Sunday Smiles

David Strom 2:00 PM | May 25, 2025
David Strom

We have reached the 5-year anniversary of the George Floyd riots, which began here in my hometown of Minneapolis and spread throughout the country. 

2020 was the year of unrelenting propaganda. By May 2020, you could just assume that anything you were told by the "experts" was a steaming pile of bovine excrement. 

Advertisement

The whole point was to create hysteria, because hysteria makes people look to authorities for help. Fear about COVID was ramped up to such a level that only a few people had a decent grasp on reality.

When George Floyd, who died from a drug overdose and not asphyxiation, as we were constantly told, was videoed resisting arrest and dying while being restrained by a white police officer, it became a national obsession, and the world became even more insane. 

Liz Collins' The Fall of Minneapolis carefully takes you through the facts of that and the subsequent days--something the news media never did--and conclusively demonstrates that Floyd was not "murdered," that officials committed perjury to cover that fact up, and that Governor Tim Walz and other Minnesota officials allowed--you could even say encouraged--the destruction of the civil peace and of much of my city. 

As the violence spread, the very same public health officials who had been warning that large gatherings of people would be deadly due to COVID rushed to endorse widespread rioting, labeling racism a "public health emergency." Rioting, we were told, was GOOD for public health and a necessary tool to save lives. 

"Defund the police" became a rallying cry, and the "health" results were clear: murder rates spiked among black men, costing thousands of extra lives--as was predicted. 

Advertisement

Aside from lots of dead bodies, the riots left behind a much worse city landscape here and in many cities around the country. My friend Bill Glahn of the Center of the American Experiment visited "George Floyd Square," which remains a monument to Floyd, to see what the riots left behind. 

It's nothing good. 

Still, our elite look back on that time with wistfulness. It was a good time for them, at least at first. They got to primp and preen, show "moral courage," and use the violence as yet one more argument that Donald Trump was a very bad guy and a racist who must be tossed out of office. 


Members of the media are doing retrospectives, and while they don't deny that the hoped-for results of this racial reckoning ever came, they view this as a failure of a good cause. Good people banded together to form a movement that could have made America much better, right?

Advertisement

Don't buy it for a second. Any thinking person--and propaganda exists to subvert thinking and create an alternate reality--knew that "defund the police" is a very stupid idea that would lead to chaos and death. It took the combined efforts of the entire "expert" class to convince people that this was a good cause, and the creation of yet another racial hoax to ignite the riots that left so much destruction behind. 

City after city has been left less livable, for blacks, whites, and everybody else. Racial tensions are the worst they have been since the 1960s. 

Yet you can't call the movement a failure. It served its purpose. BLM raked in around $100 million, making many people rich. Donald Trump lost the 2020 election narrowly, and the proponents of "criminal justice reform" made many gains. Now, as then, none of the leaders of that movement cared about secondary consequences. They aren't living in crime-infested neighborhoods. They gained enormous wealth and power. 

What's not to love?






\












































BEST OF THE BABYLON BEE


Advertisement


Advertisement
Advertisement


BEST OF THE REST


Advertisement


AND FINALLY...


Tags: SUNDAY SMILES

Join the conversation as a VIP Member

Trending on HotAir Videos

Advertisement
Trending
Come As You Are: Sunday Reflection
Ed Morrissey 11:00 AM | May 25, 2025
Planned Parenthood is On Life Support
John Sexton 6:00 PM | May 24, 2025
Advertisement
Chris LaCivita's Homecoming
Salena Zito 1:00 PM | May 24, 2025
Hmmm: Did 'Free Palestine' Terrorist Get Support from Goldman Sachs and China?
Ed Morrissey 11:10 AM | May 24, 2025
Advertisement
New York City Faces the Threat of an Antisemitic Mayor
Betsy McCaughey 9:00 AM | May 24, 2025
Friday's Final Word
Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | May 23, 2025
Advertisement