Actually, some clarity is starting to emerge regarding the larger meaning of Floyd's murder and the reaction

I've recently written three pieces over at Precipice entitled "Minneapolis," "Color" and "Truth Lies In Particulars," the common theme of which was that precise terminology, accurate recounting of events, and an ability to acknowledge a range of simultaneously existing facts that don't fit a narrative are essential to anything positive coming out of the tumult of the last nine days.

That was the only conclusion I was willing to draw. For starters, the horror of the video that started it all - George Floyd dying over the course of eight minutes while his neck was under the full weight of Derek Chauvin's knee - was so fraught with ramifications that my inner compass told me to hold off on a take that encompassed anything beyond that.

But we're now over a week into this matter occupying nearly all the nation's attention. I can see the contours of a broad set of implications taking shape.

First, some facts:

All four of the officers on the scene have been charged in Floyd's death, Chauvin with third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter, and the others with aiding and abetting those crimes. 

George Floyd was on fentanyl and methamphetamine at the time of the incident. Yes, he had moved from Houston to Minneapolis to start a new life after years of run-ins with the law and several periods of incarceration and there are several accounts from those who knew him that he was a peaceable fellow, but the fact is that he was on hard dope.

One of those periods of incarceration stemmed from his conviction on an armed-robbery charge back in Houston in 2009. He'd been part of a group of seven men who'd staged a home invasion which involved Floyd pressing a gun into the abdomen of a pregnant woman.  His other convictions had to do with hard drug possession.

He was struggling with a pattern of egregious sin and not doing so well at overcoming it.

Black Lives Matter was started by three women who had established their public profiles by being focused on intersectional identity politics - "gender conformity" and "queer activism" and such. The first two situations it exploited - the Trayvon Martin - George Zimmerman case and the Michael Brown - Darren Wilson case - were blatant twisting of what was determined to have happened into lies.

There is no epidemic of racist police shootings. 

There is no doubt that black men get pulled over and questioned out of the blue with some frequency. Conservative Republican Senator Tim Scott, who personally experienced this seven times in one year and was asked for his ID badge by Capitol Hill police, said that this is a nationwide phenomenon in a 2016 speech on the Senate floor. Anecdotes by other blacks about how being inconvenienced, humiliated, and even wrongfully charged with crimes have surfaced that substantiate this assessment.

Okay, now for some viewpoint.

For starters, the nightly ritual of demonstration has made its point and ought to close up shop. The rioters and looters have been exposed as opportunistic thieves and snot-nosed anarchists, and the well-meaning impassioned peaceful marchers have catalyzed a nationwide soul-searching. Mission accomplished. At this point, the daily marches, the bullhorns and the signs are an exercise in self-congratulation and preening. It's purely a gratification of the need to appear to be a caring citizen.

What the hell is Al Sharpton - he of the Tawana Brawley hoax and the incitement of the fire-bombing of Jew-owned Freddy's Fashion Mart - doing at the memorial service for Floyd?

And now we have the playground-bully bending back of the knuckles of American citizens who deign to express viewpoints perfectly within the range of acceptable perspectives on the present moment. They dutifully dropped to their knees and demonstrated where the line between fealty to their convictions and fear of the identity-politics mob lies.

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees, in an interview with Yahoo Finance, said that he does not care for the take-a-knee-during-the-national-anthem gesture that became normalized during the era in which Colin Kaepernick - he of the Malcolm  X cap and the Fidel Castro tee shirt - had his moment of cultural significance.

It took hours for him to drop to the ground begging for the knuckle-bending to stop:

Drew Brees

@drewbrees

I would like to apologize to my friends, teammates, the City of New Orleans, the black community, NFL community and anyone I hurt with my comments yesterday. In speaking with some of you, it breaks my heart to know… https://instagram.com/p/CBA1P3gHpT_/?igshid=1qstwzxn87p2n…

8:22 AM · Jun 4, 2020·Instagram

Grant Napear was likewise served notice that his viewpoint fell outside the parameters dictated by the identity politics police:

Sacramento Kings play-by-play announcer Grant Napear was placed on administrative leave by his radio station Monday after tweeting “All Lives Matter,” a controversial phrase associated with belittling the Black Lives Matter movement.

“All Lives Matter… Every Single One!” the 60-year-old Napear tweeted Sunday after former Kings star Demarcus Cousins asked the KHTK radio host for his view on the Black Lives Matter movement.

And then there is the case of New York Times employees assuming the now-quite-familiar woke-snowflake stance in the wake of the paper printing Senator Tom Cotton's opinion column calling for the invoking of the Insurrection Act. Now, mind you, I, as a conservative, have found Cotton a major disappointment since he's established himself as a figure to reckon with, and I disagree with his position on this, but, come on. 

So, to sum up, the George Floyd murder and all that has transpired in its wake has not moved the needle. Those who are so easily cowed that they walk on eggshells in any situation in which race might be a significant factor are going to rush to burnish their bona fides as caring Americans. Institutional bullying will separate the wheat from the chaff in terms of who has the spine to stick with what they say the first time. We'll keep having diversity circles, implicit-bias workshops and "difficult conversations." Human-rights commissions will be newly empowered in their quest to get such Howard Zinn-inspired indoctrination as the 1619 Project inserted into public-school curricula.

And human fallibility will continue to show itself in ways ranging from police brutality to utterly pointless riots.