Blog: Response To Trayvon Martin Shows Country's Ugly Scars
DETROIT -- Trayvon Martin was a 17-year-old child. He was visiting his father's house and stepped outside for a walk to a convenience store and to talk to his equally young girlfriend on the phone. He was armed with nothing more lethal than a bag of candy and a can of Arizona tea priced nationally at a dollar. In this transaction someone fired a cannon into his chest, erasing everything he ever was and rendering everything he ever was going to be theoretical. He was innocent of any crime.
These are the only facts that matter. But luckily this country cannot agree on anything, ever, for any reason. There has to be the "conservative opinion" and the "liberal opinon," and that chasm has to be wide and barb wired whenever anything is said. It's a pathetic commentary on what this country has become.
In this case, the conservative opinion needs to be spit on. Why did there need to be ANY contrarian hemming and hawing? Some pigs have even decided to question the "level of coverage" it has received or wondering aloud why the media is "painting this as a tragedy". Does the fact that an unarmed high schooler was gunned down in his father's neighborhood not qualify as tragic to you? This case was over for me when I found out Trayvon didn't have a gun.
Why must this happen? Is it really necessary to lift our collective shirts up and reveal the scars of every single time? What cause was Trayvon representing? Are there really people in this discussion who are talking about people wearing hooded sweatshirts? How is this happening? How does the "Stand your ground" law apply when Trayvon did not have a weapon of any kind?!
It disgusts me to no end that some in this country have anointed themselves as professional contrarians on EVERYTHING. Rather than noting that an armed person shot an unarmed person, we now need devolve into disgusting shouting matches, where people lend their brains to radio talk show hosts and repeat their words zombie-like. They're channeling thoughts without stopping themselves to realize that everything they are saying is epically stupid. I understand that calling opinions stupid is uncivilized. I don't care.
The people who should be called on the carpet and yelled at are those who obfuscate this issue. There have been buckets of ink spilled and wagons of words whipped up to describe this emerging case, but all are unnecessary except one: Trayvon was unarmed. Anything Trayvon did up until that day is irrelevant and that goes for Zimmerman, too. When he found out that he shot an unarmed child he became a murderer. There is no reason to shoot someone unless they have a gun or a knife.
There are also COMPLTELY undeniable racial aspects to this case. The casualness of how the police acted in the wake of the murder is abhorrent. The fact that his father was not called is a tragedy. The fact that apparently the police chief overruled the lead investigator on the case is inexcusable.
But we aren't done. We haven't finished kicking this completely innocent victim yet. This society has devolved into partisan rancor where no consensus is possible on anything that is ever discussed regardless of the subject. We can't even agree that Bin Laden's death was a good thing anymore. We have to take its weight politically. I long for middle ground and negotiation, it used to be there. Even the Supreme Court, the last bastion of policy balls and strikes has been replaced by talk show hopefuls who sell books.
Civility is gone and all that is left is those who simply want to destroy everything. The same people who decry movies and video games for desensitizing fake violence call for patience and understanding when someone chases someone down and blows a hole in their chest. I wonder why we can't form consensus and negotiate, then I turn on my TV and hear people screaming. I am losing hope. We have people in this world that actually released Trayvon's school discipline record. They did that when the undeniable heartsink of a mother and father is zoomed in on and questioned for its validity. I don't care if you are white or black. It would hurt if your walking talking flesh and blood was murdered while unarmed on a street outside your house.
I guess my hope for civility is as dead as the unarmed 17-year-old in Florida.
