Rest in Power: Part 3
I just finished Rest in Power: The Trayvon Martin Story, Part 3. This is the worst episode yet.
It starts with Trayvon Martin being compared to Emmett Till. Yes, they did that.
Then the show goes to Joy-Ann Reid of MSNBC scandal fame who has a recurring role explaining various aspects of narrative. She starts talking about the Marissa Alexander case and how Angela Corey prosecuted Ms. Alexander. Joy-Ann Reid knows nothing about stand your ground, and fails to explain how going to the garage, getting a gun, and then going back into the house to fire a warning shot is illegal and is not stand your ground. She simply juxtaposes a warning shot – which is implied to be harmless – with killing someone.
There was no legal analysis, simply feelings. Since Marissa Alexander is black and George Zimmerman is white, clearly Corey is racist regardless of what the law says.
This episode was supposed to be about the start of the case, but the middle 30 minutes was a Social Justice thesis. This is what was presented:
George Zimmerman was half white, half Afro-Peruvian. He had minority friends. Then he started dating and married a white woman so he tried to “become white.” Part of that was getting into guns because guns are part of “white christian male culture” and by liking guns he could be more white.
The aggressive racist Michael Eric Dyson launched into an explanation that Hispanics can be “white” by “not being black” and that George Zimmerman was trying to “aspire to be white.”
The NRA was brought up by the Social Justice commentator and attacked. The NRA was accused of having a business model in which it “scares white people into buying guns” and then tells the scared white people that they should be able to shoot anyone at anytime for not being white and scaring them.
Yes, this was really said. This is the history lesson talking from Bowling for Columbine. White people are paranoid of everyone that doesn’t look like them and want guns to shoot the people that scare them. That this is both wrong and horribly racist is never brought up.
The latter half of the episode went into the issuance of bail then the discovery a second passport and the change of the bail, as well as the funds raised by Zimmerman and his wife.
Where this really went off the rails was in the promotion of the idea that Zimmerman was some sort of Right Wing hero.
This can’t be restated enough, he wasn’t. A tiny fraction of people who are white supremacists did back him. Overwhelmingly the “other side” – the people who were not beatifying Trayvon – wanted the rule of law not the rule of emotion and hysteria. The creation of a narrative, the way Trayvon and Zimmerman were presented, all was a perversion of justice. Rather than deal with facts in a court, it was a show trial with the intent of a TV pop culture conviction and that is terrible.
Think about what we’ve seen in the last couple of days regarding the Unite the Right anniversary march. There were maybe a couple of dozen neo-Nazis. There were hundreds of Antifa. It was the Antifa that smashed stuff, attacked cops, and caused the havoc. The media has worked diligently to portray a pathetic group of white supremacists as the bread and butter of the Republican party, which as been denouncing them. On the other hand, the media has worked hard to cover up the Antifa violence, despite that Leftist pundits and talking heads defend Antifa.
Rest in Power is doing the same thing. It is trying to make the handful of racists who supported Zimmerman into being the core of the pro-self defense side, because it’s easier to say “they are all racists who wanted Trayvon to get shot” than it is to explain the importance of an impartial judicial system that runs on facts and not a media circus.
The whole point of this show is to re-litigate the case with the purpose of convicting Zimmerman, Trump, and everybody to the right of #BlackLivesMatter in the court of public opinion before an election.
