Paranoia, Zealotry, and Politics

Boston Globe:  "Vigilantes’ license to kill"

Herein lies the heart of the faux murder trial just concluded in Florida.  It was phony as a three dollar bill and now we get into the payoff---the whole point of this charade.

Those who want to defend themselves against a deadly attack are paranoid, says Derrick Jackson, the author.  It is a loosely used word which describes unreasoning fear.  Perhaps that could have been demonstrated in the trial, but no evidence was offered to support such a claim.  In fact, the evidence suggested otherwise.  But all this concern is just a figment of your imagination.  We are all just a bunch of trigger happy scaredy cats.

So, now we are all putting ourselves above the police?  The verdict gives a license to kill, he wails.  Woo-hoo!  Time to go kill me up some black sobs, huh?  Yeah, all of us paranoids out here just can't wait to arm ourselves and go out there and kill all these poor innocent little black boys just minding their own business coming home from the store, or so they want us all to believe.  Zimmerman called the police.  He was waiting for the police to come and meet him.  He was cooperating with the police.   He wasn't putting himself above them.

Vigilantism wasn't vetted as he suggests.  It wasn't even discussed in the trial.  The thing that was discussed was race.  The race card got played and it came up a joker.  The joker wasn't wild so it didn't do them any good in winning this trial, so now we get to play another game here in the aftermath--- politics.

Zealotry is in the eye of the beholder, it seems.  While he condemns zealotry in Zimmerman for shooting Martin, he fails to see it in the prosecution.  While there may have been an opportunity to explore a lesser charge to discover some legally plausible means of convicting Zimmerman, they pursue the completely barren avenue of racism.  But a lesser charge would hardly suit their political purposes, now would it?  A third degree charge, or manslaughter case just doesn't get the juices flowing like a good, old fashioned race card.  Bigger stakes were anticipated.  As the acquittal raked in their chips, here comes the next game of shutting down gun rights and the right of self-defense.

We are treated once again to the spectre of gun violence as an excuse to grab our guns.  Yet the trial didn't even attempt to get at the real issues of the case.  It wasn't the guns, it was the people involved.

If Zimmerman made a mistake, he should pay for it.  But that has to be established in a court.  If it can't, do we abolish the courts because they don't give us the results we want?  Do we go over the courts with mob rule and a dictatorship because the people cannot be trusted to handle force properly?  If the people can't handle force properly, we have no basis for self-government.  Do we really want to go there?

If the jury was wrong, the people are wrong.  The jury is the buffer between the people and the state. If the people are wrong, what other recourse is there but overwhelming force of government in the hands of the elite?

We should not want irresponsible and unreliable people to handle guns.  We should also not want irresponsible and unreliable government officials who can't or won't conduct a proper trial.  Then it can be determined accurately as humanly possible if Zimmerman did the right thing or not.

This trial was serious business.  The aftermath could be worse.  At least try to get it right.  We may not get an infinite number of chances at this.