I confess I hesitated to pen that title because I definitely don’t view St George of the Fentanyl as a hero. But many on the ‘left’ appear to do so. The outpouring of grief and hysteria at his death was quite remarkable to witness. Nobody in the UK had heard of this guy before his death and yet suddenly we were allowed to ignore the most super-duperest deadliest epidemic the universe has ever witnessed so that we could ponce about on a street, assault cops, vandalize the crap out of everything, and pull down statues.
The US version of the same had the statue thing, but despite being “mostly peaceful” did see the attempt to turn more than a few downtown areas into giant barbeques. We also had chav city - or was it chaz - which was a new nation created in the US where people could live a different kind of life. It mostly seemed to be an exercise in creating the largest compost heap the world had ever seen, but it was entertaining. It was a time of love, and a time of free Nikes.
This image is perhaps the most iconic of the time. It is hard to fathom just how or why, but people really did still continue paying attention to mainstream media after this.
George Floyd was not a decent guy - although it seemed that at 46 he was trying to turn his life around - by passing counterfeit bills and taking copious amounts of Fentanyl. He had the usual string of convictions we might expect of a career criminal and doubtless plenty of other offences committed that we don’t know about.
Despite all that, he didn’t deserve to die.
I remember watching the first video of his death at the time - the one posted some weeks before a more complete story and context emerged. I couldn’t watch it all and it brought me to tears.
It was a tragic event, an entirely preventable one, but it was not murder. Nor was it racially motivated - and there has never been any evidence that it was. The police were at fault. Definitely. They had a duty of care to their suspect and they failed in that. I get that the play acting of “I can’t breathe” started well before he was pinned to the ground, and that he’d chucked down the Fentanyl like it was going out of fashion and so the police, rightly, might have suspected he was just playing up again or a bit off his head, but at some point, much sooner than they did, they should have realized Floyd was in genuine respiratory distress.
Negligence? Yes - or whatever the legal equivalent is. Murder? Nope - not having it.
His death still saddens me - although I recognise his own direct partial culpability in that. It wasn’t all on the cops here. Very sad, and I wish things had been different that day. He might still be alive and we might have seen whether his attempts to turn his life around had finally succeeded although the odds probably weren’t in his favour on that score given that he was still using and still doing illegal things.
The “mostly peaceful” protests continued for some time and things developed into the weirdest kind of sycophancy. If you had the temerity, the very effrontery, to criticize BLM you were treated as some kind of heretic. BLM reached a level of assumed sanctity and veneration that would send your average Pope into a raging fit of jealousy.
It was a very strange time indeed. The Corona Boner that our governments forced upon us - an orgy of complete idiocy - had already deranged us and then we had the mass hysteria of BLM (bonkers, loopy and mad). All over the death of a not particularly upstanding member of the community.
They turned a sinner into a saint and tried to burn places to the ground in their adopted mantle of righteous anger. He got a gold casket and the most fawning and vomit-inducing speeches from leading politicians, including the Vegetable-in-Chief’s own hideous and insincere ramblings.
Around the same time as all this was going on I read about the death of a 2-year old in his stroller at a barbeque. A drive by shooting was all it took. All that love that had brought him into existence, all that potential, the things he might have done, the people he may have touched in his life - all gone in an instant. This brought me to tears too. He was black - but there was no gold casket for him, no presidential speeches - and yet in the blameless and innocence stakes he outdistances St George by several light years.
Of course, there wasn’t the same degree of political capital to be made over the death of this little boy.
In the picture above you can see the words “stop killing black people”. Well quite. That would be awesome. Remind me again which demographic represents the greatest threat to black people?
Oddly enough, I didn’t see too many videos or commentary celebrating Floyd’s death. Actually I didn’t see any, but with humans being what they are, they were probably a few, sadly.
People like me, those who would be critical of the kind of life he led and the person he appeared to be, were saddened by it. It would have been gross and inhuman to have celebrated his death wouldn’t it?
And now after Charlie Kirk’s death we’re seeing right wingers take to the streets, burn shit down, loot stores, attack cops . . . .
