What Happens When We Pardon Chauvin?

Four and a half years after a seminal moment in America, we're still having discussions about fentanyl in his system and all that. What is wrong with us?

In the grand scheme of “events that divided America since 9/11,” George Floyd is probably somewhere near the top to the middle. It gets lumped in with COVID and general “summer of 2020 hysteria,” but it was the event that caused most of that summer's hysteria — unless you think COVID caused it, and Floyd was a symbol of the COVID summer, or unless you want to talk about Jacob Blake or someone else.

I think we know the fault lines on Floyd. Generally speaking, you have these arguments:

• From the right-leaning: “He was a career criminal who once hit a pregnant woman, had drugs in his system, was trying to pay with a counterfeit $20 bill, and had an enlarged heart.”

• From the left-leaning: “This is an absolute sign and symbol of police overreach and how black men and women are treated by police.”

Because in May 2020, most of us had nothing to do except look at the Internet and watch television (I think we hit a 13% unemployment rate around the time of the Floyd murder), everyone had a take and theories were flying left and right.

Four and a quarter years later, I think some of those theories still fly around — and the fact that Tim Walz, who was Governor of Minnesota at the time and, according to conservatives “let Minneapolis burn,” was on a national ticket in 2024 just re-upped the conversation.

I don’t always like Tyler O’s YouTube videos, and he definitely leans a little bit junior MAGA on most of them, but this video does cover both sides of how people process Floyd: