Part One
The case of the state of Florida v George Zimmerman will live in the annals of American history as a turning point in our centuries-long Conversation About Race, a discussion that has taken many twists and turns down through the generations. Remember when our current Attorney General came into office claiming it was a Conversation we were too cowardly to have? We didn’t know it at the time but that risible, rankly untruthful remark by Holder, made during Black History Month in 2009, was a warning shot fired across the bow of White People. Yes, we had been loaded onto our own separate ship, and our Attorney General was putting us on notice that the BGI (Black Grievance Industry) was now in the driver’s seat and we’d better make sure our lifeboats were in order.
But let’s go back a ways — back to the start of it all. Consider this:
Perhaps that Conversation itself was inherently flawed at our very beginnings? Is it the case that the long arms of karmic consequence reach down to us even now, to grab at our throats because of our Founders’ refusal to firmly confront the issue of slavery? Is that America’s Original Sin? Those men gathered in stifling back rooms in Philadelphia, hunkered down to hammer out something everyone could live with, had two ugly choices in the face of the exigencies of the situation.
Southern Colonies and the Issue of Slavery
The first “choice” would have been to refuse to give in to the Southern colonies on the issue of slavery and to demand surcease as the price for the South’s inclusion in this fledgling enterprise. The Northern and Mid-Atlantic delegates knew full well that the Southern colonies were adamant about keeping slavery legal. Thus, if the North pushed the issue, the grand dream of a federation free of King George’s heavy hand would die a-borning. Or rather, it would die on the battlefield itself, since they were already engaged in the conflict. Only unity could save the North and South from ruination and widespread executions of the rebel colonists.
The second choice, the path they took finally, was to appease the South and accept what they saw as an odious “institution”. Those men knew they were only kicking the can down the road to some future point when slavery would inflame and divide the country, but they thought it could be settled in a safer time and place, away from the pressures brought about by their Rebellion. Yes, they were certain that what they were bequeathing to future generations would carry a price, but I’ve often wondered this: if the Founders could have truly foreseen the consequences — the deaths of 650,000 men in horrific battles — would they have gone forward anyway?
Ruminating over the choices made by those signers of the Declaration of Independence is part of the Conversation that Eric Holder, with his Race-ist Filter permanently installed, can no longer hear nor see. Perhaps he never could.
The Engine of Justice and Conflict with the Power Elite
Nonetheless, the Conversation has continued down the generations since it first began. Its origins are coterminous with America’s own beginning. The talk has taken many twists and turns over the years, in large part driven by the engine of justice, however ill-defined that virtue may be. All of us are born with that sense of “rightness” hardwired into whatever it is that makes us human. That desire can be suppressed, denied, or otherwise twisted, but nothing can destroy it, not even death. Many tyrannies, both personal and corporate, have taught us this hard lesson repeatedly, but it never stops the power-hungry from their attempts to engineer the plebes into thinking differently.
It is inevitable that along with those who hunger for justice come those who hunger for power. This conundrum repeats itself in every generation, and sometimes we can’t separate the wheat from the chaff until long after even the gleaners have left the field.
The Civil War, with its 700,000 dead (no one really knows for sure) was supposed to have settled the argument. But the thoughtful among us never really believed a war would work, because weapons were, and remain always, the wrong tools for framing The Conversation. All that wars do is divide and conquer; feuds have a way of becoming eternal. One has only to study the history of the wider world to understand this phenomenon. If people perceive that Justice wasn’t served, then The Conversation goes underground, but it still continues. And the fiercest wars become the ones generated between those who are nearest, those in whom we can perceive just the slightest difference — and maybe the slightest, glancing blow of indifference. Grievances mount. Anger divides. The experience of scarcity accumulates.
Martin Luther King, Jr and His Baton
Almost fifty years ago, on August 28th 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr. brought The Conversation center-stage. Dr. King was a fine strategist; he went into the lists to fight the reigning powers of the time, not with weapons, but with only words as his shield and sword. Those words established a firm moral underpinning to The Conversation. That is, he changed the frame of the argument from mere “rights” to a more profound consideration of justice for all. His “Dream” speech stands today as a marker for a new beginning.
