The start of 2021 is getting more bizarre each day. Facing a stack of executive orders, Joe Biden, near a hot mic, mutters, “I don’t know what I’m signing.” Learning that she and Ted Cruz agree about the Gamestop market manipulation, AOC accuses the senator of attempted murder.
On Friday, Black Lives Matter (BLM), an organization that contributes to, if not foments riots in which at least 25 people have died, has been nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize. As Sean Hannity is fond of saying, "You can't make this stuff up."
BLM came into existence in 2013, in response to what its founders deemed to be a miscarriage of justice and non-existent legal regard for black lives. However, was the verdict a miscarriage of justice? For defending himself after his nose had been broken and his head was being smashed into the sidewalk, George Zimmerman was acquitted for killing Trayvon Martin, 17 months earlier.
Fair Beyond Reason
Many years have passed. Anyone who claims that the trial was not fair didn't follow it closely and likely relied on media sound bites. In the face of intense media and public scrutiny, it is difficult to imagine a more thorough review of all available evidence by both sides. Yet, most of the media coverage remains to this day highly biased in favor of Martin.
A compelling police account of the shooting, supported by forensic analysis, revealed that Martin perpetrated "an unprovoked attack" on Zimmerman, first punching him in the face, then knocking him to the ground and repeatedly bashing his head into the sidewalk, before attempting to grab Zimmerman's gun. Even with overwhelming evidence that Zimmerman feared for his life and acted in self-defense, Martin's supporters ignored the evidence and haven't budged since.
Martin's supporters ignore the time gap between when Martin first spoke about Zimmerman on his cell phone to a friend and when he actually confronted and struck Zimmerman.
During four minutes, Martin had ample time to traverse the forty yards back to his father's apartment, at most a forty-second walk. Martin's supporters rail about Zimmerman leaving his car, but they don't concede that Martin lingered outdoors for four minutes, and then confronted and assaulted Zimmerman.
A Life of Drugs and Violence
The press has downplayed or altogether ignored Martin's likely state of mind on this day in which he noticed a "creepy-ass cracker" following him. Two days before the incident, he had been suspended from school for theft, this being his third suspension.
The press described Martin as a "sweet" boy, although he had made videos of himself beating other people and laughing while doing it. He also had boasted online about striking a bus driver in the face.
Martin had been smoking pot, which can impair judgment, when he encountered Zimmerman. The mainstream media downplayed his purchase of "Skittles" and iced-tea. These two items are major ingredients in the homemade production of a hard drug known as "purple." Martin was a drug user and, as uncovered by investigative blogs, a drug dealer to his classmates.
A troubled seventeen-year-old, even with his father present in his life, Martin became pre-disposed to theft and thuggery. Tracy Martin, his father, was a long-time gang member, who introduced his son to guns and drugs. Weeks before the Zimmerman trial, Tracy Martin's gang-signifying neck tattoo was altered to disguise his affiliation.
Merely a Short Walk
To ignore Trayvon Martin's propensity for intermittent violence or to suggest that after he spotted Zimmerman he did not become the aggressor is pure folly. Martin was a football player, with a lean, tough body, standing nearly six feet tall; he was no adolescent. For newspapers, major web sites, and rally protestors to continue to exhibit pictures of Martin at a younger age, in his red burgundy "Hollister" t-shirt, perhaps before he embarked on a life of constant crime, is a disservice to society.
Might most other seventeen-year-olds of any race, build, or family situation used the four minutes available to return home?
It is tragic for a young man to be killed heading back to his father's house when he had, at first, apparently been doing nothing wrong. To the chagrin of BLM founders, the preponderance of evidence reveals that the legal system worked as it should and that Trayvon Martin was the precipitating force leading to his own death. As such, BLM was founded on a lie, while currently maintaining a huge presence at violent, domestic uprisings.
How exactly does that square up with a Nobel Peace Prize nomination?