How’s that law thing working out for you? With the reality show of the Zimmerman trial winding down, (we’ll have to endure a few more episodes featuring loops of eye-witness videos of the protests and violence that will surge and dissipate over the next week or so), the frivolous debate, pitting justice against lawyering, will shuffle back into hibernation until the next high profile atrocity. One need not be Solomon-like to find fault with a system that over and over again declares that it’s okay to Ojay your wife, Casey Anthony your daughter, Wall St. the global economy, (not necessarily a fair comparison as there have been no charges or trial in the Wall St. deal), and now Zimmerman a Skittle-toting teen.
I admit that the bigger picture is mind-numbingly complex; people cheat and steal and batter one another, exacerbated by drugs and alcohol and a sadly innate, Darwinian bent on bullying those less fit. But, as we continue to disproportionately demonize crimes of low impact consequence against safety and society, imprisoning millions of pot-smoking, petty-thieving, young, poor, (mostly black), young kids, we shamefully allow glib, manipulative defensive attorneys, (“If the gloves don’t fit…”), to play the system, adding to our moral decay.
No one alive, (except George Zimmerman), knows what happened in those last minutes of Trayvon Martin’s life, but everyone knows this:
• George Zimmerman was not being threatened while sitting in his car observing whatever he considered Trayvon’s intentions to be.
• George Zimmerman ‘chose’ to leave his car in pursuit, with an unauthorized, loaded weapon, rather than to simply call in his suspicions to real law enforcement, (his actual job).
• Trayvon Martin was shot dead by a gun-slinging moron playing cowboys and Indians…and that’s murder in some degree.
Wayne LaPierre would guffaw at the notion that the gun deserves any culpability in this tragedy, but the availability of the gun to an over-zealous boob, like the deadly automobile under the guidance of an alcohol or drug impaired driver, or the algorithm in the greedy, manipulative hands of a super caffeinated derivatives trader are the tools of our social undoing. It’s a disturbing fact that time after time, we get the verdicts against gun violence wrong; irrationally plead down charges against lethal automobile crime; and can’t find our way through the smoky maze manipulating our economy to even charge that blatant criminal behavior.
Guilty! (I just wanted to see what it sounded like).