There are no good guys in the George Floyd matter. Not Floyd, not Chauvin, not the rioters, not the prosecutor, and not the judge.

Commentators and opinionators have not been covering themselves with glory either. We expect big lies and argument by assertion from the left. That stuff drives people on the right kind of batty, and justifiably so. But in countering these falsehoods, voices from the right have fallen into error. Here’s the left narrative:

George Floyd’s death was a state-sanctioned race-motivated murder of an innocent man, and it proves all white people are evil and justifies rioting and looting.

It is fair to say about any of the parts in bold, that’s dishonest garbage. But take a look at “proves all white people are evil”; that’s an example of conflation. Once you notice how conflation works, you can see it in every Big Lie. All white people didn’t step on George Floyd’s neck; only Derek Chauvin did that. Conflating whiteness with Chauvin is an error, a falsehood. The correct response is to say, white people don’t own that guy, he’s on his own.

Instead, many fell for the conflation and developed an unhealthy bias towards narratives of Chauvin’s innocence. These are smart, good people, driven by politics into the trap of motivated reasoning. They were forgiveably, perhaps happily naive enough to fall for smoke screens like “no evidence of strangulation” and “fatal level of Fentanyl”.

And they do have a point when they say George Floyd brought this on himself. At least, he mostly brought it on himself.

This TMZ article features the bodycam footage. Here’s how they describe the opening encounter:

George Floyd was terrified and afraid [and also probably scared –ed.] when cops first approached him in his car … pleading for his life with a gun trained on his head.

Here’s the sequence of events from 00:03 to 00:18:

• Officer Thomas Lane raps Floyd’s car window with his flashlight.
• George Floyd looks around and jumps like a jackrabbit when he sees the badge. Cops call it “the look”. If you look at a cop and your eyes go wide or you startle, that’s a red flag.
• “Lemme see your hands.” Floyd ignores this command, slumping over the steering wheel. Then he opens the car door. Cops hate that. An open car door is an open door to assault or ambush. Red flag.
• “Stay in the car, lemme see your other hand.” Officer Lane tries to push the door shut, Floyd pushes it back open, saying “I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry”. There are more red flags in this moment than at a Tiananmen Square Patriotic March. Floyd is now offering physical resistance to this officer, to keep the car door open; he’s obviously feeling guilty and desperate; he’s physically huge; he has disregarded every command from this officer, and we still haven’t seen that right hand.
• “Let me see your other hand. Both hands!” “I didn’t do nothin!”
• Officer Lane draws his sidearm and covers Floyd. We still haven’t seen Floyd’s right hand.

That’s in just fifteen seconds. Officer Lane shows considerable restraint up to this point and beyond. At any moment he could find himself fighting for his life at a disadvantage. With nothing but his service pistol, he’s sadly undergunned for George Floyd. In an eyeblink, Floyd could boil out of that car with a knife.

In movies, handguns are usually portrayed as instant fight-enders; someone gets shot and falls over dead right there. In real life, if George Floyd turns out to be a knife attacker, there’s no timely, reliable way to stop him with a service sidearm chambered in not more than .40 S&W. Floyd could take a dozen hits and fight on for minutes. If that fight starts at this range, officer Lane will almost certainly lose. That’s why he’s covering Floyd’s head; a head shot would be his one and only chance.

And Floyd just keeps screwing around: he reaches with the right hand where Officer Lane can’t see, puts his foot out of the vehicle, blabbers hysterically and ignores everything Lane says. He wrestles mightily with the cops when they go to cuff him, and on and on.

To their credit, the officers managed to load Floyd into the back of the cop car without hurting him, but then he got out again and Derek Chauvin took over the scene.

In Part One, based on my interpretation of public information, I gave my opinion that Derek Chauvin is guilty of murder in the second degree under Minnesota law. A conviction would be a just outcome. But at sentencing, George Floyd’s conduct should be taken into account as a mitigating factor. True, Floyd never did get actively, aggressively violent. But with his hulking frame, his seemingly limitless capacity for physical resistance, his hysteria and his refusal to cooperate in his own interests, Floyd deserves much of the blame. Had he cooperated, he would never have been hurt, much less killed.

Had George Floyd lived, he probably would have done time for drug possession, DUI, and resisting arrest. As a repeat offender, he might have gone away for a while. They ought to work out what his sentence would have been and reduce Derek Chauvin’s by at least that. Instead, they’ll increase his penalty because…you know.