"These fucking punks... these assholes always get away."

First lines heard in the trial... and the conclusion of the trial itself.

Tonight, a 17 year old boy was found to have been deserving of death by a jury. I'm not going to try to characterize those jurors, I have no idea what's in their heads, as far as i know they are just six women from the community and nothing further can be drawn with regard to them. But that is the decision they reached - Zimmerman's plea was not guilty, and the strategy his defense team took was self-defense. By acquitting him, the jury has given this the thumbs-up, intentionally or not - they have agreed that Trayvon Martin had to die.

Also tonight, here on DU, we have a sudden parade of peckerwood fucks tromping around in their doc martins, snapping their suspenders and giving smug grins and high-fives to each other. Since I have discovered in my time here that DU's admin and juries have far more tolerance of bigots than people who speak against them, I'll refrain from my first urge to list the names of these scumbags - I don't think I'd need to, the rest of you have eyes, after all.

Tonight shows us that it's not over. That it will never be over so long as we as a society grant these stooges, and their new saint, our indifferent apathy, our limp masturbatory platitudes of "well, like, that's just their opinion man." No, it's not just opinion. It's active, vocal efforts to denigrate and dehumanize and disenfranchise our brothers and sisters in this society. It's a grinding, wearying argument, the caustic nature of which erodes rights and fair application of law.

Whatever you think of the system at work, know that no jury can make the murder of a 17 year old boy armed with nothing more dangerous than sugary snacks justified. Understand that even if you think the jurors were fair and thoughtful, the trial itself was anything but - the media around it was anything but. The kid-glove treatment of Judge Zimmerman's lumpy fuck of a son was anything but. This is another splash of acid on the cogs of the machine that makes our society work, the equality of all people. And that acid doesn't come from nowhere.

It's time to stop being "tolerant" of intolerance and hatred, the forces which have led to the death of this child and the grotesque justifications - intentional and non - and start recognizing htem as more than "just words," more than ugly opinion, and to call them out, expose and oppose them where htye're found.

And I think if we start anywhere, it should be here, the place our own community of professedly progressive, liberal, leftist people call "home." If we're going to accept the snarls and spits of bigots here, then we're certainly not going ot get up the guts to oppose them anywhere else.. .and htne what fucking good are we?