STOP CRUCIFYING GEORGE ZIMMERMAN April 10, 2012

“Ahh Zimmerman killed a boy because he was black! Outrage! Lock him up! He’s guilty! This is hate!”

Um, not really. America(ns) needs to grow up, and people need to stop obsessing over this Trayvon Martin case. Please. You weren’t there, and you aren’t on the grand jury (which, by the way, is no longer even a factor). In short: you have no idea what you’re talking about.

First of all, I’m not directing this toward legitimate and fact-checking news sources who simply report what’s happening (without altering audio samples). I’m directing this toward the assholes in comments sections, blogs, their own articles, etc, who think they somehow know better than all the people actually involved the case. (Spoiler alert: they don’t.)

Second of all, let me say that would I never, under any circumstances, advocate or condone murder for any reason (including, obviously, racism or hatred). That being said, I simply wasn’t there. Very few people were. Stop effing speculating.

I get it. I do. This is a tragedy any way you slice it. That being said, people want a cause to rally behind, and hate crimes, bullies, and so forth, are today’s hot topics. And they damn well should be! Perpetrators of hate crimes, bullies, and the like, are the most despicable brand of criminal (and ironically, one of the few things activists can legitimately use to justify their own feelings of unabashed hatred; a testament to just how awful these criminals are). That’s not the problem. The problem is this juvenile mob mentality that escalates to a national, very public stage, before anybody acknowledges that nobody really knows what the hell happened. They just… decide. That’s bad.

In fact, taking justice into one’s own hands is a general no-no for this very reason. It’s one of the main reasons we have a justice system, instead of just a bunch of angry people who simply decide: our government has made the determination that people (both individuals and mobs of them) are incapable of enforcing true, fair justice based on how they feel. Which is usually angry.

So people scream and shout and clamor for justice, without actually honoring what justice really is. Of course, they aren’t taking justice into their own hands. Except for the death threat-ers and those folks, who are coming close, sort of. And maybe the Black Panther Party with their reward for Zimmerman’s capture. But it’s those sorts of angry attitudes that reinforce why people aren’t allowed to do take justice into their own hands in the first place.

Anyhow, all of this rambling is to say that people need to stop getting behind a stance that they really don’t have the evidence to support. People: you aren’t standing for anything. You aren’t supporting Trayvon, you aren’t bringing a killer to justice. You aren’t doing anything except looking stupid. To have passion without knowledge is really more of a hollow shell of what passion should be, rather than the sort of passion that’s worth admiring or listening to or not laughing at. So to clear it up for you: you don’t have conviction. You’re just angry and yelling, and volume does not equal righteousness. Ordinarily, this would be the place to say “go get your facts straight.” But nobody knows what the facts really are.

Do I think Zimmerman should be put away if it’s determined that he did, in fact, kill Martin for any reason other than self defense? Abso-freaking-lutely. And if that’s what the courts decide then fine; I’ll be happy to have seen justice done. But do I know enough about what actually occurred to say that’s really what happened? Not even close. And neither do you.