It was the devious-cruising Rachel, that in her retracing search after her missing children, only found another orphan
Call it Outrage on Demand. I wrote a while back about how the emotions and passions of American public remind me of a marionette made to dance; made to laugh, cry, rage and mourn as strings are pulled by the various puppeteers, corporate, religious and political. Some seemed to agree, but I'm not sure that many will admit to being just another wooden character in the great Punch and Judy show of America.
I used to blame Republicans for acting like dogs being sicced on selected targets, inflamed by slanted accounts of various incidents real or fabricated, to serve the political objectives of off-stage players. Of late I think it describes us all: addicted to outrage, unable to advocate a cause without an outrage, and I'm increasingly alienated by the increasingly transparent performances of Oz-like string pullers and drum beaters who in turn are increasingly desperate and increasingly careless.
It's easy to blame the media for the endless series of outrages they trump up and package to command our obsessive attention, but we who watch, we who bark like dogs when told to, and demand that something be done or undone or punished or set free as the voices behind various curtains direct -- we who are addicted to following those voices because it makes us feel important, intelligent, worthy, are really to blame for the failure of enlightenment, the fracking of progress and the increasing subjugation of the people.
It used to be easy for me to identify with the 'Left' when the right was openly advocating oppression, segregation, free speech and the like. I became a 'lefty' when you could have your life ruined for being suspected or falsely accused of private political opinions, when conservatives could tell you where you could live, who you could marry, what you could do on Sunday, what you could and couldn't read, when they could restrict what you could work at, how much you could be paid, what public and private facilities you could use based on stereotype and prejudice and religious belief and superstition.
It was easy to loath the party who supported Nixon, promoted him, lied for him and maintained ludicrous fictions about his words for decades after he skulked out of office rather than be removed. It's been easy to feel disgust at their attempts to unseat Clinton and it's still easy to laugh at the claims of Communism, the promises that his tax policies would bankrupt us and his 'spending' was ruinous. The stench of Republican hypocrisy was never more apparent than when they subsequently supported the ruinous spending, the reckless deregulation under Bush II. The abandonment of government responsibility and massive escalation of peremptory executive power all of which actually was ruinous. The Party that has resumed trashing the Executive with unsupported theory, laughable fictions, vague, substance-free objections is no more worthy of respect or support than it has been in half a century, but is that enough to make me a Democrat any more?
Is it enough to distract me from the troubling observation that the Democrats have also been the party that supports, perhaps eagerly supports silly regulations and prohibitions for their own sake, because 'our side' is touting it? Are we as doctrinaire and unwilling to temper enthusiasm for obeying idiocies from national speed limits to regulations on how big a paper cup you can drink from? Have we, and I'm still saying "we" for the moment, begun to paste together racial incidents from various events so that we can pretend it's still the 1960's when we had a clear mission? Are we so obsessed with safety and security that we can justify anything "as long as one life is saved?" Are we selling fear and ignoring fact, denying the abject failure of what we have sold as a panacea and refusing to change things that don't work or make things worse? After all, we're the party that signed off on that knife in the heart of liberty obscenity the Patriot Act, the party that seems to support the idea that unwarranted searches, universal surveillance, random investigation, hidden cameras, wiretaps and the reading of mail are a justifiable price for safety. Incarceration without charges, secret trials and all the trappings of totalitarianism all because "freedom isn't free."
The misrepresentation of the George Zimmerman case by desperate, old-guard Democrats like Al Sharpton, with his long record of inventing racial incidents apparently forgotten, may have been some sort of last straw for me. No I don't think the shooting was justified, but the case is black and white only in an ethnic sense. It has nothing to do with a law the overturning of which is the real objective. I want nothing to do with people who don't recognize that, who have no intention of reading the law or thinking about its implications to this case. I'm tired of people who steadfastly misrepresent facts and law if they conflict with doctrine, who see racism everywhere, crazed, machine gun toting murderers everwhere, like the John Birchers see Communism and the Christian Right sees the devil. I'm reminded of those who supported the horror in Vietnam because they missed WWII.
"Murder has now been legalized in half the states,”
says Ladd Everitt, spokesman for the Washington (D.C.)-based Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. Of course that's as wild and wooly and dishonest as the "abortion is murder" shibboleth. Are we no longer the party of liberation but the party of bans, controls and worse, the party of the same old fictions, the same old failed solutions, fanatically held? How does it compare to hyperbolic falsehoods we've been getting from the other side all these decades? Are we as sold on the idea that extremism in defense of virtue is no vice as Spiro the crook Agnew? Are middle of the road, pragmatic Democrats anywhere in sight?
