Why "All Lives Matters" is wrong

[Berzerker]

Has it ever been pointed out to you that a prerequisite to "losing him" was "following him"?

Yes, the creeper did "lose him." The stalk was unsuccessful, thus the hunter became the hunted.

If you lose someone, you're not watching or following them any more. So what was Zimmerman doing after he lost Martin? Walking around talking to 911 wondering if Martin was headed for the entrance and where to meet the cops.

Which happened after he left his car and followed down that path.

Which means Zimmerman wasn't watching or following Martin after losing him.

A creeper follows me in a car when I'm on foot, yeah, I cut down a path he can't follow with his car. Because yes, I avoid confrontations where I might have to hurt someone.

If the creeper gets out of their car and continues to follow me I am quite certain they are not someone who shares my views about avoiding confrontations.

Then why didn't he confront him at his truck? No, the creeper intent on a violent confrontation waited for Martin to disappear into the complex and then he waited for Martin to attack him.

Now I have a situation. There is someone who by all indications is dangerous, and they have clearly taken some unhealthy interest in me. There are decisions to be made.

And you...get in their face and attack because they're dangerous and should be avoided. Right? Didn't Martin refer to Zimmerman as 5-0, ie 'the man', or security?

In my case eliminate the threat, because anyone taking an unhealthy interest in me and willing to have a confrontation is also a danger to other people is a significant weight in that decision making process. I also lack Trayvon Martin's clean record so I share his reality that when the police get involved there will be strong bias cutting against me. So, yeah, the only difference between me and Trayvon Martin is that I am extremely wary of being overconfident, and fully aware that striking quickly and fading into the night is my only option. Zimmerman wouldn't have had the opportunity to have a confrontation with me. His choice to seek such a confrontation would have been sufficient to net him the consequences it deserved.

If these are your plans the next time a neighborhood watch person becomes a threat, maybe you shouldn't be admitting to the crime here. But I do detect a double standard, its fine for Martin to attack a neighborhood watch person because you think Zimmerman was a creeper, but Zimmerman was wrong to view Martin as a possible criminal. Well, Zimmerman wasn't a creeper, just a neighborhood watch volunteer trying to reduce crime and the person he called the cops on was.... a criminal.

"I didn't want to shoot him, it just turns out that when I challenged him to a wrestling match while wearing a gun on my hip his hand got close to it."

So now you have Zimmerman starting the fight while his gun remained on his hip?

Indeed, the real irony is that the way you and Skele are characterizing Trayvon Martin is actually how George Zimmerman was/is. But that's par for the course of racism in America. If you're black you gotta do twice the work to get half the credit a white person would get. If you're Trayvon Martin you have to be, literally, an angel before people will look at you as a human being.

Zimmerman's a Peruvian Jew, but he gets the white man's sins dumped on him? The real irony is their skin color is only relevant to you, I could care less. My position wouldn't change if it was a black neighborhood watch person being attacked by a Peruvian Jew.

Trayvon Martin was a criminal? What was his criminal record?

He attacked a neighborhood watch volunteer and tried to bash his skull in

I mean, if you're going to chase "criminals" up and down the street, you should expect to get dusted up. You can't play at being a hero if there's no danger involved, and you don't get to start killing people when it turns out you forgot to bring your big-boy pants.

You should offer that advice in an opinion letter to the local paper the next time a cop is killed in the line of duty...

I mean seriously. We're talking about somebody following a minor around in a car and on foot, a minor the police have told him to leave alone. In what universe is Zimmerman not acting like a wannabe rapist but for the obvious conclusion that his fetish manages to be even worse than that?

The dispatcher told him not to follow and he complied. His 'fetish' was a neighborhood freaked out enough by a rash of burglaries to motivate residents to risk their necks to keep watch. He called the cops and tried to give them an idea where Martin was headed. Thats his 'crime'...

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The dispatcher told him not to follow and he complied. His 'fetish' was a neighborhood freaked out enough by a rash of burglaries to motivate residents to risk their necks to keep watch.

Zimmerman wasn't motivated by "a freaked out neighborhood." He was motivated by "oh boy maybe i can get in a confrontation and hey I have a gun."

 

[Kyriakos]

Not sure if Zimmerman is really the current topic

I mean, that was one person. Fearing an entire police force due to system-approved easy use of lethal force is somewhat more serious.

 

[Senethro]

The fact that the same bad arguments and post-mortem character assassinations come out to defend an un-uniformed schmuck as a cop convinces me this is a race thing, not a law enforcement/crime thing.

