By James Kunstler - April 19, 2021

Rep. Maxine Waters (D – Calif) laid it out neatly Friday night on a visit to Minneapolis, where she apparently went to stir a pot of racial hatred that was already on boil without her help, following the accidental killing of felonious bail jumper Daunte Wright (first-degree aggravated robbery, fleeing from police, and possession of a handgun without a permit): “We got to stay on the street,” Ms. Waters yelled at the mob gathered in the suburb of Brooklyn Center, “get more confrontational!” Yes, exactly what the sore-beset city needs, as it awaits this week’s verdict in the trial of Derek Chauvin, about which she added: “I am very hopeful… that we will get a verdict that says guilty, guilty, guilty. If we do not, we will not go away.”

Former police officer Chauvin is charged with Murder 2, Murder 3, and Manslaughter all predicated on varying degrees of intention and recklessness in the death of George Floyd, the internationally acclaimed saint-of-oppressed-peoples who died under Mr. Chauvin’s knee in an indelible video shared ‘round the world last May. The video has the status of a religious icon, portraying, as it seems to, the vivid distillation of the black experience in America: pure, unalloyed, hateful, murderous subjugation.

The trouble is what’s not in the indelible picture: Mr. Floyd’s prodigious ingestion of the world’s hardest narcotic, fentanyl, at a level likely to cause death, plus methedrine, plus THC, on top of a 90-percent blockage of a coronary artery, and other cardiopathies, and Covid-19, all according to the official medical examiner. Also, as it happened in the instance of his arrest, Mr. Floyd was failing to follow police instructions, and acting dangerously deranged — behavior apt to lead to police restraint, under which he died, rest his soul.

So, now it will be left to the jury to sort all this out, under the threat of getting “doxed” (having their home addresses disclosed) by the Black Lives Matter org, as well as following the $27-million lawsuit settlement on the Floyd family for “wrongful death” by the Minneapolis City Council before the trial commenced — not exactly a propitious lead-in for a fair outcome. One might even view the public expressions of black opinion leaders and politicians as coercive — but then coercion is the animating spirit of liberal Wokery, the wish and the will to punish at all costs.

In any case, the fine spring weather around the country invites the young and energetic to caper angrily in the streets after a harsh winter of lockdowns. The mobs will turn out, things will burn, businesses will get looted (and destroyed), and people will get hurt . . .

[SNIP]