Before there was Ferguson, there was Trayvon Martin. On February 26, 2012, Martin was shot and killed by neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman inside a Sanford, FL neighborhood, producing a ripple effect still being felt to this day. Zimmerman has been largely silent since his 2013 acquittal, but he is making up for lost time with a new video he recorded with his attorney, Howard Iken.
Asked who he blamed for the “highest level of unfairness” he has experienced since the shooting, Zimmerman was quick with an answer.
“By far, the president of the United States,” Zimmerman said. “Barack Hussein Obama. He had the most authority and, in that sense, I would hold him in the highest regard believing that he would hold that position and do his absolute best to not inflame racial tension in America.”
Zimmerman specifically criticized Obama for mentioning that if he had a son, he would look a lot like Trayvon. “To me, that was clearly a dereliction of duty pitting Americans against each other solely based on race.”
Zimmerman waited until now to speak out because he was still under investigation by the Justice Department. Eric Holder announced last month that they were putting that investigation to bed without charges, insisting that the “high legal standard” applicable to a civil rights case were to blame. Holder argued that these standards should be lowered.
Of course, the last thing we need to do is lower the legal bar needed to bring federal charges against a man who has already been acquitted by a jury of his peers. Our efforts would be better used to ask why Zimmerman’s case ever went to trial in the first place. The evidence clearly demonstrated that Martin initiated a violent confrontation, putting Zimmerman in fear for his life. It’s why he was acquitted, and it’s why he feels no remorse for what he did.
“Only in a true life-and-death situation can you have mental clearness to know that you cannot feel guilty for surviving,” Zimmerman said in the video.
To the race-baiters who have used the deaths of Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown to fuel their aims, the facts don’t matter. Only now, months later, are certain news organizations admitting that they got “hands up, don’t shoot” wrong in the Ferguson case. Most still refuse to admit that they were just as wrong in this one.
For George Zimmerman (and Darren Wilson), life will never be the same. Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Al Sharpton, and the liberal media have seen to that. That’s a shame, but it pales in comparison to the damage these hooligans have done to our country. By weaving divisive fictions, they have gouged deep wounds across our national psyche. It will take a long time for those wounds to heal, but they will never close as long as we keep picking the scab. We will never move forward until we admit, collectively, that these cases were never what they seemed to be.
And I’m not holding my breath.
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