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April
01
2021

Officer Chauvin’s Show Trial Will Bring the End of Law and Order
Paul Craig Roberts

The United States now has attributes of the 20th century totalitarian regimes that it opposed.  The New York governor is implementing the hated Soviet internal passport that prevents freedom of movement, and the illegitimate Biden regime is working with private firms to create a nationwide internal passport.

American elections mean no more than Soviet ones. As Stalin said, it is who counts the votes that matters.

Washington’s foreign policy is more aggressive and bloody than the Third Reich’s.

Soviet show trials are now the new normal for American “justice.”

As an example, consider the highly orchestrated show trial of Officer Chauvin accused of George Floyd’s death currently underway.  Yesterday, the second day of Officer Chauvin’s trial was “eye-witness day.”  Eye-witness Donald Williams told the prosecutor, Steve Schleicher, that “I believe I witnessed a murder.”  Eye-witness Alyssa Funari said, “I was upset because there was nothing that we could do as bystanders except watch them take this man’s life in front of our eyes.”  Eye-witness Darnella Frazier said, “When I look at George Floyd I look at, look at my dad. I look at my brothers, cousins, uncles, because they are all Black. I have a Black father, I have a Black brother, I have Black friends. And I look at that and I look at how that could have been one of them.”

I believe these witnesses are describing what it seemed like to them.  Donald Williams believes that he witnessed a murder.  It certainly can look like that to everyone who does not have all the information.  Thanks to the media, all the information is missing.

Among the missing information is the medical examiner’s report that finds three times the fatal dose of fentanyl in George Floyd’s blood.  The medical examiner reports “No life-threatening injuries identified. No injuries of anterior muscles of neck or laryngeal structures.” The medical examiner reports extensive heart disease:  Arteriosclerotic heart disease, multifocal, severe; Hypertensive heart disease.

Fentanyl causes breathing problems and death when overdosed. 

As police audio/video show, Floyd complained to police of breathing problems prior to being restrained on the ground. He complained of breathing problems while sitting in the police car.

When Officer Chauvin arrived, he recognized a drug overdose problem and called for medics, an inexplicable decision if he intended murder.

Officer Chauvin restrained Floyd using a police-approved technique that has been used many times without killing anyone.  Chavin restrained Floyd in order to prevent Floyd from agitated behavior that would exhaust the little oxygen able to get into his system.  The knee-hold does not prevent the flow of oxygen.

Practically alone among the print, TV, radio, and Internet media, I reported the facts of the situation.  See here, here, here, here, here, and here.

In contrast, the visual “evidence” was constantly hyped all over the media.  What people thought they saw was not the explanation.

The public was primed to misunderstand George Floyd’s death by previous instances of police brutality against blacks. The presstitutes only report police brutality against blacks, not the more numerous instances against whites, so the public sees it as a racist response to blacks.  Officer Chauvin is partly a victim of the one-sided reported incidents against blacks. 

As my readers know, I am a long-standing critic of police brutality against the public.  I forecast that the police brutality together with the one-sided reporting was brewing racial problems by being misrepresented as racism.  When I reported the medical examiner’s report, some readers wanted to know why I had changed from being a police critic to being a police apologist. I am not for or against the police.  I am for truth and against lies and misrepresentation.

The truth is Officer Chauvin’s true defense, but it is unlikely to play a role.  The presstitutes have presented the prosecutor with the case of his career. He is not going to let facts get in the way of Chauvin’s conviction.  Neither does the judge want the vilification that a fair trial would bring. The jurors all understand that if they let Officer Chavin off they will be outcasts and suffer violence to themselves and their property.  The entire community knows that unless Chauvin is convicted, their city will again be looted and burned.  Indeed, the many cities that experienced the George Floyd protests feel the same way.  A person already convicted by the media cannot be let off even if innocent. What is the purpose of the eye-witnesses when all have already seen many times the scenario they describe and have their minds made up?

In former times when America had a justice system and a responsible media, media was careful not to convict a suspect or defendant prior to the jury doing so.  To be convicted by the media was reason for dismissing the charges on the grounds that there was no prospect of an objective jury.  But in America today, it is conviction that is the focus, not innocence or guilt.  

