As is usually the case with witnesses of a crime, I just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time; although I would never have assumed that the oversized couch in my living room could ever be a crime scene, with the possible exception of some poorly worded, cringe-worthy Dad-puns designed specifically to induce eyerolls from my children. I am the master of this. I’m sure it’s gotta be illegal on some level.

You cannot paint a beautiful existence with only one color on your palette..Jp
No, I had my chubby feet elevated on the coffee table, safely encased in my fuzzy Christmas present slippers, lazily sinking one Oreo after another into my tumbler of chocolate milk when the crime unfolded in front of my very eyes, conveniently delivered to my living room via some such alphabet news channel, the name of which currently eludes me. I sat in horror and sheer disgust as I watched one human slowly squeeze the living essence from another human; defenseless, subdued and begging for his life. How one person can do this to another is a question as old as man’s very existence itself. What type of monsters live among us that have the capacity to do this and how, or indeed can, we ever guard against this most hideous nature of those with whom we share our human heritage?
I saw the replay multiple times over the course of the evening, not bothering to listen to how I was told I should feel about this or what it means from the perspective of those who were working their hardest to educate me that it indicates some issue or flaw in some segment of humanity that I mostly resemble or am responsible for. No, I was still struggling to come to grips with the image of one sadistic, unique representative of our species who was more than willing and determined to end the life of another totally unique representative of that same species.
I suppose I am just as guilty, not only because I am told that I am, but because I failed to see what value there is in making any sort of distinction between the killer and his victim. Would we all have felt some slight relief if the color palette had been reversed? Or maybe if the victim had been a young man of Asian descent? Or possibly some young Italian kid from Brooklyn? Would that have bothered me less, viewing a politically correct murder versus the one I was a witness to? It was a murder nonetheless, a slow deliberate act of kneeling across the airway and blood supply of a unique member of our species at the hands, or in this case the knee, of another. I need no disclaimers beyond that fact, no “perspective” or “context.” I saw pure hatred and pure evil, with no need to adjudicate it further. This S.O.B killed another human and that, in and of itself, is all that matters. The victim is no more or less dead based on his color or the color of his assailant. Maybe I’m too simple a man for all this, maybe all the pundits and looters have insights beyond my capacities, but if you believe that racism is the crime here, then we are as a species, truly the most flawed animals on the planet. You cannot be motivated to kill a person of color without being savage and callous enough to take the life of another human in the first place.
So now the education begins. I’m sure to receive quite the bit of hate mail and persuasion from those who seek to dance on the grave of George Floyd for their own macabre political power play. His death will serve this purpose or that, result in this program or that legislation, none of which will truly address the reality that we are a species that is quite capable of killing on a whim, exploitation of that death notwithstanding. I saw a man in a “position of authority,” sworn to serve and protect, willingly execute an unarmed, shackled and prone suspect, without cause, without trial, without sentence.
Unfortunately, we will never have what the left is always clamoring for, a “real conversation about racism.” To do so would strip away all the importance and the power of that charge, laying us all bare to the fact that indeed, we are all racist whether we can, or wish to admit it or not. I’ve spent the last two weeks listening to pundits on various channels tell me how Derek Chuavin is representative of all police officers, if not of all “white people.” Van Jones is quite sure that I have “a virus in my brain that can be activated in an instant.” If I were to make the same comment regarding Mr. Jones, I would be accused of racism without hesitation. But I’m told that as a white man, I cannot speak about racism because I’m not black. It’s the irony lost on the left when they tell me that “I cannot speak to racism because I’ve never been judged on my race,” as if that sentence is one they’ve been trained to speak like an oath without unpacking the meaning. Because I am of the white race, they judge that I cannot speak about race. But that’s not racist.
So to prove how racist I am, they loot and burn their own cities in honor of George Floyd, chasing away the jobs and opportunities so sorely needed by those they claim to care for; those who have spent hours, blood and sweat to build businesses, livelihoods and homes in areas that will now take decades to recover, if they ever will, ensuring that the next generation of young people, of all colors, suffer in excruciating poverty and hopelessness. And for this, they preen and pose and “speak truth to whatever” in an effort to gain and maintain the power that they have held over the inner cities for the last 50 years of my life, places where it’s taboo to speak about black on black crime lest we show just how truly racist we are. I don’t need to speak about the crime stats, you can look them up yourself and argue against them; they’re not mine, I don’t own them or produce them. And frankly, I don’t care about them. Stats just ensure that we continue to break down our shared existence into convenient buckets of victimization and “I told you so-s” that do nothing more than separate us from our common bonds, our common existence, our common humanity and gives fodder to the worst in all of us; all of us, regardless of color.
Simply put, I witnessed a murder. If you need some type of qualification to make it more or less hideous than it truly is, I can’t help you.