I’ll get to the George Floyd hoax, but let’s start with a lesser hoax.
Over lunch a friend told me, “George Clooney has come out as gay.” (So what! Celebrity sexuality doesn’t interest me—unless it’s Travis and Taylor.)
Wow! Really?! Where did you see that?
On my phone.
I rolled my eyes, figuratively.
When I got home I consulted Snopes, an online fact-checking service. Snopes explained how the Clooney rumor started and how it got legs. The verdict: False.
I informed my (usually savvy) friend. He admitted he’d been duped.
Haven’t we all. From time to time.
(The Vietnam War and Saddam Hussein’s WMD come to mind.)
Many of us thought George Floyd was murdered. But according to a recent compelling documentary called The Fall of Minneapolis, he wasn’t. It alleges that Floyd died from a fusion of drugs and cardiac fragility and says that in the trial, that information was marginalized.
Furthermore, body cam video clearly shows that what the world saw wasn’t the whole picture. Floyd had asked to be put on the ground instead of in the back of the cruiser because he was claustrophobic. The police accommodated his wishes and immediately called for an ambulance.
That was news to me.
Alas, it seems the police were victims of a guileful crusade propelled by the (“fake news”) media and Democratic politicians (Mayor Frey, Governor Walz, Speaker Pelosi, Presidential candidate Biden) to fuel the fledgling Black Lives Matter movement.
It worked.
Floyd was lionized. The police demonized. The world mobilized.
I don’t know whether Floyd was murdered. I wasn’t there. I didn’t see it. But I believed he was. My friends did too. We trusted the media. Besides, it fit the woke (formerly, “liberal”) narrative: Police kill Black men disproportionately.
I participated in a Black Lives Matter demonstration in Charles Town. I chanted “Black lives matter.” I knelt for nine minutes and 29 seconds.
Was I duped?
Was south Minneapolis torched and vandalized for a big lie?
I asked a friend. Floyd was not murdered, he said.
I asked Snopes. Floyd was murdered.
A 12-person jury thought so too. I know juries are not infallible. Justice can be thwarted. Still, I believe the verdict in this case. I believe, but I really don’t know for certain.
I once was certain of many things. These days, I’m living with uncertainty and wondering: Who can we trust?
* * *
You’ll find a link to the documentary in this article by Deena Winter, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal at the Derek Chauvin trial: “I watched ‘The Fall of Minneapolis’ so you don’t have to”
Are you registered to vote? Are you certain that your registration is up-to-date? Make sure that everyone you’ve ever met in your life is registered, and not only that, that they actually get to the polls in November, and on May 14, in West Virginia. Participate in democracy.
Trust yourself and continue fact checking. When in doubt, always check. The first thing authoritarian movements try to accomplish is to cast doubt thus causing citizens to distrust themselves. What we see; what we think; what we finally analyze as true. Authoritarians want to make us doubt ourselves and to believe in the regime. Big Brother takes care of all! You, as an individual, can trust completely in Brother and no longer have to worry with the eternal question, “What is truth?” The authoritarian mantra is, and has always been, “I alone can fix it!” The following is a line from a song, poem, something that is floating unattributed in my juke box head, “Keep on walking; keep on talking; and marching to the freedom land!” (I think this is a line from a Steve Miller Band song.) Also, as a parting thought, “Get up, stand up! Stand up for your rights!” Now that one is from Bob Marley.
Wow. All I can say is “yes , check multiple sources and not just mainline media”. Even Snopes can make mistakes ? Hmmm.
Oh, come on Randy! Every clear thing we know because thousands of journalists, who are not all of one mind, made it clear — Sandy Hook, Jan 6, Holocaust deaths, ALL police overreactions or murders, slavery was a blot on our history — can be debunked by Laura Ingraham and then — NOW we know! All I have to do is find one lunatic who supports what I would love to believe in my silo. If the media goes, because papers are bought by those pressing an agenda, or because we are taught not to believe what we hear from journalists, we are sunk. If we are to be vigilant about one thing that is it — support a free press. Rachel Maddow, at a town hall with Chris Hayes, said maga people don’t believe facts, don’t believe the media, don’t believe scientists, mistrust educated people (really hate educational institutions), so what do they trust? — one thing, their gut. And how do they arrive at those opinions do you suppose? People who get their biases from screeds are lost causes. People who are not wearing red hats should have reliable news to count on.
So we are to believe that, when George Floyd walked out of the convenience store, he would have dropped dead on the way home fewer than 20 minutes later from “cardiac arrest and an infusion of drugs,” at a very fit 46 years of age? Nothing to do with Chauvin’s knee on Floyd’s neck for an accurately revised 9 minutes and 29 seconds, amidst Floyd’s desperate inhalations/exhalations that he couldn’t breathe? You know how my “s**t sniffer” guides me? Since all humans err in any number of ways, I trust the stories that focus on acts of human justice, kindness, compassion, and seem to report as if I have a brain that functions commensurate with my general intelligence and awareness levels. For example, did anyone think the anti-Biden, anti-union auto workers’ protestors in Michigan some months’ back !weren’t! paid to be there by Republican operatives, as was just verified? Disruptive, mean, beyond the pale… Not a First Amendment aggravation against “wokeness!” We deserve more credit than that. Sad that not everyone is able to discern. Trust yourself, your intuition, and your experience when there is nothing else available. It got you this far! (And on matters of trust? This could be an entire season’s topic!!) Thanks, Randy. Important conversation.
Trayvon Martin, Ahmad Arbury, Emmett Till, the Scottsboro Boys, 400 years of brutal slavery, 600,000 killed in the Civil War, They dreamed up the Lost Cause bullshit. The foundational problem in our USA is racism and white supremacy. Genocide against indigenous people and slavery. Still today idiots call John Brown a terrorist without mentioning the daily terror of slavery. Thanks Randy for reminding us of the lies of tyranny resting on the foundation of white supremacy.
Such a powerful way to start the day & week… just love getting my reason & truth sniffers primed & synapses firing!
Trust, reason, & verifiable evidence all inform me, & my way forward is clear as I check in – listen, learn, act responsibly – & I can live with the reality of what was, what is, and what will be – with my faith, hope & love intact… thanks once again! I can breathe… thankfully – many others no longer can…
Let us remember the prophetic words of Carl Bernstein: “The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and the contempt for truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism.” Let us be awake and also be aware, especially in this crucial election year!
My wife thinks I am a technology guru. I fiddle around with a problem with furrowed brow, but usually I just restart the computer/iPad and it heals itself. Much about what we talk, debate, or argue about is also done with furrowed brow in these times, reflecting confusion, anger, sadness, disapproval, pain, fear, suspicion, and/or worry. Remember what mom said, “Your face is going to freeze that way if you aren’t careful.
We might be living in what might become the Age of Uncertainty and Distrust. I am waiting for the book, “How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI.” Also, in the running for age name: The Gelded Age.
Democracy seems to be on the ropes. It has some bugs, including MAGA mania, a retribution-Congress, a right-packed Supreme Court, and a host of “lost cause” state legislatures and administrations.
In my furrowed brow opinion, we need a reset to debug our Democracy. Turn off the power to those who are using democracy to destroy it. That can best be done in the voting booth.
I do like the reset!
My God! I suppose George Floyd asked the police to kneel on his throat with their full body weight after ‘laying’ him on the ground and to continue to kneel even when he gasped that he couldn’t breathe. Oh, yes, that must’ve been just how it happened. I like fairy tales, but this one is a little too ugly.