Small Problems

Global warming is a hoax and we’re dwelling in post-racial America. Not. I’d still be wondering what happened to spring, why my kid was wearing long sleeves until the last week of school, but my swiss cheese brain has melted into a tiny puddle of goo.

I can’t fathom how a man who chooses to carry a gun, chooses to whirl himself into that adrenaline feuled state, who stalks another person, causing them fear and terror, causing them to be in an adrenaline feuled state isn’t culpable for what results. It kills me to hear the Zimmerman’s saying that the tall, skinny teenager with a pocket full of skittles was also armed, he used the pavement as a deadly weapon. Well, seems to me that the pavement was quite innocuous until Mr. Zimmerman turned it into a weapon by stalking a stranger and scaring them into protecting themselves with whatever means necessary. And that assumes that the boy did smash the man’s head into the pavement, I don’t know, I wasn’t there, but I do know who left their home armed with a gun and looking for trouble, and who went out to get a snack. Was the young man a perfect model of youth? Don't know, don't care. That night he causing trouble for anyone, just strolling along with a snack in his pocket and a girl on the phone, minding his own business before getting scared shitless and then getting dead.

Where was the suggestion that “excuse me sir, are you lost?” might have clued Mr. Z into what this young man was “up to”. A simple act of civility or minding his own damned business because someone isn’t suspicious until they’re jimmying open a door or climbing through a window and even that, very often has a logical explanation. Lost keys perhaps? You know when you intervene Mr. Citizen? When someone's getting attacked, when there's already violence going on, you intervene or you call for help.

Mr. Zimmerman is an adult. Adults should know not to stalk other people, especially if they’re afraid of them. They call the police, they keep watch from a safe distance or they go home. We are not a well-ordered militia.

I also don’t understand why prosecutors allow themselves to be outflanked, was going to say, outgunned, but that’s too awful a pun. There must have been many willing, able, civil rights attorneys willing to consult pro-bono, how is it that the prosecution in these big cases are the only ones who don’t read the news, they might have gotten a clue, that in fact, there was a smattering of racial profiling going on. Why do they allow themselves to get clobbered this way? Did they want to loose? I’m not one for conspiracy theories and I really don’t care if there was a second shooter, I just know JFK is dead, but what gives with this ineptitude?

My heart hurts for every ethnic parent of a son, who has to have the uncomfortable conversation with their boys that I’ll never have to have with mine. How to behave when the police pull them over for being black, probably over and over, how to handle strangers fearing them with no cause, how to handle the fear and stupidity and recklessness of lesser people, small-minded, yet arrogant people.

I’d go on and on, but I have an overheated, grumpy little person downstairs stomping around to get my attention. My problems are small.