It's yet another one of those days where you find yourself mildly embarrassed for Florida, but not at all surprised. One could easily and rationally debate the murder charge against George Zimmerman, but the manslaughter charge seemed indisputable. Guess not; the (mini) jury always knows best, right? Only two people know what really took place that fateful night, and one of them is dead.
But hey, "everyone lost" (though, uh, some lost more than others, no?) and Zimmerman feels real bad about the whole thing, so it's all good then. There's perhaps some small consolation that Zimmerman will be looking over his shoulder for some time to come, until 'murka forgets about this and moves on to the next outrage du jour. And he'll probably get his ass sued, and might experience some challenges in obtaining decent employment.
Another dimension to this that's worth considering is the legitimacy of the "stand your ground" law, which seems to be (to say the least) applied rather irregularly. Not only is the notion of unqualified mall-cop yahoos like Zimmerman carrying weapons ridiculous, but that one can "stand" their "ground" in a public place, yet not in their own home.
Can't imagine why anyone might think there are racial undertones to all this, not to mention the fact that if Zimmerman had been black and Martin white, or if Martin had wrestled Zimmerman's gun away and accidentally shot Zimmerman, the outcomes would have been completely different -- and instantly resolved in either hypothetical; in fact, you'd have never heard about the case.
So protesters will protest, and a couple vandals will take advantage of the situation to steal and light fires (and perhaps get themselves shot in the process), and Florida's power structure and judicial system will do what it does, which is shrug its shoulders and say, "fuck you gonna do about it?"
But hey, "everyone lost" (though, uh, some lost more than others, no?) and Zimmerman feels real bad about the whole thing, so it's all good then. There's perhaps some small consolation that Zimmerman will be looking over his shoulder for some time to come, until 'murka forgets about this and moves on to the next outrage du jour. And he'll probably get his ass sued, and might experience some challenges in obtaining decent employment.
Another dimension to this that's worth considering is the legitimacy of the "stand your ground" law, which seems to be (to say the least) applied rather irregularly. Not only is the notion of unqualified mall-cop yahoos like Zimmerman carrying weapons ridiculous, but that one can "stand" their "ground" in a public place, yet not in their own home.
Can't imagine why anyone might think there are racial undertones to all this, not to mention the fact that if Zimmerman had been black and Martin white, or if Martin had wrestled Zimmerman's gun away and accidentally shot Zimmerman, the outcomes would have been completely different -- and instantly resolved in either hypothetical; in fact, you'd have never heard about the case.
So protesters will protest, and a couple vandals will take advantage of the situation to steal and light fires (and perhaps get themselves shot in the process), and Florida's power structure and judicial system will do what it does, which is shrug its shoulders and say, "fuck you gonna do about it?"
The fact that the pro-Zimmerman crowd tried to smear a dead 17-year-old kid with a fake photo is all the evidence you need of their motivations. First, it's an obvious lie - one which, if they had the truth on their side, they wouldn't feel the need to bolster their phony arguments with. Second, it wouldn't matter if Trayvon Martin looked like Genghis Khan: he was minding his own business one minute, and had been shot by a paranoid idiot with a gun a minute later. Tattooed muscle-bound black men don't deserve to get shot to death for no reason any more than glasses-wearing white accountants do. It's pathetic that this needs to be explained to people.
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