New Book- "If I had a Son: Race, Guns, and the Railroading of George Zimmerman"

Sadly, the Left Wing media along with the Oprah Winfreys get to project their narrative on a vastly larger stage. Meanwhile, anyone that buys the book will be labeled a Tea Bagging genocidal racist.

 

Thank you for your post,

You said, "Zimmerman? Wasn't he the guy who decided to go after(Martin)"

No, Zimmerman didn't go after anyone. Zimmerman was attempting to maintain a visual observance of Martins location until PD arrived. To 'go after' Martin would assume that Zimmerman had the ability or thought that he had the ability to outrun and chase down Martin, which is laughable either way. The 205 lb. Zimmerman was wearing jeans, a heavy jacket and work boots and talking on the phone having a conversation. You believe that? Does anyone anywhere actually believe that Zimmerman could catch, outrun or detain Martin or dictate if they had a physical encounter?

You said, "Wasn't he the guy who decided to go after an unarmed teenager".

No, he wasnt. Zimmerman was the guy that decided to maintain a visual on someone that he didn't know if they were armed or not. He actually told the dispatcher that Martin had something in his pocket.


There is no evidence or testimony that Martin was railroaded. But there is evidence that his girlfriend thought Martin doubled back to confront Martin and that Martin started the fight in her opinion. Zimmerman was also the guy with the broken nose per the doctor and photos taken at the scene and at the station. And again, Martin could have probably hopped on one foot and outran Zimmerman. Martin dictated if they fought or not and they did fight with Zimmerman getting beat up.
Railroaded? Zimmerman was a volunteer, a taxpayer, a homeowner, a benefactor, an activist and Patriot and the dude that got beat up or for following for some 150' some suspicious dude that was running. Yeah Id say he got railroaded.

Respectfully,

 

Thank you for your post,

There are a number of closely related definitions of what constitutes 'stalking'. And all of them carry the intent to capture, kill, hunt or to stealthily follow for nefarious reasons. None of those definitions apply to following someone that you have no chance of capturing for the reason to wait for PD.
Can you imagine if Zimmerman actually did tackle Martin in the dark and hold him down until PD arrived! What in the world would Zimmerman tell the police when they got there?

"Uhhhh, there was this guy and he was looking suspicious and so I ran after him and tackled him and unlawfully detained him for you, here he is..."

Respectfully,

 

So much for freedom of speech(insert TAPS playing on a trumpet).

 

Nothing in there will surprise me. Because I predicted it all from day one. This is simply what progressives do. They are on a perpetual witch hunt in a never-ending crusade against an imaginary villain.

Nonetheless, I do look forward to reading that. It sounds really good.

 

That sounds very convincing. I guess the problems people have are
(1) If Zimmerman had done nothing, then nothing would have happened.
(2) Zimmerman was armed and Martin was not.
(3) Martin is DEAD.

 

I think probably it would be called something other than what you have described.

 

Thank you for your reply Flintc,

You are correct, 'people' do have a problem in that they take the facts that you offered and glean from those facts what may be invented against itself. In this case, in order to arrive at their conclusions they utilize a propositional logical fallacy called 'Affirming the Consequent'. They note the literal fact of Martins being dead as proof of Zimmerman being guilty of it. They offer a literal fact as proof while piggybacking a subjective accusation of Zimmerman's guilt on top of it. Thus, if "A" is true then "B" is true as well.
For instance, I can say, "If Martin had never left his house Martin would still be alive". This appears to have validity and truth because obviously Martin wouldn't have met Zimmerman at all that night and thus not get shot. But the statement is indeed false because it confirms the consequent without an exterior qualifier apart from it. While the statement is literally true it wasn't OFFERED as being literally true but carried with it an accusation of guilt/responsibility.
In this case the statement says that Martin caused his own death by walking out his door. Tell me, which of the following two statements pass the smell test;

"If the real estate developer had not build that complex that Martin lived in then Martin would still be alive".

and

""If Martin had never left his house Martin would still be alive because Martins father told Martin that an armed man wanted to kill him that night".

Both fictitious scenarios are literally true but only the last one is correct in that it had the outside qualifier of an element of a gunman and danger. Its clear that the accusation of the real estate developer baring Martins guilt is silly but is still nonetheless literally true.

