evidence: The photograph that captures the here and now of the here and now is of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin, slowly, calmly, choking the life out of George Floyd, a recently laid-off restaurant worker. It’s the blithe calmness of the execution that is so unsettling. Chauvin has his knee planted firmly on Floyd’s neck, placing a good part of his weight on it. Floyd is handcuffed, so not much of a threat to Chauvin. The police officer has his sunglasses perched on top of his head, the way people do at parks or in backyards. But it’s the way Chauvin’s left hand rests casually in his pants pocket that just did me in. The banality of evil, as Hannah Arendt so memorably described Adolf Eichmann’s indifferent manner at his 1961 trial for war crimes, was also on full display in Minneapolis that day in May. [...] At a time of global injustice and inequality, it is not surprising that a photograph like the one of Chauvin calmly squeezing the life out of Floyd lit the flame of protest around the world. And it is almost impossible not to side with the response. Time and time again over the past decade, American courts have failed to charge police officers who have killed African-American men, women, and children. If you are black and living in the U.S., you have every right to demand justice and equality. To do otherwise is to turn the American Dream—if ever there really was one—into a waking nightmare.