The sordid events in Sanford do not mirror the murder of Medgar Evers or Dr. King or the civil rights workers in 1964 Mississippi. They have nothing to do with racism on the streets or in the courts. They do not represent a return to Jim Crow and if Democrats can't seem to live without an endless supply of convenient but inapposite outrages; if the Democrats can't find any way to promote progress toward freedom and justice for all without witch hunts and race baiting, lies and fabrications and misrepresentations, media circuses and fear mongering, then I'm an alien to both parties.
It was easy to appear to be on the side of the angels when we had the Commander Guy, the Old Ranger and Tricky Dick to be compared to, but after two consecutive presidential victories; after gaining some ground on the devil, it's time to ask ourselves if we haven't become, or at least come to more closely resemble what we've been fighting -- or have we been that way all along?
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ReplyDeleteThanks for confirming my case.
ReplyDeleteWhen liberals insist that everything is very simple, that every flintlock or BB gun owner is a crazed homicidal lunatic -- that every black person shot by a white person was a victim of rampant, bloodthirsty, institutionalized racism they are not liberals. Al Sharpton is not a liberal, nor are you.
ReplyDeleteWhen your arguments are a relentless repetition of broad stereotypes that must not ever be questioned and need not be substantiated, you are not a liberal.
Perhaps what we have here is a neurotic, fearful, and frightfully prejudiced person hiding behind a liberal facade?
Go ahead and reprint my comment if it supports your argument. I was just trying to avoid direct confrontation. I'm not okay with Zimmerman murdering Trayvon Martin. I decided it on my own from the first account I read, just like I decided that OJ was guilty from the first article in the L.A. Times. Sometimes the bare facts of the case are enough. I'm starting to get the point you were trying to make. But it is fairly rambling. Honestly, I never really checked in with Sharpton. The reaction from the black community was predictable perhaps, but in my opinion, entirely justified. Of course, murder hasn't been legalized. It will probably be a lot harder for the next guy to get off. But that's the emotion that people are feeling. I don't get why it pisses you off.
ReplyDeleteI do believe that the young woman who fired a warning shot in the house with her ex and got twenty years was on the receiving end of a far greater miscarriage of justice. Zimmerman's your one guilty party going free. Just what English jurisprudence is all about, right? And then the other side of the coin is some rather rotten luck for the poor unfortunate who goes to prison for not doing anything at all. Tant pis pour elle. I guess there wasn't enough reasonable doubt.
Shot rings in my ears
ReplyDeleteNine millimeter pistol
Why am I falling?
Sometimes the bare facts are enough, but not always and that's why we have trials with rules of evidence - unless we get around it by calling people enemy combatants, much to our shame.
Uh, yes, it was overly long, sorry, but this is complicated. I shall try to be succinct, but being terse takes time.
I think we do real disservice to the law and to justice by giving in to angry mobs demanding that laws be changed because of one dissatisfying outcome. Mobs are nearly always wrong, nearly always led by someone whose anger is tactical, nearly always misinformed or deluded. I prefer democracy, be it slow and clumsy. That's why I hate the Tea Party, that's why I hate Sharpton that's why I hate media manipulation of the news.
It's one thing to demand things of our representatives, but another thing to flirt with taking the law into your own hands in response to someone else taking the law into his hands. I seem to remember an old tale about someone being executed because of an angry mob demanding that a judge follow their wishes rather than the evidence. I think it never happened quite that way, but I think it's a powerful lesson.
It just bugs the hell out me when being a liberal starts to mean following an alternative organized opinion maker that is just another corporate entity with goals of its own. As I wrote recently, our emotions these days are orchestrated. We obsess, the press obsesses endlessly about one thing and ignores a dozen more important things. It's usually about ratings but sometimes it's also about some completely other agenda. When Reverend Al is involved, I think it's always about something else. For Robertson, everything bad that happens is about sin. For Sharpton everything is about racism. That's his sole stock in trade.
I think this case was inappropriately chosen to be a test case for a law that had nothing to do with the circumstances. No legal authority, not Zimmerman's defense or the prosecution said it had anything to do with anyone's right to stand his ground. Both parties had the right to be where they were. It's not necessary to assume race played any part at all.