Oh, hang on. I just made that shit up.
Do I really need to spell out all the compare and contrasts we could do here?
One ‘side’ in all of this is most definitely NOT like the other.
One hero is most definitely NOT like the other.
There is no symmetry here. There’s a real split in character between those we might broadly class on the ‘right’ and those on the ‘left’ - and we’re seeing it now very clearly. More clearly, perhaps, than we’ve seen it before.
One side goes mental. The other side does not.
Can you imagine a whole bunch of people on the right surrounding someone seated at a restaurant and try to force them to demonstrate allegiance to some cause of theirs?
Nope - neither can I.
And if you’re going to bring up J6 as some kind of ‘equivalent’ example of the right going ‘mental’ - please, don’t be an arsehole.
What we’re seeing now is a whole bunch of people on the left condemning violence as a political tool - trying to distance themselves from the demented ghouls they have spent years creating. But it’s too little, too late. Very few condemned the extreme language employed against those on the right - only now, when it is politically expedient to do so - do they call it out.
A plague on only one of your houses.
I don’t know what the future will bring - whether things will calm down and go back to ‘normal’ after Charlie Kirk’s death - or whether a line has been crossed that will shape the US for years to come.
Indeed, after seeing the grotesque celebration of Charlie Kirk’s death many are now asking themselves the question “how can we live with people who want us dead?”
We should probably ask Israel for some advice here. After all, it’s a question they’ve had to face for over 75 years now.
Whatever that future may be I hope it can be achieved without any further violence. It partially depends on whether the patience on the right has finally run out. It’s a kind of non-linear thing and we don’t yet know whether some threshold has been reached. The crazy left will continue doing what they do best - being insufferable nasty violent arseholes drenched in emotion and suffused with narcissism.
But we have a choice - defend what we know to be decent, honourable, and wholesome - or continue to burn shit down because we can’t manage our own emotions and can only win arguments through force?
Floyd or Kirk - which hero do you want to choose?
Sadly, I think the violence from the Left will continue. Charlie won’t be the last. The absolutely despicable, disgusting, vile things I have seen the past few days, calling for Charlie’s wife and children to be murdered so “the whole line is destroyed”, calling for the death of all conservatives, the insane laughing and cackling and creepiness of it all!!! The partying and dancing. It’s so incredibly disturbing. I’ve seen a lot over the years with 25 years of police work behind me and none of it has disturbed me as much as what I’ve seen these past few days.
There truly are demons walking among us. The only positive side is that this incident has brought them all out into the open. They’re gloating and reveling openly for all to see. And I do believe that in the end goodness will win.
Before Charlie’s assassination there were 8000 chapters of Turning Point in the USA. In the last three days 18,000 more people have applied to open chapters at their high schools and colleges. They have awoken a sleeping giant. This is indeed a Turning Point for America.
I've seen lots of stuff on the internet over rhe last decade or so about how leftists want conservative people imprisoned and/or killed, and I've generally discounted it. There's nutters everywhere I thought, but not in any numbers.
After contemplating Mr Kirk's death and subsequent events, it hit me quite viscerally last night that its true.
I've been loosely following his progress for about 5 years. I admired his courage, his intellect and his ability to think on his feet and discuss controversial things with hostile people with wit and good will. Apart from some of the religious stuff he espoused, I agreed with everything he said. I really can't recall ever seeing him speak and thinking "Nah...he's totally wrong on that".
So, having seen the grotesque widespread celebrations of his murder, I can only conclude that those people would also celebrate the same thing happening to me, because I largely share Mr Kirk's views. They wanted him dead, they're overjoyed that he's dead and they're shouting it all over the internet. The only rational conclusion is that they want all people like Mr Kirk dead, including me, and they'd also applaud my murder. Certainly there are lots of suggestions for future high profile targets such as Ben Shapiro, Matt Walsh and JK Rowling, but way down their list, there's also me.
I understand their attitude very clearly now, and my heart has hardened against them, like a piece of fucking flint. I greatly suspect that many other middle of the road people luke me feel much the same.