Slouching Towards Oblivion

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Zimmerman Walks

I guess I should own up to some things.
  • I wasn't very into the Zimmerman trial.
  • I half-expected the jury to let him off.
  • I'm not overly surprised that the reaction from "the black community" hasn't been too bad (so far), mostly because I fear that reaction is coming in the form of outright reprisal.  So if you're looking for a great medium-to-long-run business opportunity, open a gun store in any Majority Black neighborhood ASAP.
But I'm more than a little bothered about the total lack of focus on the bullshit Stand Your Ground law itself.

There's a lot more to it than this, but the salient points are that Trayvon's walking home a little after dark when some misguided dipwad with a bad case of The Wyatt Earps goes out of his way (and against the cops' direct instruction) to confront the kid on the off chance that Martin is up to no good, and happens to fit with Zimmerman's bigoted imaginings of what a bad guy looks like according to some pretty fucked up cultural history in Sanford FL.

That's the synopsis when I'm feeling charitable; when I'm not assuming Zimmerman was just out looking to goad somebody into a fight so he'd have a plausible excuse to gun him down.

I don't want this to turn into a big long thesis, and I don't know how to make it good and short, so I'll just sum it up:  Without Stand Your Ground, the trial probably turns out differently, but without the gun, everything turns out differently.

One last thing - when we're looking back on the events and the causes leading to Civil War II, this is likely to be a big one.

Ya heard it here first.

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