Stand Your Ground, Post-Trayvon Martin America, You're Not Racist Jul 21st 2013, 08:00
(Photo credit: david_shankbone)
After my youngest brother died at the age of 19 from what started as a rare childhood cancer, my mother never recovered. She bore her grief until the day she died a decade later, even castigating us over moments of merrymaking and laughter years later. So I can sense from this experience how Trayvon Martin's mother must grieve over her son's tragic death.
But that just makes all those exploiting Martin's death to sow social discord and even violence for political gain all the uglier. Martin's life and death would be honored by promotion of racial harmony and good will. Those who want to say "this is for Trayvon," should be delivering human kindness and understanding that would teach the principled non-violence that Martin Luther King taught, which empowered the civil rights movement from the moral high ground. But that won't serve what the ruling establishment today sees as its political interests.
What the ruling class now sees as its political advantage is the narrative that America is a racist society. That would maximize white guilt and black resentment, both expected to maximize the vote for more government power to fundamentally transform America. So the Democrat Party controlled news media doctored transcripts, buried exculpatory evidence as to Zimmerman's guilt, maximized sympathetic presentations of Martin and his conduct, and manipulated and misled the American people.
This party line is logically at war with the standard of proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Evidence at the trial indicated that Zimmerman was only doing what any neighborhood watch would do, which is follow and observe, and report to the police what is happening. Zimmerman rightly did not recognize Trayvon, walking in the rain and peering into windows, as a resident of the gated community, which had been victimized by repeated recent robberies. So as the neighborhood watchman, it was perfectly logical for Zimmerman to follow and observe. This is not even "racial profiling," as the same would and should apply to anyone in the same position as Trayvon, regardless of race.
When the dispatcher asked Zimmerman what Martin's race was, Zimmerman's answer indicated he wasn't even sure. Witness testimony, the physical evidence of Zimmerman's injuries, and even Martin's physical condition, down to the coroner's report of the worn knuckles on his hands, all supported Zimmerman's consistent report of what happened from his very first answers to police questioning.
That report was that Trayvon surprised the following Zimmerman with a punch to the face that broke his nose and knocked him down. Trayvon then seated himself on top of Zimmerman, and began punching him martial arts, pound and ground, style, and bashing his head against the sidewalk. Zimmerman began yelling for help. Only when Trayvon noticed Zimmerman's gun, and a struggle ensued over it, did Zimmerman grab the gun and shoot Martin.
The logical fallacy behind all the critics of the jury verdict is that the prosecution never remotely proved beyond a reasonable doubt that this legitimate self-defense scenario was not true. Quite to the contrary, it was the interpretation of the facts most consistent with all of the evidence. Consequently, the jury had no choice under the law except to find Zimmerman not guilty.
But "progressive" callers to the Chris Plante radio show in Washington, DC in the past week or so seemed to me to be insisting on a new interpretation of the law that if a white man follows a black man walking around the neighborhood, to observe what he is doing, the black man has the right to beat the white man to death. What would you expect him to do, some callers even asked. If the white man resists, then he must be held criminally liable for any harm that results.
These callers, expressing a common argument among the ruling Left, base their view on the notion that by getting out of his car to follow Martin, Zimmerman started the fight, and self-defense is not legally available to anyone who starts the fight. But Zimmerman following and observing Martin, while on the phone reporting to the police, is not what the law means by starting the fight, or "initiating the confrontation." Starting the fight is punching someone in the face, as evidence indicated Martin did to Zimmerman, without contradiction. Following and observing, and reporting to the police, is standard neighborhood watch procedure, highly favored by Left to Right, in recent decades. The "progressive" perspective on Martin/Zimmerman would suddenly criminalize standard neighborhood watches, legally depriving all those participating of their right to self-defense.
A similar view was expressed by Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson in his commentary this week. Robinson opined, "To me, and to many who watched the trial, the fact that Zimmerman recklessly initiated the tragic encounter was enough to establish, at a minimum, guilt of manslaughter." But there was no evidence at all that Zimmerman did anything that the law would recognize as starting the fight, or initiating the confrontation.
To the contrary, Rachel Jeantel spilled the beans post trial on a nationally televised interview with CNN's Piers Morgan. Martin was on the phone with Jeantel in the minutes leading up to the confrontation with Zimmerman. Jeantel's recounting of her conversation with Martin just further confirmed Zimmerman's narrative that it was Martin who started the fight with Zimmerman. Indeed, Trayvon's girlfriend Jeantel seemed to encourage Martin to go after the "crazy ass cracker."
But Robinson continued in his column, "The assumption underlying the approach [of the police] to the case was that Zimmerman had the right to self-defense but Martin – young, male, black – did not. The assumption was that Zimmerman would fear for his life in a hand-to-hand struggle but Martin – young, black, male – would not." But so typical of Robinson's writing, this could not be more silly.
Just what "self-defense" would have been appropriate and necessary for Martin against Zimmerman following and observing him, and reporting to the police? Beating him to death? And if Zimmerman had knocked down Martin with a surprise punch, and got on top of him punching him pound and ground style, no one would deny that Travyon had the right to self-defense.
But Robinson's discussion was sophisticated compared to the on air reporting of Al Sharpton of MSNBC. Sharpton reported repeatedly that the jury verdict was "an atrocity" reminiscent of the brutal murder of the entirely innocent, 14 year old, Emitt Till during the start of the postwar Civil Rights struggles in the 1950s. According to Sharpton's on air account, Trayvon was walking home unarmed after going to the store to buy skittles and Ice Tea, and Zimmerman just hunted him down, and shot him dead in cold blood.
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