Your stance on this issue is a great example of how some of us insist on "shooting our wounded."
I've never shot anybody, and if I ever have to, I hope those with whom I share the details will help me evaluate the situation honestly, even if it means being critical, and under
no circumstances whatsoever, would I want anyone to engage in hero-worship of me for taking another human being's life.
You've spent a lot of time on this issue criticizing, if not outright condemning, Zimmerman's actions.
Absolutely false. I've spent a lot of time criticizing and outrightly condemning those who refuse to accept that he made tactical mistakes leading up to his first face-to-face meeting with Martin. The very fact that he was surprised by that first encounter is all the proof I need that he made mistakes. Your hero-worship of the guy, for some inexplicable reason, is not allowing you to recognize that 100% accurate evaluation.
You can point out mistakes without inferring that he's stupid or worse.
And apparently you can't read critical after-action evaluations of his actions without inserting your own jaded memes into others' train of thought. I guess that makes sense though, since you don't know the difference between the words "imply" and "infer."
You are making inferences based on what you are now claiming I have
implied, but what's worse, I specifically said in the other thread that am not implying stupidity or worse on GZ's part. I'm implying that anyone who doesn't learn the lessons from the mistakes he made is stupid
and dangerous. Try to keep up here.
His motives were good, and his actions and the outcome (BG dead, GG alive) outweigh his mistakes, by far.
His mistakes are partly responsible for the outcome! How can the outcome outweigh his own mistakes? Oh, that's right, heroes don't make mistakes, right? Pfft.
Why is it that anyone who doesn't agree with you is a "danger to those around him???" WTH???
What do you mean by saying "anyone?" I don't think I've ever typed that line in here before. I referred specifically to your refusal to acknowledge mistakes that could have prevented the killing before the situation escalated to the point of it being necessary. If you refuse to learn lessons concerning the foresight to prevent death at your own hand, that seems like a dangerous mindset for someone who carries a gun to have. It has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with me, and everything to do with you engaging in hero-worship and refusing to learn important lessons that could save either yours or someone else's life. How rude of me to care about saving lives, eh? But you keep thinking it has to do with me just being mean to po' po' little Georgie Zimmerman. Get a freakin' clue, wouldja please?
(BTW, I had my opinions before I read what Ayoob had to say about it.)
Then why do you keep using Ayoob to validate your opinion(s)? I'd be willing to bet that if the three of us sat down and you started whining about me being critical of Zimmerman, and then I gave him my rationale for the critical evaluations I've tried to engage in, he'd tell you to get you man-panties un-bunched and take heed to what I'm saying. I've read enough of Ayoob to know without a doubt that he would advise all civilians to learn safe avoidance of trouble rather than chasing it down.
The person who is WHOLLY responsible for Martin's death is MARTIN.
Absolute and utter sophistry. That thinking is dangerous to you and everyone around you when you're carrying a gun.
He made the decision to assault Zimmerman, with, IMO, the intent to murder him.
Oh, because GZ says that TM said, "You're going to die tonight MF'er" that means you can read TM's legal intent? Look Karnac, you don't know the intent of TM any better than any other outside observer does, and claiming that your opinion on that score is substantive in any way makes you look dumber than refusing to learn important lessons about sound tactics does.
Zimmerman did enough things right to turn the tables, had the skin colors not been what they were or had the racists is the whitehouse not been in power, the GG would have went home that night, and the neighborhood would have been safer, and no one outside of Florida would have ever heard about it.
Finally, something we can agree on. But the only reason we agree is because you had to completely eliminate the five or six minutes that led up to the fight. Including those minutes, Zimmerman made very significant mistakes that put him in the position to be snuck up on and sucker-punched. Keep denying and/or minimizing it and/or ignoring it. Doesn't change the
facts that it's 100% true that Zimmerman's mistakes contributed to the outcome.
Sorry for the cross-posting, but I'm not going to have the same conversation in two or more threads at the same time. So.....
