something about it. George Floyd was killed slowly, over nine minutes, while people stood around and filmed it. Not just the other officers, but civilian bystanders, too.

  There were people who did something. At one point a witness said: "You got him down. Let him breathe." Another pointed out that Floyd was bleeding from the nose. Another told the officers that Floyd was "not even resisting arrest right now". Yet another said "Get him off the ground ... You could have put him in the car by now. He's not resisting arrest or nothing. You're enjoying it. Look at you. Your body language explains it." But that's all they did. Wikipedia calls them "witnesses", but you have to wonder: what skin color were they? Were they afraid they would be next and that's why all they could was beg for George's life as he slowly died? Or did they believe the story that American TV has fed them for decades, that cops are ultimately good people who break the rules in order to protect the innocent? Or maybe a more recent belief had taken hold: that filming injustice makes you a hero and it's more than enough.

  The world has spoken. Racism must go, police brutality must go. Let's not replace them by carefully crafted fantasies, though. Let's see the truth as it is so we can make it better.

2020 is great so far

  I am not being sarcastic. After a virus that punched presidents of the free world and dictators alike in the nose, that made people question their fake feelings of safety and forced them to act, here comes this age of protesting how things are. We have been shaken awake. Will we fall asleep again? I am sure we will, but some things will have changed by then. And the year is not yet over.