Around ten years ago, while I was still in the service...

Last edited Wed Jul 10, 2013, 09:40 PM - Edit history (4)

On my way back home after duty I stopped by the local 7-11 on my weekly routine of buying some lotto tickets.

The clerk behind the counter told me that the store had just been robbed a few minutes before I walked in. The robber took the cash out of the register and ran out the door. I asked him if he called the cops, which he had and he also gave them a description of the robber. I asked him for the description as well, just in case, and he also told me what he looked like.

So, after picking up my tickets I jumped back in my car for the drive home, when lo and behold, I see the guy who fit the clerk's description of the robber walking down the street.

I didn't stop, I didn't even slow down, I didn't have own a cell phone at the time so the only way that I was going to report this guy's location was by getting to my townhouse and calling the cops from there. I did just that. I told them that I was just at the 7-11 that was robbed and the clerk gave me a description of the robber. They made me aware that they received a report of the robbery. I told them where and when I saw the person who fit the clerk's description of the robber and the 911 person told me that the police were on the way.

The clerk then informed me that they wanted to call me back, just in case after the call was over. They asked me for my name, which I made it very clear that I did not want to give it and they honored that request without a problem. The told me that they have my number from Caller ID and that's all they needed to both call me back and use for identification. A few minutes later, they did call me back and they told me that the police on the scene had taken the person, that I had reported seeing who had fit the description that they 7-11 clerk had given me, into custody.

That was all they needed and I was never contacted by the authorities again...

Of course, I'm about to relate how I view my own experience in regard to the Zimmerman case.

Unlike Z, I had a very good reason for thinking that someone who had just visited a 7-11... To rob it mind you, was someone that warranted close attention. Had the place not been robbed, or had I passed by that person walking down the street without me encountering the 7-11 clerk, there's nothing about that person whom I did drive by in my car, would make me think to take any notice of him.

I was situationally informed and observant enough to come to make a decision to report the guy that I saw. I was also confident that the authorities, The Hampton, VA Police Department, was both competent and efficient enough to handle the situation without my direct physical involvement. I also, thought enough of my own physical well-being to not get out of my car to follow around this guy who was described to me as a robber. Prior to that, I never felt that I needed to carry a weapon for my own personal safety.

Living in Virginia at the time, buying and owning a personal firearm would be pretty easy for me had I made the decision to do so. It's my own mindset alone which impelled me to make that determination. I had no desire to be an armed vigilante... Even in a neighborhood where a 7-11 was in fact robbed. To this day, I've never owned a firearm for any purpose.

To me, my own reaction to the situation was the best course of action. It also was an action that achieved a desirable result.

On the other hand, it's clear that Z's own actions did not speak to a mindset where he considered his own personal safety as paramount. His actions did not speak to a faith the authorities would resolve his concerns... But most of all, it's clear to me that profiled an innocent person, without any realistic justification of being a danger to either himself or his community.

He clearly discounted how his own actions and behavior are responsible for creating situation where some person on the street would consider himself problematic or even a threat. Why would he bring that kind of attention on himself if he felt that Martin would represent a threat to himself?

Z's own previous behavior, his assaults and incidents of domestic violence, not to mention his well documented confrontational attitude, if anything, says to me that he's grown bully. A bully who sought to make himself more capable to engage in bullying through both his desire to obtain MMA type training and that fact that he bought and armed himself with a loaded pistol.

Now, how could George Zimmerman eventually find himself in a situation where he was putting a bullet through the chest of Trayvon Martin? For me to understand this, it quite clear for me to assess what kind of person Zimmerman is.
I will stipulate that the following text is merely my own speculation. This isn't the kind of thing that one would hear in a court of law, but is based on my own observation of the human condition.

So, who do I think George Zimmerman is?

If anything, Zimmerman appears to be a creature born of some kind of self-perceived privilege. A person who had created his own position of unofficial authority in his community, even after not having the capability of achieving that status through official means.
He's the son of a local judge, merely by association, that in itself could lead him to believe that he led a justifiable life of privilege in his community. Having his domestic violence and assault charges magically disappear (not really magic of course, it's perfectly reasonable to assume that he has connections to any number of good lawyers who could get the charges dropped), that would impress upon himself that he was somewhat untouchable.

I mentioned before that he behaved like a bully to me. And what is a bully, if not a person who throws his own weight around as a demonstration of his own self-perceived position of authority? Being the so-called neighborhood watch guy, if anything, would facilitate that kind of behavior. He couldn't be a cop, he didn't have cop training, or a cop's badge, but he could most certainly arm himself so he could insert himself into cop-like situations in his own mind.

