Zimmerman verdict: Not Guilty.

[smax]

Because I had roughly three options. 1) Attack him. 2) Ignore him and keep standing there until I got shot. 3)Leave.

I picked option 3. So which do you pick?

Funny that you don't include the most obvious choice:

4) Report this obviously unstable and uncivilized individual to the authorities for a terrorist threat.

Look, let's look at these three stories and compare.

1. Twins and buddies
2. Trayvon and Zimmerman
3. Rahul and Redneck

Let's come up with some colors to symbolize the gradual increase in aggression.

White: Everyone is cool.

Yellow: Someone is being mean, rude, insulting etc to someone. The Law? Nothing illegal about being an asshole.

Orange: Someone lays their hands on someone else like pushing them. Nothing to cause injury but aggressive, mild touching. The Law? Might be considered assault depending on the situation.

Red: Flat out fist fight. No one in fear of dying. Just a fistfight. The Law? Flat out assault. The police will determine who brought it to that level and charge them.

Black: One person is fearing that the other person is going to kill them or someone else. Our nation's laws against murder are no longer valid for someone that takes out the person that reaches level black aggression. The Law? Charges might ramp it up to attempted murder for the aggressor if the person lives.

Twins and buddies. The twins start acting like assholes (yellow) and then start slapping their beers out of their hands (orange). They shouldn't have done that. But they did.

Now the buddies should have walked away. "Fuck you dudes, we're going to the bar next door to enjoy ourselves."

Instead they increased the aggression to level red. Fist fight. This level of aggression was briefly stopped until the one buddy met back up with them out back. Now it should have ended after a good fist fight. But did the twins leave it at that?

No, after the buddy was already on the ground and they had already won they increased the level of aggression. Stomping the shit out of a prone body. They just hit level black.

The other buddy uses deadly force and kills one. The courts let him go.

Do you see this here? At each step someone kept increasing the aggression level. Either side could have stopped increasing that level. But they were all young, dumb, over-testosterone having idiots.

Trayvon and Zimmerman. Zimmerman approaches and questions Trayvon. Level yellow. Trayvon immediately shoots past level orange straight to red. So theyre both at level red now briefly maybe. But the charges would be leveled against Trayvon.

But then Zimmerman goes down.

So Trayvon ramps it up again to level black by straddling his prone body, slamming his head in the concrete and repeatedly hitting him. Pow. Trayvon took a level yellow encounter and shot it up three more levels of aggression. Zimmerman defended himself. Our courts let him go. Because Zimmerman never broke the law. Not at any point. None.

Rahul and Redneck. I'm at level white. Redneck comes up and levels yellow at me (annoying) and threatening level black. Now threatening level black is illegal. I could have reported him. But fuck it, no harm no foul. First time I was in the neighborhood. I had no reason to ever return. So it was meaningless to me.

I can either stand around for level black to come at me, at which point, well I didn't have a gun. So I'd be at his mercy. Or I can increase the aggression. Or I can walk away.

I walked away from the level yellow aggression.

If any one of these dipshits had walked away from the yellow and orange levels no one would have died.

People have level yellowed me hundreds of times. Even once or twice went to level orange maybe. Can't remember. But it's not like they were trying to rob me or kick me out of my own place or something like that. I just roll my eyes and walk away.

Idiots that don't do that sometimes die. Tough shit for them.

If everyone accepted your approach, we'd live in a terrible society where we simply allowed people to bully and harrass others simply because they didn't like something they were doing.

Again, the answer isn't to simply fight fire with fire, but to look for ways to extinguish the fire.

You can kid yourself all you want, but you wouldn't like the society that you are suggesting that you are so okay with right now. In that society, anyone could approach you at any time and question what you are doing and why you are doing it. And, if they don't like your answers, they could take aggressive action against you.

Right now you live in a society where you only have to answer to the proper authorities. You can go wherever you want and do whatever you want as long those activities don't violate the rights of others.

What Florida's legal system allowed to go unpunished proposes a very different kind of society.