Epithets and Exasperation: When “I Told You So” Isn’t Enough

“Fuck you, America.”

It’s all I could write this morning. Well, that and a reminder to a friend in Norway that I had told her years ago Americans are crazy. “Believe me now?”

As I plan where in my basement I am going to hide Muslims who are being hunted by the Secret State Police, I mutter apologies to every non-human on this planet. We deserve what happens to us. No other being should pay such steep prices for our ills.

I try to conjure Omega level mutant powers ("Class 5" for you X-Men movie fans). Not even an earthquake. I really don’t know what else to do. I write. I am a writer. In my activist past, I’ve made calls, protested in the streets, argued on behalf of the oppressed in court, and voted, of course. It’s not enough. What does my activist future look like? Probably still a lot of writing.

I speak English, so I should know better. I should know that violence wins. People from a small island across the Atlantic infiltrated the world to such extent that almost everywhere now their language is spoken. Maybe I should be giving credit instead to the Anglo-Saxons and thus Germany…and what of the Spanish? They did a pretty good job at imperialism and colonization, too.

And don’t forget how well violence has kept men in power over women. A majority of the population is oppressed by a minority, and not because that minority is smarter or cleverer.

Non-violence. I took a pledge at The King Center.

I pledge to honor Martin Luther King, Jr.’s life and non-violent work by helping to make this world a better, more just place for all people. I will: Respect all people; Live a life of loving, not hating; Choose patience over anger, non-violence over force; Actively help to promote freedom, justice, and world peace (signed 04/27/2009).

The pledge hangs on my fridge. …. MLK is dead. Murdered. Violence won his life, too.

I pledged to uphold the Constitution as well, for me most importantly, the Preamble:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

It’s what our laws are supposed to achieve, and if they don’t, they are unconstitutional. Few remember.

The Preamble is the most neglected part of our Constitution, a document based upon the Iroquois Confederacy’s form of governance, by the way. Where are the Iroquois now? Mostly dead. Violence wins.

We’ve been celebrating and elevating violence for a long time in this country, even before this despairing campaign for President in which the victor spewed hatred in almost every breath. Sadly, to show strength, the opposition boasted about killing a person. My friend who survived the collapse of the first tower on 9/11 was thrilled by Osama bin Laden’s execution, but our leaders should not ever glorify someone’s death, no matter how vile the life. Our current President won the Nobel Peace Prize while overseeing several armed conflicts around the world. Our President-elect hinted at the assassination of his rival. He called for a foreign government to hack her emails and has vowed to jail her. He will never be charged with Treason. Violence wins.

Violence’s cousin stupidity has won, too. To be blind to the implications of a situation or a behavior or a word, to believe that somehow there are not related consequences to actions, is to be unable to compute even simple calculations. The untoward manifestations – just as violence – know no party boundary. When our President ran the first time, he was elected because of his rhetoric, not his record. Berners also supported their candidate because of words. Our President-elect’s words were both elevated and ignored by his supporters, depending upon how much power they wanted them to wield. We value what we believe to be potential over experience, record, and truth. Depressing. Petula Dvorak, writing for The Washington Post calls it, “borderline treason” to make election decisions based on “who’s going to make you laugh, who you’d rather have a beer with, or who comes up with the zippiest one-liners,” but when power and compensation are inextricably linked to successfully entertaining the masses, there can be no other result.

A culture that is designed such that it’s not the people who provide food, clothing, shelter, sanitation, safety, and education who dominate but instead those who offer nothing of substance…really, what is it entertainers offer that justifies the power and influence they obtain, financial and otherwise? What is it that Kim Kardashian offers for the betterment of humanity that outweighs Jerel McCrary’s 15+ years of full time work against domestic violence and as an advocate for LGBT rights? Oh, you don’t know who Jerel McCrary is? Point made.

But we’re not supposed to call people stupid; it’s divisive. Instead, we are apparently supposed to view lack of critical thinking skills as a personality quirk. We’re nailing our coffin shut from the inside.

I have had three careers: entertainer, educator, and human and civil rights attorney. The first was valued to much greater extent by measure of both hourly wage and influence. When I began acting, I earned more from one commercial than in one year of practicing law – a few hours work to sell product compensated me more than 12 months of helping disabled veterans obtain benefits that fed them, clothed them, and frequently ended homelessness. I was offered a quarter of a million dollars for a bout in Vegas when women’s boxing was emerging on the scene. Never have I been offered such a purse for something more meaningful, e.g., a dazzling presentation about how employment discrimination in entertainment media is a scourge we need to defeat. Efforts to beguile the public are why the President-elect obtained disproportionately generous news coverage in the early days of his campaign and for every lunatic behavior that followed.

Our society's constructs elevate drugs and their dealers – humans, products, and their overseers who package and promote them. We are addicts. We are stupid. We are violent. We are America.

Fuck you, America. I have seen the movie “Idiocracy” many times. I really didn’t want to live in it.

The Zimmerman Acquittal: Doubt in the Age of Unreason

“A reasonable doubt is not a mere possible doubt, a speculative, imaginary or forced doubt. Such a doubt must not influence you to return a verdict of not guilty if you have an abiding conviction of guilt.”