Unfortunately, with his assassination the baton fell to the ground of that balcony where he died. What followed after, beginning even before they interred the remains of Dr. King, was a protracted period of unseemly, brutal, and amoral infighting among his associates. The king was dead: who would take his place as the leader in the cause of justice for all? To this day that baton lies where it fell. Sadly, those contending for its possession lacked the gravitas to pick it up and move forward.
In the fifty years since Martin Luther King spoke in Washington D.C. the political class there has created a poisonous winner-takes-all environment. It has divided our citizens, bloated our government, and compromised the integrity of our media by selling itself to the highest bidder. Thus do we find spouses and siblings of powerful journalists occupying seats very close to the chair in the Oval Office with not a whisper of public complaint. The walls and boundaries so carefully erected to prevent collusion and undue influence have long since collapsed and disappeared.
The Degradation of our American Culture is Almost Complete
So it is that we’ve come to live in a time of manufactured crises, of opportunities grabbed and utilized for political agendas whether or not citizens would assent to what is done in their name. Protest too loudly and you’ll find yourself a target, too. Old people are saying they’re glad they won’t be here to see the end of all they loved, while the young are bitter about the diminished chances they have to control their own futures.
We have arrived at a narrow defile; there seems no way forward. With alarm we are witnessing an increasingly hostile environment.
Here are just a few indicators:
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the rise of warrior police forces in nearly every state, some complete with tanks;
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intrusive bureaucracies that capriciously rain fire down on innocent individuals;
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the overtly pornographic and abusive search-and-seizure mandates of the TSA, sullenly borne on the backs of those who shuffle through airports;
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the legislation of all-encompassing regulations which force law breaking by even the most careful among us;
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an expensive system of education which produces ever more ignorant students, many of them functionally illiterate after twelve years of government teaching;
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the spread of “infotainment” which has replaced the reporting of news;
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the increasing balkanization of our fellow-citizens, as we fragment into mutually suspicious paranoias;
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over the course of only two generations, the creation by government fiat of an underclass which has neither ambition nor direction;
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a blanket of political correctness that smothers legitimate differences and legalizes injustices performed in the name of a specious higher “good”.
The Baton Lies on the Ground, Like Excaliber in Stone
It is not the case that Americans are too cowardly to have This Conversation about race. We’ve been talking for hundreds of years. What has become plain fact, however, is that after Dr. King died, the inferior folk who jostled for his position weren’t willing to be either honest or benign. They were out to make a killing, both figuratively and literally, and they have succeeded brilliantly in producing an angry, entitled criminal class, one that even scares them.
The Karma Dude will have his little joke, won’t he?
In a further bit of karmic humor, today it was revealed that the man the Black Grievance Industry (BGI) chose as their villain, George Zimmerman, acted in character again. This link is to the opinion piece from the Daily Caller, who titled their story, “Enemy of the State George Zimmerman emerges from hiding to, um, save someone from an overturned truck.”
ABC News reported that police in Sanford, Florida revealed only today that last week George Zimmerman stopped at the scene of a highway accident to help rescue a family from their overturned truck. He and another man pulled family members — two parents and their children — from the vehicle. Mr. Zimmerman didn’t witness the accident, so he simply gave his name to the officers and was permitted to go on his way.
The Trayvon Truther
It’s worth visiting the Daily Trawler for his tongue-in-cheek predictions about what the TrayvonTruthers will do with the story. In addition, be sure to read about the way in which ABC first twisted the story. They hastily removed the nasty bit, but you know how it is in the bowels of the Internet: nothing disappears, so their snide comment in the body of a news story is right there in a screen capture. It’s too bad the editor at Standpoint magazine fails so utterly to understand why one doesn’t remove materials on the internet. However, it would seem he is now joined in that ignorance by ABC.
As for George Zimmerman’s good Samaritan behavior, just a reminder: this is but one more sample of the fabric of George Zimmerman’s life. Helping others is simply who he is, what he does. This is a difficult concept for the cynical to grasp.
Our Attorney General, who has cynically turned the Department of Justice into what some are calling the “Just Us” Dept., won’t ever get it. His Race-ist filter fatally hinders his understanding: he stumbles under the weight of his resentments.