Are you suggesting that all of George Zimmerman's actions on 2/26/12 are above reproach? No scrutiny should be applied by anyone but the jury and Massad Ayoob? I'd be amazed to read where Massad says he would not have identified himself before it all got out of hand. Zimmerman isn't a "co-villain" or stupid, but that doesn't mean some of his actions (or lack thereof) didn't contribute in significant ways to what ultimately happened.
Blues
Except for "significant," and that I'm not sure when Zimmerman had the need (many would have called him the instigator had he done so) opportunity to identify himself, I can agree with this.
As I said above, you accuse me of thinking things that are completely contradicted by what I actually say.
Aside from that, would
you have called him the instigator if he had either identified himself as a neighborhood watchman or contacted him in a friendly, helpful, non-confrontational manner? You keep putting thoughts in everyone else's heads that never said what you're saying here. If he had stayed in his car, rolled down his window enough to be heard saying, "Hey man, Neighborhood Watch over here. Are you visiting someone here, or should I call the police?" If Martin had said, "F-off man, mind your own business,"
that would've been "acting suspicious" and would've justified calling the police. It would've even justified keeping visual contact with him while on the phone with the cop-shop. Assuming everything else went just the same as GZ says it did, under
no circumstances should he have gotten out of the car after telling cops that TM was reaching for something in his waistband and coming towards him to check him out! In fact, if that really happened, just sitting there in his car while this guy who's reaching in his waistband is circling his car, he would've been legally justified if he shot the kid right then and there! Or, as soon as he saw the reach for the waistband, he should've put his truck in gear and moved out of the area. Instead, the guy "skips" 50 yards or so up to the "T" of the sidewalk and disappears out of sight into the darkness. What does your hero do? Goes after the guy who at this point has demonstrated suspicious and
threatening behavior, and he does it with a flashlight that doesn't work and doesn't even bother scanning the area as he's walking back to his truck so that he doesn't get surprised out of the darkness by a guy who had something in his waistband just a couple or three minutes before! And you say he made no "significant" mistakes????
Instead of all that followed identifying himself the way I suggest above, what if Martin had just said, "Yeah man, my dad's fiance lives just around the corner. I was just waiting under this mailbox kiosk for the rain to let up. I'll be fine, thanks for asking." Neighborhood Watch your way on to Target and get your shopping done, George. Nothing to see here. Right?
RIGHT?
However, I've got a feeling that anyone who happened to be walking in the vicinity and in a similar direction as Martin that night would have been on the receiving end of Martin's gangbanger violence.
Now he's a
gangbanger???? What evidence do you have of that little bit of posthumous libel? Only your hero and the hoodie-wearing, suspicious, reaching-in-his-waistband Trayvon Martin were out there that night. So now you've not only divined Martin's intent concerning killing Zimmerman if your hero hadn't stopped him first, you've divined out of thin air that he went back there looking for
anybody to commit violence on, and that it was all motivated by his status of being a
gangbanger! Karnac wishes he were you!
However, as ill prepared or whatever as Zimmermanman may have been, he was equal to the task, and all would have ended satisfactorily, had it not been for the racebaiting power grabbers in the whitehouse, and their lapdog media.
Of course, all is "satisfactory" as long as the world has been rid of just another gangbanger whose only claimed "suspicious activity" was walking too slow in the rain with only a hood to keep him dry. No after-action evals needed as long as your hero says everything he did that night, he would do again because it was "God's plan." If all that was "God's plan," then it is likewise just as Holy for me to do the evaluation that Zimmerman (and you) refuse to do.
If that is a "satisfactory" ending to the life of a kid who did nothing illegal for the first four to six minutes of the overall event that night, then you are one sick puppy. Absolutely nothing that I've said on the subject seeks to justify or otherwise support the Sharptons, Jacksons or media hacks of the world getting involved or blowing it out of proportion. In fact, I have consistently spoken against them if I acknowledge them at all, which I don't need to do in order to evaluate what I would hope I (and anybody reading this) had the foresight to not repeat the same mistakes Zimmerman made that contributed to a person dying that night.
Blues
