Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground! And now you are cursed from the ground, which has opened its mouth to receive your brother’s blood from your hand.” (Gen 4:9–11)
In yet another iteration of state-sanctioned police brutality, the United States has witnessed the killing of George Floyd by police officer Derek Chauvin in Minneapolis, Minn. In harrowing fulfillment of what political philosopher Hannah Arendt once defined counter-intuitively as the “banality” of evil, Officer Chauvin seemed frighteningly calm as he slowly asphyxiated Mr. Floyd with his knee outside a corner store: eight minutes and 46 seconds of deafening, uncontested silence, save the plaintive protest of passerby, and Mr. Floyd himself, gasping for enough air to call for his mother.
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