- Jury Instruction, State of Florida v. George Zimmerman

One should always understand the tool of measurement before taking the measure, so let me begin by stating that I think of writer/director Mike Judge’s movie “Idiocracy” as much prescient documentary as entertainment.

Synopsis: it’s 2505 - the year of the Great Garbage Avalanche - and an average Joe from 2005 awakens from stasis to find he is now the smartest person alive. Hijinks ensue.

I laugh and am horrified. It’s a documentary. Knowing this impression of mine is as important as knowing that I majored in rhetoric, graduated from Harvard Law School, served in the “legal peace corps”, and left legal practice for the entertainment industry. That written, it may not take much to guess where I stand regarding the Zimmerman acquittal. It is one more artifact from the Age of Unreason.

Reason. The dividing line between those who are outraged by the acquittal of George Zimmerman - who followed then shot and killed unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin - and those who support the verdict, the verdict of six women of whom half initially convicted Zimmerman. They reportedly cried, wanted to convict Zimmerman of something, morally certain Zimmerman unlawfully killed Martin - the definition of “beyond a reasonable doubt” - and yet deliberations altered their verdicts. I am unconvinced that it altered their certainty. The doubt they caved into was speculative and imaginary, created by force, not by facts or Zimmerman’s veracity. Their doubt was unreasonable, one in a series of unreasonable acts.

The jury instruction for Justifiable Use Of Deadly Force stated that “A person is justified in using deadly force if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.” It further instructs that George Zimmerman “had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force” but only if “George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity”. ... only if George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity. There were no explanations or examples of what that might entail.

For example, Florida’s definition of the unlawful activity “stalking” includes a person who willfully, maliciously, and repeatedly follows or harasses another person, a misdemeanor of the first degree. Include a credible threat to that person, and it becomes “aggravated stalking”, a felony. “Aggravated assault” seems also apropos, an unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to another person with a deadly weapon, even without intent to kill. Although prosecutors chose the unreasonable path of not charging Zimmerman with stalking or assault, he was, based upon evidence presented at trial, engaged in these unlawful activities when he killed Trayvon Martin. Any reasonable juror would have concluded so even if she needed to ask for clarification about the term “unlawful activity”. However, we live in a day and age when the ignorant juror is unreasonably deemed first choice, thus the chances of her asking intelligent or insightful questions are unlikely.

Durell Peaden, the former Republican senator from Crestview, Florida who sponsored the “Stand Your Ground” bill, said the law was never intended for people who put themselves in harm’s way before they start firing. This legislative intention is crucial to interpretation of law, and the prosecution, defense, and judge know it. Because Zimmerman exited his vehicle, because he followed Martin, because his actions put him in a situation where he felt it necessary to shoot a boy dead, Peaden said, “The guy lost his defense right then. When he said, ‘I’m following him,’ he lost his defense.”

I’m not sure for whom that isn’t obvious. If Zimmerman had died that night instead of Martin, nothing but the most irrational jury would have found that Martin was not entitled to defend himself against an adult following on a rainy night with a gun. The insults about ignorant Floridians or how the law worked exactly as it is meant to - “and that’s what’s wrong” - distract from the fact that legislators never intended to create a “self defense of self defense” claim. It is unreasonable to think so, but we don’t address the truth of it: that the jurors’ verdict is an unreasonable one based upon unreasonable doubt.

President Obama further distracted from reason by delivering a speech focusing on challenges for Black males and commenting as though they are more criminally inclined than anyone else, suffer more than Black women who are penalized in our society both for race and gender, are not impacted by inequitable arrest and conviction rates, and are somehow relevant to the Zimmerman verdict because if they as a group clean up their act, then young Black males won’t be shot by people who are legitimately afraid of them. No mention was made of the fact that regardless of how you interpret the stats, odds are - and I really do mean actual ratios - that any individual Black person you encounter is unlikely to harm you. President Obama likewise spoke not about an African-American woman recently sentenced to 20 years for firing a warning shot over the head of an abusive husband (State of Florida v. Marissa Alexander). President Obama instead stated the obvious about the Zimmerman judge, jury, and attorneys: that they played their roles, and a verdict was reached.

The jury was instructed, “It is up to you to decide what evidence is reliable. You should use your common sense in deciding which is the best evidence, and which evidence should not be relied upon in considering your verdict.” This instruction presumes they had common sense.

We live in the Age of Unreason, a sad transition to what seems inevitable Idiocratic governance. At some point, we need to take a hard look at the tools measuring guilt, innocence, right, and wrong. ... or into Mike Judge’s prescient future we go.

Related Sources:
Idiocracy (2006)
State of Florida v. George Zimmerman jury instructions
President Obama Speaks on Trayvon Martin
'Stand Your Ground" law protects those who go far beyond that point, Tampa Bay Times (03/31/2012).
Jones, Van. ARE Blacks a Criminal Race? Surprising Statistics, Huffington Post (10/05/2005). Trayvon Martin's mother: Juror comments are 'devastating', Los Angeles Times (07/26/2013).

"March for Dignity" Seeks Release of Marissa Alexander & Resignation of Prosecutor Angela Corey, Democracy Now! (07/26/2013)
Tarr, Kathleen Antonia. Trayvon Martin and the Rhetoric of Justice in America, Cultural Weekly (07/25/2013).