Eye-witness Donald Williams feels that he witnessed a murder.  No doubt every juror feels the same way prior to the trial. Evidence, even if presented, is unlikely to get anywhere with people already convinced by the constantly replayed video of Officer Chauvin with his knee-hold on George Floyd.

What I have noticed over the years, especially recent ones, is that facts have lost their importance.  Facts have given way to emotional responses based on feelings.  It is how Americans feel about whatever, not the facts, that determines the response. 

It would take a heroic jury to find Chauvin innocent.  His conviction will constitute another blow to law and order. White and Asian police officers will protect themselves by avoiding interaction with black criminals.  I suspect that black officers will also.  Otherwise, their kids will be beat up and their homes firebombed.  The emboldened criminal population that is being created will be hard to contain.

Hon. Paul Craig Roberts is the John M. Olin Fellow at the Institute for Political Economy, Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, and Research Fellow at the Independent Institute. A former editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and columnist for Business Week and the Scripps Howard News Service, he is a nationally syndicated columnist for Creators Syndicate in Los Angeles and a columnist for Investor's Business Daily. In 1992 he received the Warren Brookes Award for Excellence in Journalism. In 1993 the Forbes Media Guide ranked him as one of the top seven journalists.

He was Distinguished Fellow at the Cato Institute from 1993 to 1996. From 1982 through 1993, he held the William E. Simon Chair in Political Economy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. During 1981-82 he served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy. President Reagan and Treasury Secretary Regan credited him with a major role in the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, and he was awarded the Treasury Department's Meritorious Service Award for "his outstanding contributions to the formulation of United States economic policy." From 1975 to 1978, Dr. Roberts served on the congressional staff where he drafted the Kemp-Roth bill and played a leading role in developing bipartisan support for a supply-side economic policy.

In 1987 the French government recognized him as "the artisan of a renewal in economic science and policy after half a century of state interventionism" and inducted him into the Legion of Honor.

Dr. Roberts' latest books are The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with IPE Fellow Lawrence Stratton, and published by Prima Publishing in May 2000, and Chile: Two Visions - The Allende-Pinochet Era, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen Araujo, and published in Spanish by Universidad Nacional Andres Bello in Santiago, Chile, in November 2000. The Capitalist Revolution in Latin America, co-authored with IPE Fellow Karen LaFollette Araujo, was published by Oxford University Press in 1997. A Spanish language edition was published by Oxford in 1999. The New Colorline: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, was published by Regnery in 1995. A paperback edition was published in 1997. Meltdown: Inside the Soviet Economy, co-authored with Karen LaFollette, was published by the Cato Institute in 1990. Harvard University Press published his book, The Supply-Side Revolution, in 1984. Widely reviewed and favorably received, the book was praised by Forbes as "a timely masterpiece that will have real impact on economic thinking in the years ahead." Dr. Roberts is the author of Alienation and the Soviet Economy, published in 1971 and republished in 1990. He is the author of Marx's Theory of Exchange, Alienation and Crisis, published in 1973 and republished in 1983. A Spanish language edition was published in 1974.

Dr. Roberts has held numerous academic appointments. He has contributed chapters to numerous books and has published many articles in journals of scholarship, including the Journal of Political Economy, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law and Economics, Studies in Banking and Finance, Journal of Monetary Economics, Public Finance Quarterly, Public Choice, Classica et Mediaevalia, Ethics, Slavic Review, Soviet Studies, Rivista de Political Economica, and Zeitschrift fur Wirtschafspolitik. He has entries in the McGraw-Hill Encyclopedia of Economics and the New Palgrave Dictionary of Money and Finance. He has contributed to Commentary, The Public Interest, The National Interest, Harper's, the New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, Fortune, London Times, The Financial Times, TLS, The Spectator, Il Sole 24 Ore, Le Figaro, Liberation, and the Nihon Keizai Shimbun. He has testified before committees of Congress on 30 occasions.

Dr. Roberts was educated at the Georgia Institute of Technology (B.S.), the University of Virginia (Ph.D.), the University of California at Berkeley and Oxford University where he was a member of Merton College.

He is listed in Who's Who in America, Who's Who in the World, The Dictionary of International Biography, Outstanding People of the Twentieth Century, and 1000 Leaders of World Influence. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at: [email protected]

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