There have been more troubling case that did involve real misinterpretations of self-defense cases yet we never hear of them. We should and would but that the media and the politicians can't make a buck on it.
I was thoroughly disgusted by the verdict. I was disgusted by the nasty and abusive defense lawyer. I think Zimmerman was irresponsible and reckless in his behavior. I think his aggressive behavior put him in a position where he thought his life was threatened and I think he panicked, as most of us might have. I think he is responsible for Martin's death. I wasn't sure until I had read much of the testimony and listened to the juror's thoughts. I don't think the public has bothered.
as an aside, the possibility of panic is one very good reason for untrained amateurs NOT to go about with weapons as self appointed guardians of the public. Florida law forbids vigilantism. It's so easy to pull a trigger, you may not know you did it until someone falls down. The odds of unintentionally doing the wrong thing or an illegal thing with a gun scares me far more than the chance possibility of being attacked.
Killing someone and in many cases something would be a nightmare - a life ruining event to me, justified or not, for what it's worth. I think you have mistook me all this while.
Certain people have a vested interest in maintaining racial strife and they seem to search the news for events that can be made to "prove" that their antiquated brand of revolutionary agitation is still needed.
You have thought this case through thoroughly. Sorry about the riff about killing people. That's one of my one-liners I toss off at the gun bloggers. It was inappropriate. Great Gosh-a-Mighty! Guess what's on the cover of TIME magazine this week?
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid to look.
ReplyDeleteI have watched the trial clips and read the accounts and I still believe that if George was black and Trayvon was white, law or no law, he'd be in jail right now.
ReplyDeleteThe way the law reads as disgusting as it is, Zimmerman did not break the law. But a law that allows one person to gun down another anytime anywhere as long as they felt "threatened" is flawed indeed.
Zimmerman was reckless and irresponsible and there is some evidence he was profiling Trayvon. I get it he wants to keep his neighborhood safe and is committed to being a part of his neighborhood watch but he was clearly told by 911 to not pursue the kid and he did anyway because he had a gun.
I don't think, given all the circumstances, that you can unequivocally state this had nothing to do with race. Unfortunately in today's America there is still much too much that has to do with race. We need to keep talking about it and we need to keep fighting to create fairness and equality. That being said I am much more concerned about the affect of the repeal of the voting act on civil rights than this case.
The stand your ground law played no part whatever in this trial. He would have been and in fact was found not guilty under the 'duty to retreat' law. There was a reasonable doubt that he was able to retreat.
ReplyDeleteAll we have to show that Martin was targeted as a black person rather than an unrecognized, hooded white person walking through a neighborhood at night is a feeling, a 'certainty' a prejudice. Was George right to chase and confront him? No. Was he wrong in playing cop? I think so. Does he bear responsibility? I think a civil court will agree he does, but he was charged with murder, not criminal recklessness or even aggravated battery.
Not being able to say unequivocally that Zimmerman's feelings about black people had nothing to do with his feeling that this kid didn't belong is hardly a reason to prosecute, much less to jail someone for murder -- much less to state that murder is now legal as at least one liberal spokesman is shouting hysterically.
For one last time: the law does not allow anyone to gun down someone who seems threatening. This tired shibboleth has me as frustrated as the same tired rhetoric about "weapons of war on the street" and at this point I have to begin to agree with people I formerly argued with, that intransigence, prejudice and obstinate denial of facts and evidence are as rampant on the left side of the aisle as on the right.
The jury was unable to disregard the reasonable possibility that Martin was on top of him and so was unable to do what the prior law insisted he do: run away. He was found not guilty because there was reasonable doubt as to that fact. He still has a responsibility for his actions and a civil court will probably agree. It's hardly over.
If we are going to disregard the presumption of innocence in favor of 'feelings' and 'certainties' that someone just must be a racist until proven otherwise (and even then.) If we're now to think it right that a law, unanimously and bi-partisanly passed should be overturned by a mob because something might happen but didn't, I'm going not only to resign as a card carrying liberal, but as an American.
I remember being told that we must not get angry that OJ was found not guilty -- that this is how the system works -- even though his entire defense was based on the argument that all white cops are racists and therefore otherwise damning evidence must have been tampered with. And now the same wise men are insisting that a presumption of racism on the part of a Hispanic man must be enough to damn him.
When I hear intelligent and otherwise open minded black people telling me that all white people are suspect, and yes I read that yesterday -- I give up.