Respectfully,

 

I suspect you are overthinking this. The problem isn't that most people are cherry-picking whatever facts or interpretations they can find to support foregone conclusions. I would say people are constructing narratives. In one narrative, Martin was entirely harmless, and doing nothing wrong. Martin did not precipitate what happened. It's unlikely Martin would have felt himself threatened if Zimmerman had simply reported his presence. In the other narrative, Zimmerman was simply doing his job, Martin reacted to that much more aggressively than could reasonably have been anticipated, with tragic results.

Now, what I personally think is that what went down here was a tragedy of profound distrust. There HAD been some break-ins in the neighborhood, and black teenagers are known to be overrepresented among those who do it. From Zimmerman's perspective, Martin was clearly suspicious, someone who had no obvious reason for being where he was. From Martin's perspective, Zimmerman was a white man following him around for no obvious reason. Martin knew he was doing nothing wrong, and he assumed Zimmerman had something harmful in mind - an assumption all too often correct.

So each person harbored very strong suspicitions, bordering on conviction, that the other had racially-motivated malevolent intent of some sort - and both were taking what they considered appropriate steps to neutralize it. The fact that both near-convictions were wrong doesn't change the underlying fear and distrust, and the fatal violence of the conflict (a conflict that was completely unnecessary on both sides) shows the depths of that fear and distrust.

The national response to this encounter is itself instructive, because it is so polarized. People don't see poor judgement exercised by both Zimmerman and Martin and try to understand what would motivate such poor judgment. Instead, people see one side has having acted entirely appropriately and the other side as having acted from sheer mindless racially-ignited belligerance.

The tensions are what concern me. Zimmerman saw a burgler, and it seems highly improbable that if Martin had been white Zimmerman would have seen a burgler. Martin saw a mugger, and it's highly unlikely that if Zimmerman had been black, Martin would have seen a mugger. And both ACTED (in their view) appropriately to what they SAW.

 

Thank you for your reply and opportunity to respond,
Respectfully, if you disagreed with my citation of the 'Affirming the Consequent' logical fallacy you should have addressed it directly with a rebuttal and not deflected it totally with "I suspect you are overthinking this.".

Respectfully, thanks again.

 

Respectfully, it sounds like you have decided that Zimmerman exercised nothing but good judgment, Martin is an irresponsible thug, all of the circumstances (rainy night, where everyone was, etc.) support the preconceived conclusions you bring to this case, and you cannot find it within yourself to find ANYTHING to be said for any perspective other than your own. You paint an open-and-shut case here, Good against Evil. And while Good won the battle, it may be losing the larger war.

So I will stick with my narrative of mutual distrust, each suspecting the other. I'm personally convinced that without strong suspicions, neither person would have done what he did. You can stick with your foregone conclusion that Zimmerman has no racial concerns, acted with nothing but responsible probity, was out to protect us all while Martin was, well, who really cares what Martin did or thought or whatever. Your goal here is to rationalize Zimmerman's total angelic innocence whatever it takes. Nobody will penetrate.

Respectfully,

 

Thank you for your reply,

Yet remember that I responded to your claims. I didnt offer a narraative and expect you to believe it. You offered a narrative and I responded to each of your claims. So far, you have not offered any rebuttal on any reply of mine. In short, the dynamic of our exchange is one of you making a claim, me replying and disproving it and then your next post changes the subject or the parameters of whats being debated.

Something like this;

Flintc says, "Zimmerman shouldnt have used his machine gun on 12 year old Trayvon".

Maxtor replies: "Zimmerman didnt use a machine gun and Martin was 17 years old".

Flintc counters with; "but Zimmerman shouldn't have got out of his car though and he was stupid".


Thus, what happened to the claim of the machine gun? The 12 year old thing? It just kind of goes away.............................


Respectfully and sincerely,

 

I said nothing about a machine gun. I mentioned nobody's age. I said there were racial tensions. You hand-waved these away. YOUR claim was that Zimmerman ONLY said "I think he's black". Now, examining the transcript (especially in light of my main point, which is one of suspicion and distrust), we hear Zimmerman say:

"This guy looks like he's up to no good, or he's on drugs or something." Remember, this is a rainy night, and Zimmerman is some distance away.
Zimmerman goes on to say "It's raining and he's just walking around, looking about." Like, maybe, looking for some place he can break into?