 

[Ryika]

OK. Now this is a topic that I have posted at length about before, but before I go through all that... Do you accept the premise "the increased rates of (violent) crime happening in poor areas" can also be a reflection of the increased rates of police presence and enforcement happening in poor areas?

In other words, the police are much more aggressive about monitoring, stopping, arresting and charging when it comes to poor people/areas, and the Courts are harsher in convicting/sentencing them. This creates higher crime statistics for those people/areas, and those statistics are then used to justify more/harsher enforcement on those communities, leading to more skewed statistics... and so on. Do you see this?

Yes, I do think "being policed" causes more crimes, especially if the people trying to police an area are not doing a professional job.
However, you seem to imply that is one of the main factors, and that is just ridiculous in my eyes. If you have a good job, a stable family, an overall good life, and the only really problem you face is the cops who are over-policing you, then you don't become a criminal. You become a criminal because none of the positive, life-stabilizing factors apply.

That's what needs to be fixed for those low-income areas, and America doesn't do a good job at helping the people in the poor areas.
The social systems do nothing to help people get out of the ghettos, quite the opposite, badly funded schools in those areas already set them onto a path of failure.

Now, given my above point, maybe you can see why I can't agree with your conclusion... You see poor people as "the bad" people who need to be taken down. I say this because I asked you this specifically and you responded that yes, because of the higher crime statistics in the "poor areas" that's where the armed police need to be because that's where the bad people are, who in your words "need to be taken down".

No, I don't see them as bad people at all. I see them as people who are in a weak position, with nobody to help them up, and in such a situation, yes, some of them unfortunately start to do bad things.

That's sad, and again, America as a society should start thinking about what can actually be done to increase social mobility, and how to de-ghettorize districts without just forcing the poor people there to move elsewhere. But these people still have to be policed, especially if they're serious criminals. That's what the police is for, and that's their job. If there's a bad guy, and he or she is an active threat to the lives of other people or the cops, then killing him is perfectly justified, and them doing their job.

And that is the problem... I am certain that many people, including (especially) the police have that same outlook. They view the poor as the bad people. The poor areas are where the bad people are... the poor areas are where all the crime is happening... But as I've demonstrated above that's flawed reasoning, and that is why I reject the premise that "we need the cops to be effective at taking down the bad people"... because I realize that the cops, like you and many others, have a faulty notion of who "the bad people" are. So no, I have no interest in helping the cops be more effective at killing the people they perceive to be "the bad people", because their perceptions are flawed, based on catch-22, circular reasoning.

But nobody said that. You, and you alone, built that whole premise in your head that with "the bad people" we mean "poor people", or people from ghettos. I didn't say that, and I think this post demonstrates that my view on people from these areas is more nuanced than you try to make it look.

The main issue is that your past doesn't justify your actions. I can have all the sympathy for a person, can understand the struggle they had to go through in your life, and again, I think society at large should help those low-income areas, but if after all of that you end up being a person who goes around robbing and murdering people, and you end up in front of a cop, shooting at them, and then yes, you've become a bad guy, and you being shot at is the right outcome. Stopping you from hurting more people is what the cop is there to do.

 

[KmDubya]

The fact that the same bad arguments and post-mortem character assassinations come out to defend an un-uniformed schmuck as a cop convinces me this is a race thing, not a law enforcement/crime thing.

The same arguments keep coming up because frequently the dead guy was also the instigator of the violence.

Michael Brown chose to rob the store and then chose to walk down the middle of the street prompting the cop to take notice. When confronted he chose violence against an armed cop which resulted in his death. His parents failed to teach him common sense and instead promoted a thug lifestyle for him. The upside is that he did not pass his criminal tendencies onto any children and he saved the taxpayers a lifetime of prison expense.

After breaking the initial contact, Trayvon Martin had the choice to either:
A.) Avoid Zimmerman and return to his father's house
B.) Openly walk to his father's house, while informing the neighborhood watch guy, Zimmerman, that he had every right to be there and to go back to his car and look for bad guys or whatever.
C.) initiate a fist fight with a cracker who he was soundly whupping until the gun came into play.

He chose option C and ended up dead. His choice and his fault.

If Trayvon had instead been 'Buford Jackson', poor white trash with a confederate flag on his belt buckle and Zimmerman was black none of the defenders of Trayvon here on the forums or in the media would have been defending the dead white guy, while I'd still defend the shooter regardless of his race as he was in the right.

 

[Senethro]

Nope, because a neighbourhood watch guy is a random chump, not a uniformed law officer. He does not have any authority, or the right to stalk and intimidate.

