It seems more like Trayvon Martin was convicted of attempter murder, doesn't it?

Trayvon Martin’s posthumous conviction for assault with intent to kill, along with the letters here justifying that conviction, show the longevity of the South’s Myth of the Black Brute. Southern slaveholders created this myth to justify their abuse of blacks. After the Civil War they continued it to justify their virtual re-enslavement of blacks.

In the 1970s the GOP inherited it as part of Nixon’s Southern Strategy–only now it’s hidden in terms like "Urban Drug Gang" and "Chicago." Meanwhile America’s criminal "justice" system prosecutes and sentences blacks vastly out of proportion to whites arrested for similar crimes.

This becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, with the huge number of jailed black men used to justify imprisoning even more black men (and then disenfranchising them).

In reality, poor uneducated blacks are about as likely to commit violent crimes as poor uneducated whites; ditto black doctors vs. white doctors. What drives violent crime is poverty, undereducation, police misbehavior, easy access to firearms...and being Southern. The South’s cult of violent "honor" stems from the brutal exigencies of slavery, living on in these Stand Your Ground laws.

"For the great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie--deliberate, contrived, and dishonest--but the myth--persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."


--John F. Kennedy

There's one thing we can be certain of about George Zimmerman

He's not a Neighborhood Watch volunteer.

Whether you think he's a hero or a zero, this is not a matter of opinion. It's plain fact.

Neighborhood Watch rules nationwide include:

1. You are never armed.

2. You only go out in teams of at least two volunteers.

3. You never engage with people you think are suspicious.

4. You call the cops, then back off.

No Neighborhood Watch operation would tolerate someone like George Zimmerman in their organization.

Yet all the media--liberal, conservative, in-between--persist in calling him a "Neighborhood Watch volunteer."

He is no such thing.

Yes he's being allowed to singlehandedly change the definition of Neighborhood Watch organizations as something very close to vigilante operations. That's just one adverse consequence of his actions.

George Zimmerman was not a Neighborhood Watch volunteer

The Neighborhood Watch movement was started formally in the US in the 1960s, and has spread to various other countries as well.

They vary, of course, but all have several key features in common:

1. People do not patrol alone. They ALWAYS go out at least in pairs, often more.
2. People do not carry offensive weapons. In some programs organized and trained up to 50 hours by local police forces, they may wear a kind of uniform and carry pepper spray. Most groups only carry phones.
3. People to not engage with people they find suspicious in any way--they phone the police. Period. They are trained to avoid contact. They are additional eyes and ears for the police. That's it.

George Zimerman patrolled alone, armed, and hunted his prey.

So by all three "prime directives" of all national and international neighborhood watch organizations, he was not a neighborhood watch volunteer, and such organizations are wringing their hands at the disrepute he's bringing up them.

George Zimmerman was a vigilante, and the mainstream press have proven once more that they aren't right wing or left wing--just lazy. If they were left wing--or speaking accurately--they'd call him a vigilante. They'd only call him a neighborhood watch volunteer if they were right wing--or lazy. Most journalists are registered Democrats, so you have to conclude that intellectually "lazy" best describes them.

Don't let people refer to Zimmerman as a "neighborhood watch volunteer." It's easy to explain why.

Also, I suspect that the special prosecutor threw the book at him because she found that was lying--starting with calling himself a neighborhood watch volunteer, following up by claiming that Trayvon hunted him down and attacked him, trying to kill him. In all likelihood the physical circumstances gave the lie to Zimmerman's alibi.

In addition, Trayvon had no history of violence; Zimmeman did.

True, in general prosecutors often over-charge people so they can plea bargain them into an easy conviction, running up the DA's record so he can run for governor on a getting tough on crime campaign. But not all do this, and not all do this all the time. Especially in a case that's being followed internationally. Most prosecutors don't want to do anything slimy when it's getting that much attention.

In all likelihood Zimmerman got lost in a fantasy where he's a heroic cop, and where people-who-look-like-crooks were to be driven off "his" turf. And black people "looked like" crooks just a bit more than others. Every police department knows about the wannabes in their territory. Many find work in private security, having failed to get into actual police forces. There's even a dark comedy about this: "Paul Bart, Mall Cop."

But when the Keystone Kops start shooting real bullets, the comedy disappears.