Some Comments on Trayvon Martin

While I was slightly fascinated by the initial story, I’ve once again been more interested in the reactions of Americans to the death of Trayvon Martin than in the case itself. The actual killing has taken a backseat to what is the near hysteria that is the public response.

Be forewarned: I have an opinion on this and I probably won’t change it until there is more evidence.

First, I want to propose what I think happened, so you know what I’m working with. I’m under the impression Trayvon was walking home and Zimmerman was out playing wanna-be-cop when he rolls up on Trayvon and calls 911. They tell him to wait for the police, but he ignores them.

So this high school student who has probably been racially harassed in the past has some guy following him in a car (which is quite an overt action). Trayvon doesn’t know this man, nor does he know what his intentions are (though if he did know, he’d probably have run). The guy gets out of the car and I presume asks Trayvon what he’s doing… a question Trayvon does not legally have to answer, even if Zimmerman were a police officer.

I’m assuming words were exchanged and tempers escalated. When I lived in Philly for seven years, I saw three fights start on the street within sight of me. You always hear them first… it’s usually “*murmur murmur murmur* out my FACE!” Then more yelling, until the fists fly. In one instance, the guy quickly took his shirt off before engaging the men he was fighting with.

All I’m saying is, I doubt Zimmerman got out of the car and Trayvon just began assaulting him. Obviously this is conjecture, but from my experience dealing with mall security and other private authority, one thing they often do is grab your arm or shoulder or basically try to touch you for some odd reason. Honestly, if a guy drives up to me and lays his hand on me, I would consider hitting him, especially if he were smaller than me.

So what we do know is, they get into a fight. Zimmerman claims Trayvon started it… gee, I wonder why? George Zimmerman shows signs of getting his nosy ass beat, notably cuts on the back of his head from a fall and grass stains on the back of his shirt. At some point, Curious George realizes he fucked with the wrong brotha, he pulls out his gun, like a bitch, and shoots the kid who was laying the smackdown on his meddling ass.

For future reference, if you harass someone and then start a fight with them, just take your licking and learn your lesson. George Zimmerman will [hopefully] never live a normal life again now, whether he goes to trial and is found guilty or not, and he would be fine if he had just minded his own fucking business or, if he just had to get involved, he could have just taken the beating he went looking for. Not only that, Trayvon would still be alive. And not only that… I wouldn’t have to see how unbelievably ignorant America is.

So tragedy aside, people have basically lost their fucking minds when talking about this. For one thing, you had liberals shouting about how a white guy had killed a black kid and wasn’t even arrested. Not that it matters what race anyone in the situation is, because it’s sad and pathetic in any case, but we’ve pretty well established now that Zimmerman is mixed race and culturally Latino.

I’m also of the opinion that Zimmerman isn’t that racist. By this I mean, I don’t think Zimmerman went looking to kill a black kid, nor did Zimmerman kill Trayvon because he was black, but I am of the opinion that a black teenager in a hoodie at night was suspicious to Zimmerman… which is kind of racist and was the impetus for all of this.

And real quick, before I forget… fuck you Geraldo Rivera. I hope you get robbed at gunpoint for wearing that smug suit. Seriously, blaming what happens to people on their style? Maybe Al Capone’s vault was empty because of your stupid mustache, because fuck reason.

While I find it sad that liberals have become the boy who cried “racist,” the way those who defend Zimmerman have handled it kind of makes me ready for another Civil War. I don’t want any of the people who I have seen defend Zimmerman to be alive anymore. There are ways to defend him, I can reason in my head that he may have felt justified and that perhaps it was self-defense, but that isn’t how it has been handled.

No, most people who support Zimmerman express a nearly maniacal glee in the whole ordeal. It’s really brought out the racist in a lot of people, and I mean real racism, like, “Just a few million more monkeys to go” racism. It’s really made me rethink some Facebook friendships.

A particularly strange, less racist, though equally ignorant “defense” is that people seem to think that if they can point to an instance where a black person hurt a white person, that it’s like off-setting penalties in football and the whole thing just gets dropped. I want to first point out that every example I have been given is about a black person who was arrested for hurting a white person. Sort of a key difference; black people don’t tend to walk free. Secondly… we aren’t keeping score.

The reason this is news is because a guy killed a kid and just walked free, without so much as even being taken in by the police for any questioning. The ignorance of this very basic fact (which is rarely if ever address by defenders of Zimmerman) indicates to me that those who support Zimmerman are probably just happy with the outcome, which is sickening.

But I’ll help the morons out and come up with a viable counter-example: OJ Simpson. OJ Simpson murdered his wife and her lover, there’s really no question about it. You can be happy for the guy because he got away with it, I can honestly understand that, but by now everyone should have come to terms with the fact that he did kill those two people. He’s not innocent, he was just found not guilty.

The outrage from the decision was palpable. I know black people who can’t believe OJ walked free, though out of cynicism. Some people even take a sort of, “Well, rich white people get away with murder all the time, so it’s only fair,” view, but we all know he did it and most of those who accept the not guilty verdict would probably not trust their kids with him. So, even when a black man gets away with murder, he’s a social pariah (even white women are not immune, ask Casey Anthony). Such may be the case with Zimmerman, trial and conviction or not.

Personally, I’m outraged that he wasn’t arrested. I don’t know if he’s guilty or not, but the guy shot an unarmed kid after getting into a fight with him. In fact, it’s not as though Trayvon approached him; Zimmerman approached Trayvon. That’s some scary shit, knowing that I could just be walking in Florida while some gun-toting vigilante might decide to drive up to me, hassle me, get into a scuffle with me, and then shoot me, claiming self-defense.

Just out of curiosity… since you can just murder people on suspicion, can I kill someone who asks me what I’m doing, out of fear they’ll Zimmerman me?