Blow uses all of his high school creative writing class skills to make his lurid case; slaves aren’t just whipped, it is black bodies that are punished and defiled. Blow writes of “the flaying of flesh, the human beings torn apart by hounds, the stiff bodies dangling from the stiff branch of a tree. The display was the thing. The theatrical production of pain, to the point of mutilation, was the thing. The transmission of trauma was the thing.” Those are fighting words. They are meant to set the stage should that Minneapolis jury fail to satisfy the blood lust masquerading as a call for justice. The certainty across America that cities will burn if the jury reaches the “wrong” conclusion makes clear that eye for an eye will be taken one way or another. The sad thing about what Blow writes (and obviously he is just an avatar who puts into words what many think) is the assumption of intent by the cops who killed George Floyd. Intent is a critical part of justice. It’s the difference between Murder One and lesser crimes such as manslaughter or even self-defense. Blow seems to see no such distinction because it was a cop and a black man. At an Upper West Side cocktail party, he would probably say the application of intent in such cases is racist itself if it saves a cop from the gallows.