It may be the case that George Zimmerman now sees Florida's Stand Your Ground law as a sort of double-edged petard:
His brother said the former neighborhood watch volunteer was still processing the reality that he wouldn’t serve prison time for the killing, which Zimmerman, 29, has maintained was an act of self-defense. A jury found him not guilty of second-degree murder late Saturday night and declined to convict him on a lesser charge of manslaughter.
However, with many critics angry over his acquittal, his freedom may be limited. “He’s going to be looking over his shoulder the rest of his life,” Robert Zimmerman Jr. said during an interview on CNN.Somebody should have thought about that before, as Johnny Cash once described it, he shot a man in Sanford just to watch him die.
It's a counter-intuitive outcome, though: when you "stand your ground" it comes to pass that your "freedom may be limited." Maybe even as much as Trayvon Martin's.
Update: now, according to a musician's son, there's evidently stand your ground, freedom-of-expression style:
Lester [Chambers] was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated ‘People Get Ready’ to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.Tick tock Tick KOO-koo!
yeah-- maybe someone exercising their own 2nd amendment "rights" will mistake that fat, lumbering moron for a viscous, armed racist and take him down to "protect themselves".
ReplyDeleteMore likely future for George is that some small community of simpletons will make him their sheriff and he'll one day shoot himself accidentally during a 4th of July parade.
Today's right-wing Everymen could do worse than to briefly reflect on the meaning of the red-letter statements in Matthew 26:52 of their King James Bibles. Whether he was real or invented, he had some pretty good "wise sayings." The title of my post was meant to suggest that Mr. Zimmerman, a self-described "Hispanic," could find himself in certain precincts of this nation where "his kind," too, are profiled for recreation purposes.
DeletePerhaps a gestaltic miasma is spreading throughout the collective consciousness of U.S. society?
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_Doctrine
It started as a preventive war approach to international diplomacy... (as defined some which/way/how, and sure to warm relations with simply everyone)...and now the policy logic has arrived at the neighborhood watch level. Peachy.
Invent your own illustrative examples, such as: the Walmart greeter acts surly so it's best to preventively stand your ground and pop him in the nose before he pulls out a Glock or Barretta.
Exercise for the reader: if this policy is applied uniformly by everyone how can total chaos and carnage NOT ensue? Will everyone's "better angels" flee in abject terror? If forced to swarm like grasshoppers, will they become a scurge of locust demons devouring all psychic good in their path?
Submitted for your approval,
Rod
Yes, it's hard to imagine how this exciting new social model of mutually assured paranoid violence can persist indefinitely. I'll predict that these laws will be rolled back not through the activity of anyone's better angels, but by corporations that begin to discover that states where everyone has a license to kill aren't good places to set up shop. At some point we will see True Americans standing their ground with the HR manager for the local Walmart or foremen at the Caterpillar plant.
DeleteHmmm. AZ's anti-Latino laws? That's a stretch to assume George Zimmerman would ever be affected? His "identification" with his hispanic mother was nothing more than a superficial attempt to deflect that he's a white racist. His behavior (self-proclaimed watchman) is much closer linked to his father's German heritage. Not to sully either nationality with this jerk. Ultimately he's a big pussy, so most closely related to Ted Nugent and Rick Perry.
ReplyDeletebtw-- isn't a petard a bomb?
Yes, a petard is not a sword. That was the intended point of the little wordplay I tried to engineer. Guess it wasn't very funny.
Delete