BluesStringer
Les Brers
"His motives were good, and his actions and the outcome (BG dead, GG alive) outweigh his mistakes, by far."
I've agreed with others, maybe even you too, that GZ's motives and intentions were good, but when you over-emphasize that his mistakes are outweighed by the deadly outcome that he contributed to, it sounds like hero-worship at best to me, and an outright break with reality at worst. There are other examples, but my words are only reactions to what you, yourself, have said, and continue to say.
Well, being a gangbanger usually refers to a member of a umm.....gang. Is there any evidence in the public record of that being true of Martin?
Hmm....druggie? Check, been there, done that. Troublemaker? Yep, big-time. Thieving, fighter and racist? Nope, not me, but I knew more high school-mates who were those things (and worse) than they themselves would be honest enough to admit to these days. 17 year olds do stupid and self-destructive things. Almost all of them to one degree or another. If you managed to avoid that truism, good for you. Most adolescents aren't that bright though.
Well established???? You're delusional! Nothing but a fight between Martin and Zimmerman has been *well* established, and even the details of that are sketchy at best. You can deduce from John Good's testimony that GZ was on the bottom and the one who was yelling, but absolutely nothing more about either of their states of mind is "well established!" That idiotic line should disqualify you from ever being a juror anywhere in this country!
It's amazing the amount of anger you have for a dead kid. You're damn right Martin was a kid. I quit high school and left home when I was a dumb kid of 16. At 17, after almost a year of trying to make a living with no education and restrictive child labor laws in CA, I was even a dumber kid and joined the Army rather than swallowing my pride and apologizing to my mom for all the heartache I caused her. I came home two years later after getting myself court-martialed for being still a dumber kid, only I brought an addiction home with me. Only when I decided to become an adult did I, and it didn't happen at some magical age between 17 and 19. It happened when I decided to stop getting high, I decided to get training for a job that would make me a living, I decided to quit being an adrenaline junkie, which BTW, was much more dangerous than doing drugs ever was - just ask Trayvon Martin.....oh, wait, you can't, because he didn't get the chance to grow out of his youthful indiscretions. Someone with such a spotless youth as you obviously had, may not be able to empathize with such indiscretions. I can, and do, because I was a dumb kid quite a bit longer than I had a right to expect polite society to be tolerant of. Fortunately for me and my wife though, I didn't get shot for it by someone who thought he was qualified to judge my gang affiliations (none), my intent to murder (never had it, never will) the speed with which I walked (I have had terrible gout since about 21), or the fact that I was wearing a hoodie (an article of clothing that I only started wearing within the last 4 or 5 years, being closer to 60 than 50). But you seem to be able to divine out of thin air that Martin possessed all those negative traits, or that the cover (a hoodie) is enough information from which to judge the book (Trayvon Martin). You must be working off a different public record than the one I've heavily scrutinized in an honest effort to get to the knowable truth. What ain't knowable, should not be spoken. That's another lesson you are having trouble learning.
Besides knowing what it's like to be a troubled kid, I've made it long enough and paid heavy enough dues in life to call 25 year olds "kids" without taking condescending quips from someone who literally celebrates that another "gangbanging, druggie, thief who 'fully intended' to murder George Zimmerman" found himself freakin' dead before he had the chance to grow out of his delinquencies. And part of that is George Zimmerman's cross to bear. Not the worst or most egregious parts, those are clearly Martin's responsibility because they were both overly-aggressive and illegal, but Zimmerman's mistakes contributed to a dumb kid paying for his dumbness with his life. And just one or two minor adjustments in attitude and/or tactics would have avoided the need for it!
Wrong. The facts of the case says that. Try to keep up.
If I was talking about what Zimmerman did in legal terms, I would be using words like, oh, I don't know, "illegal" maybe? I'm talking about the tactical mistakes he made, and you're too wrapped up in your hero worship to acknowledge that he made any. Pffft.
If you want me to agree with you on that score again, fine, you have my agreement. But you're still, for some inexplicable reason, willfully ignoring how many deadly mistakes he made leading up to that point. You want to limit the evaluation of the 45 seconds of a 911 tape and the 8 to 10 seconds that an eye-witness saw and heard, and I'm evaluating the whole event, from beginning to end. You are being willfully ignorant to leave all of that time out of your evaluation. It's flabbergasting that you would resist so vociferously looking at the whole thing just so you can absolve Zimmerman in your own mind of tactical mistakes that everybody knows he made.
Blues
