Justice and Security: Neighborhood Watch Captain Attacks, Kills Unarmed Teenager

Discussion in 'Ethics, Morality, & Justice' started by Tiassa, Mar 13, 2012.

Page 32 of 32
  1. Balerion

    Balerion Banned Banned

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    So it's not just that George Zimmerman is a murdering scumbag, but the whole Zimmerman tribe are scum? Good to know.
     
    Balerion, Jun 13, 2012
    #621

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  3. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Money is a generic commodity. If they paid off their credit card balances then they could use those cards to pay their legal fees. Lawyers take plastic like everybody else.

    Of course it would have been wiser to give the money directly to the lawyers, to avoid having to answer questions like this one.
    Judging from the actions of George Z alone, the average IQ of that family can't be above 100. Factoring in the wife's idiocy pushes it down into the 80s.
    They are clearly deficient in many of the skills and principles we're supposed to learn in late adolescence and early adulthood, such as anger management, deferred gratification, and living in harmony and cooperation with strangers in order to keep civilization running smoothly. He behaves like he's about 14, and his wife appears to be a good match for him.

    This is a painful illustration of why our gun laws are far too lenient. No one like George Zimmerman should be allowed to come within ten feet of one. If there's any good that might come out of this tragedy, it's the hope that our population will finally wake up and end the stranglehold that the NRA has on Congress. If some clever congressman drafts the bill and titles it "the Trayvon Martin Act," it will be a shoo-in. Who would dare vote against it?
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jun 13, 2012
    #622

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  5. quadraphonics

    quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Every Republican currently in the House would be guaranteed to vote against that, just on the name alone. The fact that it would be a gun control bill would make it a two-fer. The Senate is almost as bad.

    Also, many Democrats in conservative-leaning districts would be guaranteed votes.
     
    quadraphonics, Jun 13, 2012
    #623

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  7. Tiassa

    Tiassa Let us not launch the boat ... Valued Senior Member

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    Something About God (As if things weren't strange enough)

    Something About God

    Don't ask me to read the omens on this one.

    Judd Legum explains:

    Hannity asked Zimmerman if he regretted getting out of his car to follow Trayvon, carrying a gun, or anything at all about the night he killed Trayvon Martin. Zimmerman said he regretted nothing because he believed "it was all God's plan." He also said there isn’t anything he would do differently in retrospect.​

    I don't know. It sounds to me like Zimmerman is coming to terms with the fact that he's guilty of murder, and looking to God for justification. But, no, I don't know.
    ____________________

    Notes:

    Legum, Judd. "George Zimmerman Says He Wouldn’t Do Anything Differently: 'It Was God's Plan' For Me To Kill Trayvon Martin". ThinkProgress. July 18, 2012. ThinkProgress.org. July 19, 2012. http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/07/18/545791/george-zimmerman-says-he-regrets-nothing/
     
    Tiassa, Jul 20, 2012
    #624
  8. Bells

    Bells Staff Member

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    Michael W. Waters wrote an interesting piece on this. Well worth the read.


    It can be surmised then that in Zimmerman's thinking, the events of February 26th, wherein he followed Trayvon Martin, disobeyed dispatcher's instructions not to pursue Trayvon, and then fatally shot Trayvon was the providential handiwork of God preordained before the commencement of time itself.

    This makes total sense to me.

    Zimmerman's theological argument for killing Trayvon Martin makes total sense to me in that I actually believe that Zimmerman has convinced himself of what he has verbally stated -- that this is God's plan. While such an argument might seem outrageous to many, the argument itself boasts deep and extensive roots anchored in the blood-stained soil of the Western World's racial history. God has often been implicated as the impetus behind the rape, pillage, mutilation, and death of others.

    __________________________

    God-sponsored racism is an old-story, a tactic that has been leveraged for years to justify inhumane and diabolical practices against those who have been deemed less than human.
    ​
     
    Bells, Jul 24, 2012
    #625
  9. Balerion

    Balerion Banned Banned

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    8,596

    While true that God has been and still is a motivator for violence, I don't see how it really applies here. Whether or not Zimmerman actually believes that the events of that night are part of some greater celestial plot, the comment was almost certainly for public relations purposes, and probably not even his idea. Besides, I can't see where the connection is between killing black teenagers and his faith, if he has any.
     
    Balerion, Jul 24, 2012
    #626
  10. Bells

    Bells Staff Member

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    Bingo..

    Consider Hannity's audience..
     
    Bells, Jul 24, 2012
    #627
  11. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    Zimmerman is possibly the most-studied American of 2012. By now everyone who's ever known him has been interviewed. The consensus is emerging that he truly is not a racist. This is believable, considering that his mother is Latina (Peruvian) and that would make his own family the target of racism in half the country. Especially in Florida, with its gigantic Cuban-American population.

    Nonetheless, the "hoodie" that Martin was wearing is (as far as I can tell) a sartorial trademark of Afro-American youth. Zimmerman seems to have been put off by it, making the assumption that anyone wearing a hoodie on a dark street must be up to no good. So there's some institutionalized racism in there.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Jul 24, 2012
    #628
  12. joepistole

    joepistole Deacon Blues Valued Senior Member

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    I think Zimmerman was playing to his audience and financial backers - the right wing Fox News audience. It is a common theme we see repeated time and time again on Fox News (e.g. Bachmann).
     
    joepistole, Jul 24, 2012
    #629
  13. GeoffP

    GeoffP Caput gerat lupinum Valued Senior Member

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    Well, one can be racist against other races without reference to one's own race. There's a lot of mutual dislike between blacks and Latinos in some LA neighborhoods, among other groups. It's not white vs. everyone else, so to speak.
     
    GeoffP, Jul 24, 2012
    #630
  14. quadraphonics

    quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

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    Since when is that incompatible with being a racist yourself? It's not like anyone is accusing him of being racist against Latinos or something. Some of the most (anti-black) racist people I've ever encountered have been minorities who are themselves routine victims of racism. I've known a ton of Latino people who are openly, virulently racist against blacks, and particularly black men.

    Exactly.

    Like much of the racism discourse in our country, I get the idea that this topic has become stilted. I.e., because Zimmerman isn't some Klan type with a poster of Hitler on his wall and a bunch of White Power tattoos, he's supposed to be "not a racist." But that bogeyman canard is just that - almost all racism doesn't work that way. It's not about ideological hate campaigns, but much more subtle questions of privilege, power, assumption and internalized roles.

    And the point has always been as much that our society as a whole is racist, rather than Zimmerman personally. This dude can shoot a black kid to death for nothing at all, not get arrested until there's a national outcry, and then go on FOX News and say "aw shucks, that scary black kids jumped me out of nowhere and I had no choice! He was going for my gun!" and then people go around discussing how he's "not racist, really."

    Meanwhile, tons of evidence mounts that he is an experienced liar and manipulator. He lied about his passports and finances to get a better bail deal. He's accused of sexual assault, and lieing to cover that up. His convenient story is just that - and the only other eyewitness is dead. He's shed his shaven-head thug look and now appears in a suit and tie - his image is clearly being stage-managed by his lawyers and others, and the right-wing media is clearly complicit in that. He's a cause celebre with them, and they are invested in the narrative that he's an upstanding citizen (never mind his arrest history) protecting his neighborhood, and that Martin was a violent thug who attacked him with no real provocation.
     
    quadraphonics, Jul 24, 2012
    #631
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