Only one skin colour has the right to stand their ground.

 

[KmDubya]

Nope, because a neighbourhood watch guy is a random chump, not a uniformed law officer. He does not have any authority, or the right to stalk and intimidate.

Only one skin colour has the right to stand their ground.

So starting a fight with a random chump is cool as long as he's a cracker and you think you can take him?

Trayvon would have been guilty of assault for his attack on Zimmerman, while being a neighborhood watch and mistakenly following an innocent person is not a crime.

 

[Senethro]

His parents failed to teach him common sense and instead promoted a thug lifestyle for him. The upside is that he did not pass his criminal tendencies onto any children and he saved the taxpayers a lifetime of prison expense.

This is the part of the post that crosses into race/class hatred. The incredible resentment that a cent of "good" peoples money should be wasted on "bad" people, and note the inclusion of children in the bad people category. This is the attitude that prevents America having a sensible healthcare system and defunds inner city schools infavour of the suburbs, repeating segregated schooling while feigning innocence.

 

[Ryika]

Nope, because a neighbourhood watch guy is a random chump, not a uniformed law officer. He does not have any authority, or the right to stalk and intimidate.

But that doesn't change anything.

Let's say a woman is harassing a guy in the streets, calling him names, throwing gender-specific slurs at him.
He then turns around and starts beating her, wants to cause her harm.
She draws a gun and shoots him in self-defense.

Was her stalking and namecalling justified? Nope.
Was him turning around and beating her justified? Nope.
Was her drawing the gun and shooting him in self-defense justified? Absolutely.

Trayvon Martin was the exact same thing. Zimmerman did something he probably shouldn't have done, and is rightfully being called out for that. Then Trayvon Martin does something that he totally shouldn't have done, assaulting a man. That man then shoots him in self-defense, and is perfectly justified to do so. Because while he has instigated the whole thing, he was not the one who escalated the thing to turn into a violent conflict. He was the one who was physically attacked and in the process of being harmed. (At least that's what the evidence that was presented during the trial suggests.)

BLM then tried to portray Trayvon Martin as an innocent young boy who didn't do anything wrong. People who had actually looked into the whole thing call BS on that. Then people like you come in and say it's a racial thing. What?

 

[KmDubya]

This is the part of the post that crosses into race/class hatred. The incredible resentment that a cent of "good" peoples money should be wasted on "bad" people, and note the inclusion of children in the bad people category. This is the attitude that prevents America having a sensible healthcare system and defunds inner city schools infavour of the suburbs, repeating segregated schooling while feigning innocence.

Resources are limited and should not be wasted on lost causes.

All information portray Michael Brown as a thug who frequently committed petty crime like robbing the store. Eventually he'd have either graduated to committing major felonies or turning his life around and becoming a productive member. based on how he tried to attack an armed cop I'm betting that he was going to go with the major felony lifestyle. He made his choices.

If he had fathered a few kids beforehand he'd have condemned them to crime ridden life of misery as he'd have left them to be raised by a single mother which is the biggest indicator of future problems in life that there is.

The failure of the inner city is primarily a cultural failing where something like 85% of all black kids are now raised in fatherless homes. That is the root of most of the issues. School funding is not the problem, how schools choose to allocate their funding is. Time after time a Charter school that parents can choose to send their kids to will drastically outperform a heavily subsidized government bureaucracy school. But school choice can't be allowed due to the all powerful Teachers Unions that own the Democratic party. Political race hustlers like Sharpton don't want to fix anything as the status quo is what keeps them in the money.

But I can see that is much easier to call me a racist then to actually try and solve the problem. After all its all about virtue signaling to your peers rather than actual results.

 

[Traitorfish]

Let's say a woman is harassing a guy in the streets, calling him names, throwing gender-specific slurs at him.
He then turns around and starts beating her, wants to cause her harm.
She draws a gun and shoots him in self-defense.

On the surface, this sounds like somebody deliberately provoking a person into attacking them, so they can shoot that them, because that's how they get their rocks off.

And I'm not saying that isn't a plausible analogy for the Zimmerman/Martin case. Just, not one I'd expect drawn in Zimmerman's defence.

 

[Ryika]

On the surface, this sounds like somebody deliberately provoking a person into attacking them, so they can shoot that them, because that's how they get their rocks off.

Sure, but even then then, the factor of self-defense still applies. The man would still be responsible for his actions, and his actions would still not be justified. Presenting him as the victim of that confrontation when he actively went into a physical confrontation is just nonsensical.

