A moral outrage that should strike at the heart of every American. When due process is abandoned, when the Court of Law is replaced with the Court of Public Opinion, when identity politics pervade every aspect of our lives; what will we have left? Black Lives Matter, as an organization, is a cancer to American society not necessarily for the things it wants but for the things it does. When every city is burned, every courthouse and police precinct stormed, every jurist threatened or intimidated, or every white police officer sacrificed at the altar of political correctness, will America ever wake up to the sobering reality of the unprecedented abolition on the American nation, orchestrated by malevolent ideologues disguised as activists and liberators?

On Tuesday, April 20, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted on all counts in connection with the death of George Floyd. As the verdict was read, an already exhausted nation, wounded by worsening racial strife, held its breath. Minneapolis had already been the center for so much violence and destruction. So, it was understandable when the nation was anxious leading up to the guilty verdict – but why?

Well, we all know why. The United States had already been shell shocked by the horrific events of last summer, when almost every major city in the nation was set ablaze by agitators in the name of “social justice.” We watched, with pure awe and horror, as our mainstream media and politicians turned a blind eye to the blatant tyranny of mob rule, terrorizing our own citizens, setting up autonomous zones, storming and burning down police precincts, federal courthouses, and town halls.

We watched as the very minority communities these ‘activists’ claimed to advocate for were promptly burned, looted, and destroyed. We sat there and witnessed America’s iconic metropolitan behemoths such as Chicago, New York, Minneapolis, and Portland descend into chaos after caving to the demands of the mob. Their municipal police department budgets were slashed, or in the case of Minneapolis, completely dismantled. Shortly after, we saw those cities experience a year’s worth of murder, gang violence, and shootings in mere months.

We witnessed the blatant malevolence of BLM’s selective outrage, as they ruled every black person killed by a white cop as ‘systemic racism’ with little to no contextualized information available, only to turn a blind eye to the thousands of black people, whose neighborhoods were burned down, whose businesses were destroyed, whose lives were lost at the hands of the movement’s proponents.

All in the name of “social justice.”

It is really no surprise why America was on edge leading up to the jury’s verdict on Tuesday. If the jury ruled otherwise, we would have certainly experienced similar levels of destruction throughout our cities – and that is the problem.

The nation’s sympathies ought to be offered to the jurists. To be responsible for handing down a verdict, on one of the most consequential criminal trials in American history, surely exerted a larger amount of pressure than they could have ever imagined.

It is no surprise that even in the midst of convincing medical evidence offered by the defense, that suggested that George Floyd did not die of asphyxiation due to Chauvin’s knee on his neck, the jury felt compelled to hand down a guilty verdict, presumably out of fear of being threatened by the mob. Such a result is expected when both the mainstream media and politicians manufacture a narrative that encourages this type of behavior. 

This is not to be so construed as advocating for Chauvin’s exoneration, but even those who are hated universally, by those on the left and right, are entitled to due process; and I currently believe that, given these societal pressures on the verdict, Chauvin was deprived of such entitlement.

Many of the radical BLM activists are right about one thing, though: the Derek Chauvin trial was far from justice being served. The scales were instead tipped by an unbearably partisan mainstream media and politicians like Maxine Waters fanning the flames of the mob.

The inherently partisan nature of the verdict can be seen simply by going through the charges brought against Chauvin. How can a person be charged with both unintentional second-degree murder and intentional third-degree murder? You cannot intentionally and unintentionally commit a crime at the same time. You either meant it or you didn’t. Such dissonance exemplified between those two charges alone illustrates how much pressure the jurors must have felt not to administer equal justice under law, but to adhere to the will of the mob, and I don’t blame them.

Even a ‘not guilty’ verdict on just one of those charges would have put the jurors at great risk of mob retaliation. The narrative was clear: If Chauvin is found guilty on all charges, then black lives matter. If Chauvin is acquitted on just one of those charges, then it is clear that black lives do not matter, and such a verdict is an indictment of the American justice system as a whole.

This leads us to the next revelation, which is that in reality, Chauvin’s trial was more than just about his accountability. The Derek Chauvin trial is about putting America on trial. We are now often told how the United States is rooted in deep, systemic racism that can only be solved by uprooting the entire system and replacing it with something else; however, perhaps it is time that we as a nation had a serious conversation about the fine line between justice and mob rule. The Derek Chauvin trial should serve as a testament for what happens when the court of law is carelessly merged with the court of public opinion.

One of the things that makes the American republic so great is its built-in skepticism of the so-called benevolence of the majority. We talk of democracy today, and yet we all too often neglect to discuss why certain parts of our society are specifically anti-democratic. The American justice system is marvelous in the sense that it entitles a person to be tried before a jury of his peers, to have a defense, and to remain silent. But when the sanctity of such a process is disrupted and leveraged by mainstream media, activists, and angry mobs, all of which at this point have an agenda, then we no longer have equal justice under law. Instead, we have tyranny of the majority.

Derek Chauvin should absolutely appeal his case, which again, is not to be so construed as advocating for his exoneration; however, Chauvin’s appeal would allow the appellate courts to set the record straight once again: BLM activists, rioters, looters, and the ANTIFA mob do not administer justice in America, the courts do. 

They say justice is blind, but there was nothing blind about the jury’s verdict on Tuesday. 

Luke Lattanzi, Staff Writer and Contributor at American Pigeon

image credit: A.F. Bronco