@Frank Apisa,
Quote:
You are absolutely CLUELESS, Bill!
No, he's not clueless.
He's intentionally presenting a deliberately distorted version of what led to the shooting, and a deliberately distorted version of the two people involved, because he's not really interested in understanding what happened that night as much as he is in promoting pro-gun lobby/NRA propaganda.
He's defending his own racially biased viewpoints, his own need to carry a gun, which, of course, is bolstered by the thought of all these "black hoodlums" who might attack him, riot in the streets, invade his home, etc. and he's defending the flawed self-defense laws that encourage gun use and give legal cover even when shooting deaths were unnecessary and could have been prevented.
From his perch as a white man, he claims not to see the sort of covert racism and racial stereotyping that goes on all the time--particularly in our criminal justice system--and that affects and impacts the lives of black people all the time. All those black people, now marching and demonstrating to express their anger and dissatisfaction, have just been duped by race-baiting leaders, in BillRM's view--in other words, he sees the outrage of the black community as without legitimacy or merit--even when its given credence by the President of the United States, based on his own experiences as a young black male. And, naturally, he's not going to admit that racism in any way affects his perceptions or attitudes, even when it clearly does.
Racial fears help to stoke gun sales and the power of the NRA, the more people that carry guns, the more justified he feels in packing his "man card", and he promotes gun-carrying --as long as the people carrying those guns aren't law-abiding black men, or American Muslims, or women defending themselves from date/acquaintance rape, because he doesn't want to see those groups similarly "empowered". He can't even admit that a black male minor has the right to defend himself with a punch to the nose, after an armed stranger has stalked and confronted him in the dark, so he's not going to advocate that similarly menaced black males, a few years older, should be packing heat for their own self-protection. As long as black men use guns to kill each other, that's not a problem for him, and he's not going to support any gun-control measures that will stem the tide of guns, purchased by straw and shadow buyers, that flood into the inner cities. Why should anyone even be concerned about Trayvon Martin, according to BillRM, when young black men get killed all the time. He's already pronounced Martin another "hoodlum"--with "black" carefully left as the unspoken word--so, just add him to the body count, and stop making all this fuss--he got what he deserved.
Notice how BillRM crafts a portrait of Trayvon Martin based solely on innuendo, distortion, and exaggeration, with nothing substantial to back up any allegation that this teen was violent or criminal, or that he was anything other than a high school kid, simply returning from a trip to the store while yakking on his cell phone, when Zimmerman profiled, and followed, and frightened him, and disrupted his sense of safety.
Martin was not looking to commit a crime, or to assault anyone that night, he was going home to watch a basketball game. And nothing factual disputes that view. Had George Zimmerman not stalked him that night, in disregard of the rules of a Neighborhood Watch, because Zimmerman couldn't control his personal obsessions, or his impulses, Trayvon Martin would have made it safely home. Zimmerman profiled and stalked an innocent kid, and, in doing that, his errors in judgment led to a tragic needless death.
Notice how BillRM fails to address George Zimmerman's documented background of run-ins with the law, over aggressive offenses, his documented history of lying, even to his own lawyer and the court, as well as his over-zealous vigilance about "suspicious" black males in his housing complex, clearly revealed in the last several calls he had made to the police before the night he spotted Trayvon Martin.
Factual evidence about Zimmerman's character, and background, and questionable stability, are totally ignored by BillRM in order to promote a fictional narrative about Zimmerman's victim. How else can BillRM explain away how an unarmed minor, engaged in no wrong doing, gets shot and killed while walking home, yet Zimmerman is blameless, unless he ignores all that factual information about Zimmerman, as well as the fact that Zimmerman was menacing that minor by stalking him. BillRM does it by transforming Martin into some kind of lunatic, who is so easily unhinged, he savagely "attacks" and tries to kill someone for merely "annoying" him on a public street. It's interesting fiction, even if it doesn't jive with anything known about Martin, whose English teacher at his high school described him as "majoring in cheerfulness" and who, unlike Zimmerman, had no documented past incidents of violence.
Nor is there any mention, by BillRM, of the facts that Zimmerman was a trained fighter, and that the photos taken by the police the night of the shooting reveal he had only very minor injuries, not even requiring Band-Aids, let alone further medical treatment, which should certainly question the need for lethal force in response to a punch in the nose from an unarmed person--a punch which apparently caused little damage beyond a brief nosebleed. BillRM won't acknowledge any questions about Zimmerman's credibility, or judgment, or impulse control, questions even the jurors had, and have voiced, because the scenario of an "innocent" Zimmerman "attacked" by a "hoodlum" feeds into the fears the NRA thrives on, and BillRM is not about to let any nasty facts interfere with the spreading of propaganda to help support that view.
This isn't BillRM being "clueless", it's propaganda--it's designed to obscure very real, and troubling, questions about Zimmerman's credibility, judgment, emotional stability, and his need to use lethal force that night--because it's in the interests of the gun lobby/NRA to obscure all that, and BillRM is a loyal soldier in defending those interests. He defends Zimmerman because he has previously said, "We are all Zimmerman." Really? I hope not.
Whether or not one gives Zimmerman the benefit of the doubt, regarding self-defense, the troubling questions about him, and about his actions that night, still remain--and both jurors who have spoken out have raised such questions, and both of them displayed emotional distress about the verdict they had to arrive at, given the way the Florida's self-defense laws are written--one juror has said the laws should be changed, and the other has said he has gotten away with murder. But BillRM will continue to insist this jury found Zimmerman "innocent" when that appears to be far from the truth.
He's not "clueless"--he's happily, and deliberately, slandering the character and memory of an innocent black high school kid, on the basis of his own racial profiling, in order to defend a gun-toting vigilante, with a documented history of aggressive behaviors, as well as a history of lying and concealment in legal matters, because it's all about supporting a
fellow gun-owner, and spouting the NRA party-line. He's very consciously promoting propaganda and bias.