The best you can get out of it is that two people did things they shouldn't have done. I'm not sure if provoking a situation where you have the right to defend yourself is illegal in America, so maybe her intent would change the outcome for her, but it doesn't change anything about his actions, they were still unacceptable and wrong.

Unless of course she was a Nazi, then his actions would of course have been totally justified, as decided in that other thread.

And I'm not saying that isn't a plausible analogy for the Zimmerman/Martin case. Just, not one I'd expect drawn in Zimmerman's defence.

Which makes it all the more questionable that people claim it's a racial thing to say Zimmerman was justified in defending himself, especially when they're saying that in the face of people who even say that Zimmerman's behavior was based on unjustified prejudice.

Both people acted terribly, but only one of them committed an act of illegal violence. Defending and trying to minimize Trayvon Martin's actions because he ended up as a black guy killed by a white person, accusing people of racial prejudice because they are not willing to accept the narrative of him being an innocent victim, even making him a martyr of a movement is ridiculous. And of course I'm not saying you do that, but some people do.

 

[Senethro]

Resources are limited and should not be wasted on lost causes.

All information portray Michael Brown as a thug who frequently committed petty crime like robbing the store. Eventually he'd have either graduated to committing major felonies or turning his life around and becoming a productive member. based on how he tried to attack an armed cop I'm betting that he was going to go with the major felony lifestyle. He made his choices.

If he had fathered a few kids beforehand he'd have condemned them to crime ridden life of misery as he'd have left them to be raised by a single mother which is the biggest indicator of future problems in life that there is.

The failure of the inner city is primarily a cultural failing where something like 85% of all black kids are now raised in fatherless homes. That is the root of most of the issues. School funding is not the problem, how schools choose to allocate their funding is. Time after time a Charter school that parents can choose to send their kids to will drastically outperform a heavily subsidized government bureaucracy school. But school choice can't be allowed due to the all powerful Teachers Unions that own the Democratic party. Political race hustlers like Sharpton don't want to fix anything as the status quo is what keeps them in the money.

But I can see that is much easier to call me a racist then to actually try and solve the problem. After all its all about virtue signaling to your peers rather than actual results.

The racist bit is how you judge the death as good after the fact based on who it happened to, and ignore the injustice of the act itself.

 

[Traitorfish]

Sure, but even then then, the factor of self-defense still applies. The man would still be responsible for his actions, and his actions would still not be justified. Presenting him as the victim of that confrontation when he actively went into a physical confrontation is just nonsensical.

I'm not so sure. I think that your right to avoid a belt on the gob, or at any rate your right to deal out lethal violence to that end, extends only to the point you do not actively invite it through belligerence and obnoxiousness. You can't behave in such a way that a reasonable person may expect violence to result, even if that exception is that other people are not reasonable, and then start killing people when things turn out precisely as expected.

Perhaps it's a cultural thing.

Both people acted terribly, but only one of them committed an act of illegal violence. Defending and trying to minimize Trayvon Martin's actions because he ended up as a black guy killed by a white person, accusing people of racial prejudice because they are not willing to accept the narrative of him being an innocent victim, even making him a martyr of a movement is ridiculous. And of course I'm not saying you do that, but some people do.

What did Martin actually do, that was so despicable? He confronted an aggressive stranger. Unwise, perhaps, but understandable, perhaps even justifiable; we certainly don't have clear enough evidence to claim that he escalated the situation, rather than simply meeting Zimmerman's aggression. Does that not fall under the sacred and inviolable right of self-defence?

 

[Sommerswerd]

What did Martin actually do, that was so despicable?

You already know the answer to that...

 

[Ryika]

What did Martin actually do, that was so despicable? He confronted an aggressive stranger. Unwise, perhaps, but understandable, perhaps even justifiable; we certainly don't have clear enough evidence to claim that he escalated the situation, rather than simply meeting Zimmerman's aggression. Does that not fall under the sacred and inviolable right of self-defence?

At the very least, he sat on Zimmerman and was punching him, while Zimmerman yelled for help at one point, that's what the only eye witness of the physical encounter says, and it does fit Zimmerman's injuries. The autopsy didn't find any signs of attacks against Trayvon Martin, and Zimmerman's own account of what happened (which for obvious reasons we can't put too much value on, but it does fit what was found during the autopsy) was that Trayvon jumped him.

