NOT GUILTY!

NOT GUILTY!

By

ROBERT HARKINS

I am one of that Boomer generation who in primordial ages past was enchanted by the daring adventures of the Lone Ranger—and his faithful Native American friend Tanto. Boomer children, particularly males thrilled to the powerful strains of Gioachino Rossini’s William Tell Overture, as it set the pace for their mad gallop across the western plains.

Justice was so simple then.  No one died, not really. There were wicked men of course but they were quickly and painlessly brought to justice. There were  beautiful damsels in distress but they were always saved just “in the nick of time” still pure and untouched.

In the Lone Ranger’s chivalrous and imaginary Old West there was always a crime brewing somewhere, a bank robbed, a cagey crook at work stealing a poor man’s farm, a virgin maiden oppressed by a horny villain. The bad guy was always easy to recognize. Invariably he was the only one wearing a store-bought shiny suit; worse still, he sported a pencil thin mustache, smiled deviously and pretended to be nice. You know the type.

Sometimes the plot would center upon the plight of an innocent man charged with murder. A wild mob of hairy looking white guys, one toting a hanging rope, are demanding of the sheriff that Billy Bob, jailed and charged with a dastardly crime, be set free simply because the mob believe him to be overripe for hanging. They demand, therefore, that he be hoisted up to swing from the nearest tree.

The sheriff invariably shouts at the lynch mob, “You all can’t hang Billy Bob; why he ain’t even had a fair trial yet!”

To which the guy with the rope counters logically by his dim lights, “Well, daw gone it, let’s give em”a fair trial and then hang em!”  

In the end the Lone Ranger, his pearl handled Colt .45 loaded with “silver bullets” symbolic of purity, truth and justice” saves Billy Bob, rescues the pure maiden unspoiled from the clutches of her villain and exposes the mustached guy in the suit for the guilty, low-down, no-good cad that he is.

The ending is a happy one. Justice is done. Thereupon, the Lone Ranger and Tonto, hiding just out of camera range wait until someone always asks,

“Say, who was that masked man anyway?

Then again, to the powerful strains of the William Tell Overture, the Lone Ranger’s mounts his stallion Silver, rears up and shouts out “Hi-yo Silver! Away” and off they go.

That’s how it goes in the old-time movies; justice prevails always. There is no real pain or infamy. There is no real human suffering;  men are “winged” get flesh wound, but no one really dies.

In real time, however, in an expression of the blunt and merciless  power of human hatred, the New Black Panther Party, while calling for “a red sea of white blood” placed a reward for the capture of “White-Hispanic” George Zimmerman dead or alive.

Zimmerman now stands charged with Second Degree murder for the shooting death of African American, Trayvon Martin. The prosecutor did not present the constitutional threshold of “probable cause” to a grand jury. Instead one Andrea Corey, a prosecutor appointed by the Governor drafted Zimmerman’s indictment for Second Degree Murder. Ms. Corey and the government that supported her indictment were inspired not by evidence of guilt but by moral and political cowardice.

Later a gang of twenty angry African-Americans concerned apparently with the “guilty” Zimmerman’s violation of Martin’s civil rights screamed out his name as they kicked, beat and pummeled nearly to death a white guy who happened by.

The white guy, running for his life, made it to the front porch of his house but not in time to open and close his front door against an unprincipled, racist mob indifferent to whether he lived or died. He is now hospitalized in critical condition. The mob knew of course that he was innocent, that he had nothing whatever to do with Martin’s  death. But that was not their point.  Their point was that the white guy is white and they are black and insofar as the “white” Zimmerman was not available for stomping he would simply have to do—at least for the time being.

The mainstream media cut and pasted a recorded conversation between Zimmerman and the police dispatcher so as to contrive a blatant falsehood: that Zimmerman instead of answering the dispatcher’s question as to Martin’s race, volunteered instead that Martin was “black.” In a single cut and paste, in a towering act of journalistic mendacity, NBC characterized Zimmerman as a white racist so vicious and insatiable that he was willing to take the life of an African-American teenager simply to satisfy his hatred of all human beings who are black. 

Apparently, according to the first principles of a “critical race theory” conceived  in the tormented mind of the late Derick Bell, President Obama’s mentor, a man may be white for racial purposes even if as it happens he is not white but Hispanic or for that matter Korean or Hindustani.  

  

Dr. Thomas Sowell writes that,  

“An amazing proportion of the media has given us a painful demonstration of the thinking — and lack of thinking — that prevailed back in the days of the old Jim Crow South, where complexion counted more than facts in determining how people were treated.” All these verbal games grow out of the notion that complexion tells you who is to be blamed and who is not. It is a dangerous game because race is no game. If the tragic history of the old Jim Crow South in this country is not enough to show that, the history of racial and ethnic tragedies is written in blood in countries around the world. Millions have lost their lives because they looked different, talked differently, or belonged to a different religion. Thomas Sowell: “Media gives Zimmerman Jim Crow treatment,”  Orange country Register, April 2012.

In 1992 four police officers arrested an intoxicated African-American Mr. Rodney King following a late night, high-speed car chase through crowded streets. A video showed the police officers mercilessly beating Mr. King during the course of his arrest. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. African Americans then began a riot that would last for weeks. 9000 National Guard troops were called in to quell  the burning  of buildings and the casual slaughter of American citizens, 54 Americans of diverse races to be exact. 

The torching of buildings and the mass looting of stores, in political protest of the jury’s verdict, continued for weeks. “By then 54 people had died and 3,000 businesses were destroyed with around $1 billion in damages.” Twenty Years After The Los Angeles Riots latino voices Louis Rodriquez May 1, 2012

Death and destruction however were not reserved strictly for white people. Thousands of Korean immigrants, lawful citizens of the United States, once extremely poor but always ready to work tirelessly lost most of the wealth and property they had won by  their unceasing effort. Some stood armed upon the rooftops of small stores wherein they sold squid and kimchi, beans, rice and miso paste. But still many of their stores were burnt to the ground, their inventory stolen or destroyed.

“More than 2,000 Korean-run businesses were damaged or destroyed, with an estimated $400 million in losses. Two-thirds were not insured.

 But the cost went deeper. Many Koreans lost their bearings in the L.A. riots.

"They felt betrayed. It was overwhelming," said Cho, who coordinated counseling for thousands. "They said, 'I can tolerate that my business burns.' But their psychological anger toward this society — that was more intolerable.

"

Most were immigrants with little money or education. "They looked at America like heaven," Cho said.

They did not know whom to blame in the riots' messy tableau of racial violence and class warfare.

The looters? The police who failed to protect their shops? The Simi Valley jury that acquitted the officers of beating Rodney King?

Like their black customers, many Koreans thought the verdict was unjust. "They were sympathetic," Cho said. "Then they were destroyed." Sandy Banks Los Angeles Times May1.2012

Justice is not nearly so innocent in reality as it is in the fantastic stories of a distant childhood. Now many soto voce are engaged in fearful speculation. What will be their fate, and the fate of this nation should Zimmerman be found by his jury, “Not Guilty.”