THE chances of Derek Chauvin having a fair trial were never great. With the world combusting into a fit of moral panic after the death of Saint George Floyd – police and politicians alike indulging in the mandatory knee-taking – the odds against were decidedly lengthened.
Five days after jury selection began, a $27million civil case brought by the Floyd family was approved by the City of Minneapolis, an action that clearly cast a judgment on Chauvin, biasing court proceedings.
Then we have Maxine Waters, the Democratic Representative for California’s 43rd congressional district, whose lack of eloquence and reasoning skills is matched only by the invariably vile things that come out of her doddery mouth.
On the eve of jury deliberations, Waters announced to a crowd of rioters-in-waiting: ‘We’re looking for a guilty verdict. And if we don’t, we cannot go away. We’ve got to get more confrontational.’
I’m no legal expert, but to me that stinks of incitement to violence. Of course, Waters has form on such an issue, with her memorably egging on a crowd in 2018 to harass and confront any members of the Trump administration found in public.
Then there are the other standard low-information politicians who can be relied upon to trot out the dullest of dull takes. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, whose musings would be perfectly at home in a sixth-form common room but who is decidedly tedious in the real world, is saying that this guilty verdict isn’t enough: the other policemen must be brought to trial, too. Such is the way of things. Those huckstering for perpetual Race War will never rest, because it is ultimately a full-scale revolution they are selling you.
Perhaps the greatest clanger – one of many down the road to the US becoming a fully fledged banana republic – was courtesy of Joe Robinette Biden. As the jury were sent to decide on their verdict, the President took to the airwaves to say that he was ‘praying’ for the ‘right verdict’: a guilty one. In his view, the evidence in favour of such an outcome was ‘overwhelming’.
This must rank among the most stupid statements made by a president. It is up there with Obama’s self-evident and banal musing that if he had had a son, he would look like Trayvon Martin.
But sticking one’s foot into the most fractious court case of the 21st century so far and advocating a verdict is not simply stupid, it is dangerous. It is feeding the mob. Had the verdict been innocent instead of guilty, the President would have placed himself – in a mockery of the idea of the separation of powers – in opposition to the legitimate outcome of a court of law. Those seeking to riot and burn things down would have the President’s backing.
This ever-present threat of violence would, naturally, have weighed on the jury’s mind. The Babylon Bee, a satirical news outlet – though it is increasingly hard to tell where the line between satire and reality lies – perhaps had it right with the headline ‘Jurors To Read Their Final Wills Before Giving Verdict‘. The prospect of voting against the baying mob outside would not have been a welcome one, with the risk of personal repercussions not insignificant.
But in a world where the mob’s feelings are more important than the process of justice, what else is there to expect?
Perhaps this is all grounds for a retrial. Then again, who has faith in ‘the system’ to work properly? Even if a retrial were possible, it would require action in pursuit of justice and fairness, not of kowtowing to the continual threat of mob violence and of the race-baiters in our midst, whose livelihoods rely on the perpetual proliferation of race-based animus.
The United States, like much of the Western world, is on the fast track to banana republicdom. This is merely one facet of its progress. Elsewhere, its currency is debased (here’s a good graph for those in any doubt. Anyone thinking that ‘this time it’s different’ should take a quick look at a chart of Roman currency debasement for comparison’s sake), its education system indoctrinates its youth with leftist claptrap, its capital city is under permanent military occupation and its elections are fraudulent.
Biden’s intervention in the Chauvin case is another milestone along America’s slow descent. For many years, the United States would boast of its democracy and free legal system. How they must laugh in Beijing and Moscow at these increasingly hollow claims.
Sticking his oar in in such a mendacious way, calculated only to pander to the radicals in his midst and the thugs on the street whom authorities are too frightened to deal with, Biden is crossing an important and irreversible line.
On current trends, the wreckage of America is all but guaranteed: we are watching a nation pull itself apart in real time. Increasingly, it seems likely that it will end up in some kind of civil war.
Let’s hope I’m wrong.
Such an outcome was long avoidable, but with society so fractured and with institutions failing – so often willingly – the threat grows ever larger.
