#157

George Zimmerman's Case
created 16 July 2013

"He was... soft, just physically soft. He was an overweight, large man - and a very pleasant, nice man - but physically soft", testified the guy who futilely tried to train George Zimmerman in hand-to-hand combat. I've met people like this, one of whom studied boxing for years, sparred with me in college, but was "just physically soft". A girl whom I also sparred with was a more ballsy fighter.

Does a Homer Simpson, who apparently knew of people in his area being victimized have a right to fight back,the best way he can, with a weapon. I say yes, even though I was once a 17-year-old punk kid who beat on an older (middle-aged) guy for telling me "You ought to be in school!" Had the guy I beat on shot me, a deep-thinking person should've still thought of my death as a tragedy, as my brain (i.e. the frontal cortex, the part that helps regulate impulses etc.) was not fully developed. I was not mature enough in my mind to be held fatally accountable for impulsive, violent actions. Yet, particularly if the guy believed his life was in danger, a fair-thinking person couldn't condemn that guy for shooting me in order to protect himself.

When "bad" things happen, we want to find a culprit, in part so can figure out how to avoid a repeat of the "bad" thing. Here, in Mr. Zimmerman's case, some people who are (justifiably or unjustifiably) predisposed - prejudiced - to blame a "bad" thing on anti-Black racism (or who have been taught that every "bad" thing that happens to a Black person is not the fault of the Black person) are simply not fair to Mr. Zimmerman, refusing to consider his perspective + his rights as a human.

Black guys in the cells around me angrily said Mr. Zimmerman should've got the death penalty, which I found strange, given that they are career criminals who also claim to hate the system and view it (correctly!) as unjust. There was ZERO evidence that Zimmerman was the physical aggressor; a witness saw Trayvon Martin on top of Zimmerman, pounding away on Zimmerman. When a police investigator, bluffing Zimmerman, seeing if Zimmerman was lying, told Zimmerman, a day after the shooting, that the incident had been recorded on a cellphone camera, Zimmerman replied, "Thank God. I was hoping somebody would videotape it." Those are not the words of somebody who was lying to the cops about what happened.

But when the likes of that hood-rat Al Sharpton get on the airwaves + start pumping their jaws, the facts become irrelevant, such as the fact that Trayvon Martin's dad (according to BOTH police investigators) originally told the police it wasn't his son screaming in the background of a recorded 911 call,then at trial dramatically claimed "...I was listening to my son's last cry for help. I was listening to his life being taken..." I suspect that those who handled Mr. Martin helped refresh his memory in a way that better served their agendas, even though blaming Zimmerman rather than keeping it real does nothing to remedy and actually thwarts the remedying of the problem of young, poorly supervised Black men DESTROYING THEMSELVES + others by living out a stereotype - wild, drug using, ill-mannered, violent, irresponsible, etc. - designed (not for them, but to entertain others!) by Hollywood, rappers etc.

According to my neighbor (he had a T.V., I didn't/don't), Zimmerman does appear to be Hispanic, rather than an Archie Bunker ran amuck. Of course a Hispanic can still hate Blacks; even Blacks can hate Blacks (I knew a Black girl, the one I sparred with in college, who had contempt for Black men, all of whom were living out that stereotype...) At worst, Zimmerman was not a racist, but hated "young punks" of the type who preyed on his neighborhood. There are young white guys - we call 'em "wiggers" or "wangstas" - who would surely have caught Z's eye and could just as easily be in Trayvon's coffin.

Sure, as one 3/4 White + 1/4 Black "Black" kid next to me said (after calling me a "bitch", saying "I hate you" etc., in response to me expressing thoughts akin to those herein, in rebuttal of some Black prisoners who called for Z's lynching in response to the verdict), I'd FEEL differently if it was a young white man who'd got shot by a Black man just for being in the wrong neighborhood... but wait; that happens quite frequently to law-abiding whites who wind up in the 'hood; and there's never an outcry.

And the same guys wishing ill on Zimmerman have boasted to me about their predations on white people, in efforts to belittle whites + me.

Rational thoughts?

Nate