Protests, riots, and violence are now the legacy of Trayvon Martin and the attention his family got for his case following his death around a year ago.
I have a problem with this…and it has nothing to do with race, racism, or race relations in America.: Truth be told, all of the angst over this case just doesn’t add up.
1. Trayvon Martin was no child.
Trayvon Martin may have been a minor, but he was no child. He was bigger and stronger than George Zimmerman. He was 6’2″ and played football. George Zimmerman may have taken some flak for his MMA training, but evidence (not allowed in court, of course) showed that Martin was involved in MMA-style fights on a semi-regular basis. Trayvon also had a not-insignificant (though also not allowed in court) drug habit. Besides his now-well-known marijuana use, he may have had a codene habit, as well. And there were other considerations of a criminal nature, that we’ll get into in a moment.
2. All of the physical evidence agreed with George Zimmerman’s account.
This is why the authorities didn’t initially charge George Zimmerman: He gave multiple statements to police – which, under Miranda, he was under no obligation to give – and while there were minor discrepancies (which is common when someone isn’t lying about a high-stress situation), the physical evidence backed him up. Even though the mob, egged on by the race-baiters, demanded that Zimmerman be charged, Florida authorities didn’t actually have sufficient evidence to file criminal charges at any time. The normal process was circumvented once the case was politicized, and that is how America was treated to the show-trial that ultimately ended in a Not Guilty verdict.
3. The Justice Department has already conducted a Civil Rights investigation.
At some point between the fraudulent filing of criminal charges and the trial, the FBI conducted an in-depth Civil Rights investigation into George Zimmerman with the specific goal of finding out whether he went after Trayvon Martin because of his race. They looked into Zimmerman’s life, interviewed his friends and family, and came up with…….precisely nothing. This is the huge irony behind the race pimp’s (and the Attorney General’s) push to investigate Zimmerman for Civil Rights violations. The investigation has already taken place, and the results were clear: Zimmerman was cleared. The only way a new Civil Rights investigation will come up with a different result is if political concerns are allowed to interfere with the investigation, and the ever-political Eric Holder puts his devotion to the left-wing mob ahead of his duties to uphold the Constitution and the law.
4. Trayvon Martin should have been in jail.
One of the most recent revelations about Trayvon Martin is that he wouldn’t have even been in Sanford, Florida, had it not been for a ridiculous new policy implemented by Miami-Dade police. You see, Trayvon Martin didn’t live in Sanford. He lived in the Miami area, but he was in Sanford because he had been suspended from his school. Authories in Miami-Dade county, in an effort to “reduce” the crime rate in area high schools, had instituted a new policy: instead of reporting some criminal acts as crimes, they would be reported as disciplinary incidents.: It was a shell-game: the reported crime: rate dropped around 60%, but that didn’t mean that there were fewer actual crimes. Trayvon Martin was caught at school with stolen goods and burglary tools – something which previously would have been classified as a criminal act – but because the Miami-Dade police wished to artificially reduce the crime rate, Martin was suspended instead of being arrested. Had he been in custody, as he should have been, he never would have been in Sanford to be confronted by George Zimmerman.
5. George Zimmerman fired his gun in self-defense.
One of the arguments made over and over again has been that, since he was being followed that night, Trayvon Martin had the right to defend himself.: Of course, according to accounts, Martin threw the first punch, but every time I hear this argument, I wonder how far Martin’s right to self-defense extended.: After all, Zimmerman hadn’t pulled a gun on him, and if Zimmerman’s statement to police is to be believed, he had actually turned to head back to his vehicle when Martin confronted him.: If Martin felt he was being pursued by Zimmerman, why didn’t he seek assistance from the neighbor who ran out, saw Martin on top of Zimmerman, and yelled at him?: Why didn’t he run away after knocking Zimmerman down?: And what was George Zimmerman supposed to do in that situation, just lay back and let Trayvon Martin beat him to death?: There was a story out of El Paso last year about a police officer who approached a young man who was the same age as Trayvon Martin – in this case, the young man was vandalizing the officer’s personal car.: When the officer, who was off-duty at the time, approached, the young man punched the officer in the face and used an MMA-style move to knock him over.: The officer’s head hit the pavement, rendering him unconscious.: The man continued to beat the officer until more police arrived.: The officer was rushed to the hospital, where he died nine days later.: That is the kind of situation George Zimmerman was facing that night.: That is why he fired his gun.
Do Your Research!
I came across an extremely interesting and insightful article the other day – in Slate, of all places – written by a man who I assume is a leftist only because he writes for Slate.: He stated in his column that while he was planning to write about what a horrible injustice the Zimmerman verdict was, and how horrible Zimmerman was for racially profiling Trayvon Martin, he hadn’t followed the case very closely, and wanted some details…so he sat down and did some research,only to find that all of his assumptions about the case had been built around misinformation.: The news media has only given out part of the story, and that fact, as amplified by so many on the Left who seem to see everything in terms of race, is what has so many people across the nation so fired up about what truly was a case of two people making poor decisions, resulting in a young man’s death.
This is how America has gotten so screwed up on race relations: race-hustlers like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are, for some unknown reason, still seen as trusted sources on issues of race.: The Obama administration, including and especially President Obama himself, and his Attorney General, Eric Holder, are all too willing widen America’s racial divide through irresponsible statements and biased investigations.: If we truly want to move past race in America, then we all need to move past race, and stop assuming that every time people from two different races interact, racism is involved.: How about stopping all of this judging people by the color of their skin, and start judging people by the content of their character?: Those words are so lauded by so many in our nation, yet that seems to be the one thing we haven’t tried!