Just today, a former resident of the gated community testified that after a home invasion, it was Zimmerman that made frequent visits to her and in that testimony if seems as if Zimmerman was conducting his own investigation. Under what authority did he have to conduct his own investigation, if not one that was made up in his own mind?

Zimmerman was clearly someone who wanted to be regarded as a person in his neighborhood who was viewed as a "good guy," at least to the fine, upstanding, All-American beneficiaries of a privileged lifestyle that he identified with. And anyone who did not fit hat particular dynamic could easily be classified as a threat. After all, a couple of Black guys had already broke into some nice White lady's house and robbed her. Who else could be out there? What other Black guys could rob nice White ladies in the future?

He decided to put himself on the job!

Yes, my point, is that Zimmerman's heart was in the right place... It was both his head and his body that failed him and he needed a way to compensate for that.

Now, I look at myself... Since I was both intellectually and physically able to make a 22 year career in the military, I believe that, had I decided to try a career in law enforcement, I would more likely than not be successful at at least getting through the academy's doors. However, I never wanted to be a cop, which was the main reason that I was never one. I just think that that option would have been open to me without any problem.

Unlike Zimmerman, I really had nothing to prove and I didn't feel that I needed to do anything to take it upon myself TO prove it.

Second, even if I lived in a neighborhood where a 7-11 was, in fact, ROBBED, in spite of that, I wanted to do the right thing as a citizen, but the last thing that I wanted was any kind of attention for it. Even today, I still weighed rather I should have bought up the robbery incident in the first place, but it's the only thing in my own personal experience to the Zimmerman/Martin incident that I can regard realistically as a comparison.

Now this is something about Zimmerman that puts the finger, to me, on what he's all about. Which goes to my personal theory about the dangers of privilege, which who have have it are cursed with. Privilege, in my own opinion, a key facilitator in creating a form of self-delusion and an inability to perceive an accurate state of self-awareness. It can help someone who is unable to understand how important they really are and inflate that self-importance unrealistically. Think of it as an adjunct to the Dunning-Kruger effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning–Kruger_effect

So we have Z, who is obviously unable to become a cop, in spite of his favorable connections to the Law Community. He actively functioned as a self-appointed community protector, even if he really didn't have adequate law enforcement skills to effectively do that job. I'm going to stipulate his own defense witnesses who testified that Z didn't have a high level of actual physical ability. I'll just say the I think Zimmerman's a wimp. Which will, in no way, exclude my own opinion that he's a bully as well. Bullies are well known to back down when challenged, even after biting off a lot more than they could chew and that's what I think happened during that night. Zimmerman had that gun to compensate for his inability to deal with the fact that he did bite off more than he could chew. His innate lack of self-awareness and delusional inflation of his own self-importance gave him the impetus to insert himself into a situation that he himself was not capable of handling.

And because of that he took an innocent life.

Yet to this day, Zimmerman is incapable of understanding any of this. He blatantly showed a lack of remorse for taking a life that he should understand in retrospect that he should not have taken, a la his insistence in that Hannity interview that it as all "God's Plan."

What utter bullshit.

And I'm not even going to mention all of his obvious lies, which... I think that he really believes in his heart. that someone would say, after he shoots them in the chest, "You got me," is to me, his way of saying that it is something that a "perp" would say, if he could say it. It's pretty much an active demonstration of his thoroughly delusional and un-self-aware mindset. His privileged status facilitated and even exacerbated that mindset.

Now, I know that this is one of my long-assed essays, where I'm doing this whole brain dump on you, however I beg your indulgence. I'm going to wrap this puppy up.

Much has been said about Zimmerman as being described as a "creepy assed cracker" in Rachel Jenteal's testimony. However, to me the operative word isn't the description of Z as a Saltine-American, even if he has Latino heritage. The operative words to me were in fact "creepy-assed." The "cracker" description, to me, was indicative of how Martin observed Zimmerman's behavior, not his skin color-per se.

Ms. Jenteal was asked about that, as to whether she felt that such a description had overtly racial overtones and she said that it didn't. I took it as merely an assessment that Zimmerman was acting as if he was some White guy who was moving around like he owned the place.

If I were to see something like that, my first reaction would be to say, "Who the fuck does this guy think he is?"

That, I think is the most important question... Who did George Zimmerman actually think he was that night and why?

But to me the biggest question, the one which will never be answered, is why did Trayvon Martin have to die that night, simply because George Zimmerman couldn't realistically and accurately answer that question about himself?

Instead, he told us a bullshit story about himself and expects the world to swallow it in order to get him off... Which, to me, say that he really doesn't want to know.