So what did he do? Most likely instigate violence against Zimmerman, who then shot him.
The alternative that Zimmerman, who was bigger and better trained, instigated violence without managing to do any harm to Martin's body, seems very unlikely to me.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Yes, I do think "being policed" causes more crimes, especially if the people trying to police an area are not doing a professional job.
However, you seem to imply that is one of the main factors, and that is just ridiculous in my eyes. If you have a good job, a stable family, an overall good life, and the only really problem you face is the cops who are over-policing you, then you don't become a criminal. You become a criminal because none of the positive, life-stabilizing factors apply.

That's what needs to be fixed for those low-income areas, and America doesn't do a good job at helping the people in the poor areas. The social systems do nothing to help people get out of the ghettos, quite the opposite, badly funded schools in those areas already set them onto a path of failure.

It seems like there are a couple premises that aren't fully clear between us here and the rest of your post builds on those, so I will just leave that aside and focus on the first part. So the first thing is... When you say "being policed causes more crimes", are you saying that bad/unprofessional policing provokes people into negative situations and crime? Or are you saying that the mere presence and scrutiny of the police, whether warranted or not, can irritate people and provoke them into crime? Or both of these? If it is one (or both) of these, then I would agree with you on some (not all) of that point, however, you are not understanding the point I was making and I need to explain it better. The rest of your post seems to flow from this apparent misunderstanding, which is why I'm not going into the rest.

Also, can you give me a sort of general picture of what you mean by "poor areas" and "ghettos" in the part I bolded? Since we're talking about America, can you describe to me, just a very basic, general image of what kind of area you're talking about. And just to be sure I don't misunderstand you... it seems like you are using the term "ghettos" and "poor areas" interchangeably like "poor-area/ghetto". Is that right?

 

[Ryika]

It seems like there are a couple premises that aren't fully clear between us here and the rest of your post builds on those, so I will just leave that aside and focus on the first part. So the first thing is... When you say "being policed causes more crimes", are you saying that bad/unprofessional policing provokes people into negative situations and crime? Or are you saying that the mere presence and scrutiny of the police, whether warranted or not, can irritate people and provoke them into crime? Or both of these? If it is one (or both) of these, then I would agree with you on that point, however, you are not understanding the point I was making and I need to explain it better. The rest of your post seems to flow from this apparent misunderstanding, which is why I'm not going into the rest.

Both of them are true. Being policed will cause resentment on its own, even in most clear cases of the police doing a good job. A son is being charged for a crime that they say they didn't commit? Even if there's evidence to show that the son committed the crime, in many cases the family will start resenting the police for that. At the very least subconsciously, but you also end up with enough cases where people simply want to believe that "Our Little Jimmy is not a criminal!" and go into denial, even in the face of clear evidence that he is.

Now, such cases are local, and normally, the overall impact of that would be a positive one. The family may start resenting the police more, but everybody who looks at the case reasonably will think they did a good job. However, add a high crime rate where many people have such cases in their families, where most people hear anecdotes of police arresting people who "were innocent", and your overall resentment of the police will go up significantly, because you get to a point where these stories are so common-place that people start doubting the story put out by the police. Add a racial element, and the "us vs. them"-mentality gets to a boiling point where even a police force that makes no mistakes, and does their best to keep people save, may be seen as enemies by parts of the population living in those areas.

The fact that there are officers who are badly trained, racially motivated, and/or very confrontational magnifies that problem significantly (and gives validity to the resentment of the people), but it would still exist in areas with high crime rates, even if police didn't make mistakes.

Also, can you give me a sort of general picture of what you mean by "poor areas" and "ghettos" in the part I bolded? Since we're talking about America, can you describe to me, just a very basic, general image of what kind of area you're talking about. And just to be sure I don't misunderstand you... it seems like you are using the term "ghettos" and "poor areas" interchangeably like "poor-area/ghetto". Is that right?

Well, I used these terms lightly. What I mean with both are crime-ridden areas with mostly people who have only low-income jobs available to them (if they have jobs at all), and little chance to move up in the american society.

 

[Bamspeedy]

There will always be poor areas, the difference being just how poor and run-down it is. You could ban trailer parks (some places have), you could set stricter building codes for apartment buildings and more enforcement on all buildings. Some buildings are sub-optimal, if it's left standing it can be rented out cheaply, if it's torn down and rebuilt, it's now too expensive for the poor to rent there. Obviously if it's likely to collapse, you need to tear it down.

Being policed more also creates an illusion of more crime merely because an officer is more likely to see it. Drug use and underage drinking may be just as common in urban poor area as it is in rural/suburban area. A couple dozen kids having a loud party out on some farmhouse or a couple dozen kids having a loud party in an apartment, which is more likely to have the cops show up?