Zimmerman says "Something's wrong with him, he's got something in his hands."

Now I ask you to consider this so far. Zimmerman knows Martin is black. He thinks Martin is up to something, he thinks Martin might be on drugs, he thinks Martin might be armed, he thinks Martin is checking the place out. Everything Zimmerman thinks is negative, suspicious, and presumptive of guilt.

Moving right along,

Zimmerman: "These (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)s always get away" Asked if he's following Martin, Zimmer says "yeah" and the police say "OK, we don't need you to do that." Good advice, don't you think?

So we have a pretty clear picture here. Someone described as black, possibly on drugs, wandering around suspiciously looking like he's "up to no good." And YOU can't see any hint here of racial tension? No hint of suspicion or distrust?

So I have resoundingly defeated your misrepresentation (that Zimmerman only said "I think he's black"), and resoundingly supported the narrative I developed based on this very transcript. Instead, I have demonstrated that Zimmerman set out to be a hero. Would you like me to quote from Zimmerman's facebook pages? Would you like me to quote from Zimmerman's friends? From his personal history? Or would you run away from those too, claiming they were "changing the subject"?

We're back to square one here.
1) Martin was doing nothing wrong.
2) Zimmerman was told he didn't need to follow, but did anyway
3) Zimmerman was armed, Martin was not
4) Zimmerman shot Martin to death.

You may now carry on with your excuses and misrepresentations. You just had your ass handed to you.

 

Well Flintc, I think our civility has met a grinding end here and wouldn't be beneficial to proceed. Have a good day sir.

Respectfully,

 

Oops, supporting facts! Well, gotta run!

Imagine my surprise.

 

And what blatant lies would those be? If you're so concerned about lies, I'm curious why you weren't outraged by the blatantly absurd way the media tried to portray these two men instead of how they actually were.

This is what they actually looked like on the night of the incident:






This is what the media showed us:






Worlds apart, wouldn't you agree? And that's not even factoring in how they refused to report George Zimmerman's ethnicity correctly.

 

You race-baiters are so unbelievably dishonest. Of course there is obvious suspicion and distrust. But why do you insist on focusing exclusively on the racial component? As if all the other variables don't even exist. Sit there right now with a straight face and tell me that you think George Zimmerman would have had the same suspicion and distrust if Trayvon Martin had looked like Bill Cosby. I dare you. You know damn well he wouldn't have. Which means there were clearly other factors at work that made him suspicious, weren't there?

I don't expect you to get it. You live in a world where hispanics are white and white people are bad and black people are innocent victims of white people even when they are hispanic. But I'm just trying to get you to challenge the denial you live in. It's extremely thick.

 

Good question. Zimmerman saw someone walking through the neighborhood who was black. He assumed immediately that the guy was on drugs, that he was casing out the place, that he was up to no good, that he would "get away" if Zimmerman didn't follow him. Does Zimmerman assume that about every pedestrian?

At night, in the rain, from a distance, Zimmerman saw somone. Yes, I think if he looked like Bill Cosby, Zimmerman's suspicions about a druggie up to no good would have been the same until he positively identified Cosby. Buit I'm perfectly willing to assume Zimmerman would have followed Jesus, perhaps not quite so suspicious. If you don't think Zimmerman does automatic profiling, you're nuts. If you think Zimmerman regarded race as irrelevant when it clearly statistically is not, you're assuming he's ignoring key data he needs to do his job properly. Suspicion and distrust are earned.

Nope, it's not at all what you describe. Black people are WAY overrepresented among those committing the sorts of crimes Zimmerman was worried about. He's not intuitively profiling Martin because he's a blind racist, but for good solid reasons based on experience and statistics.

So, at the risk of hitting a wall I regard as equally thick, I'll say that if a high enough percentage of an immediately visually identifiable subgroup commit enough crimes, ALL members of that subgroup are going to be regarded by those outside that group with justifiable suspicion. And that goes for Bill Cosby, until he's positively identified as Cosby. This is unfortunate, perhaps, that a minority can damage the reputation of the entire group, but it's the way people think. Just like an observant driver might exercise special caution around a teenage driver. THAT teenager might be an excellent driver, but teens in general are poor to dangerous drivers and concern is a good first reaction.

 

All this Zimmerman hype is just beating a dead horse at this point.