Just when I think I'm out of that distinctive George Zimmerman funk, he pulls me back in. This latest incident of him tagging along while his dog did guard duty has so many basic Zimmerman elements –vigilantism, lies, fantasy- it makes him seem like more of a meme than a man. As a man, he would be laughable if it weren't for his all too easy access to guns. As a meme, he seems to bring out something basic in many people. The people who are disgusted and repelled don't surprise me. The first time I saw his face, I said, out loud, "That is one creepy ass looking cracker" and I am an elderly white woman. It's the people who see something good in him, including the friends who took the witness stand for him that mystify me. In fact, their impressions of him just reinforced my feeling that he was a twisted person. In the end, Zimmerman's significance is that his story illustrates some of the things that are wrong in our culture. He raises the question, where are the grownups?
One thing about the Zimmerman/Martin case is that there are lots of parallels between the two boys and their families. Both came from solidly middle class backgrounds with adult siblings who had transitioned successfully to middle class adulthood. Both were sort of problem children at the time of the shooting. At 17, Trayvon was of the age when being a good babysitter who isn’t afraid of math can seem like a liability, so he was experimenting with marijuana and school yard fighting. At 28, George was just one of those kids who doesn’t seem to make the transition to adulthood. His dreams of being a cop hadn’t panned out. He worked and worked to get there, but couldn’t seem to stay out of trouble.
Martin’s parents had started steering Trayvon away from his fantasy career in football and into airplane maintenance. He was scheduled to go to an aeronautics camp this summer. Zimmerman was still being encouraged to pursue his fascination with law enforcement. Somehow, his various legal troubles had not resulted in his failing to get a conceal and carry permit in the state where his father and friends were in law enforcement. He was taking martial arts classes, although everyone agreed he was without skill or experience, to the point that he wasn’t even allowed to spar.
Where were the two boys the night of the shooting? Trayvon was grounded at his father’s girlfriend’s house. For good behavior, he had been allowed to run a short errand. Even though he was a teenager who smoked pot, he was under sufficient supervision that he hadn’t taken the opportunity to smoke anything on this errand, as most kids of my generation would have.
Zimmerman was driving around, carrying a gun which an adult had advised him to purchase and carry with a round chambered “in case he needed it.” This same adult got on the witness stand and told us how he picked out a gun for Georgie and gave him this advice. What he didn’t explain is why he imagined someone like George would need a loaded gun. What would someone with no training, no experience with fighting and no authority do with a gun? The core of Zimmerman’s defense was that he was a wimp with poor judgment who could be believed to scream like a child if he were getting beaten up. Why didn’t any of the supposedly more mature people around him try to steer him away from a career in law enforcement? Why did they facilitate him getting his hands on a gun?
What is my point? That people who help someone get a gun should be held responsible for what happens with the gun? Yes, actually, but I have another point. There is a community of people who like, defend, even lionize George Zimmerman. What do they see? I have been following a few of the unjustified shootings by “respectable” white men and there is a community of people who will rabidly justify even the most disgusting of acts, even those perpetrated against other respectable white men. It is as though they believe that a white (in this case white Hispanic, it’s even a category in the census) man automatically deserves to have authority and, if he can’t get it through his own gravitas he should be given it by other means.
These people consider themselves the protectors and inheritors of respectability. They respond to ancient rituals of dominance and aggression that have deep resonances with all apes, but have been superseded by argument and compassion in human society. There is nothing you can do to change these individuals, but they do offer an opportunity to uncouple respectability from conservatism. There is a significant portion of reasonable society which is deeply intimidated by this faction’s insistence that they have a right to their “opinions”. Shifting the focus from Zimmerman as an individual to the real lunacy of the community who supports him could be an opportunity to expose the ways in which this culture of irrational intimidation stretches through all levels of Republican politics. It really is not an exaggeration to say that the road to the Martin shooting began when the Florida recount was stopped by a violent demonstration in a hallway of a courthouse in 2000 http://politicalhumor.about.com/....