Our Inner Captain Renault

--Mob Rule

 There isn't any real good reason for fighting
except self-defense 
--The Outsiders, S. E. Hinton 

I'm shocked, shocked to find
that gambling is going on in here! 
--Casablanca (1942)
 ___________________

We have been discussing the small tragedy of the Zimmerman - Martin story not because it is unusual but as the phenomenon it is: a too-common story usually ignored, but once the media hops on (for whatever self-serving reason), one for which liberal people feel compelled to pull out their inner Capt. Renault --shocked, you know? All very predictable.

We will have a few more things to say about the disingenuity surrounding the tale (=The Spectacle), but today, a look at the neighborhood watch: Good Neighbor Policy, or stateside Counterinsurgency (COIN)?

For those inclined to exploit the event, The Trayvon - Zimmerman story is one of vigilantism, and becomes an excuse to label an otherwise reasonable self-protective action (=neighborhood watch) as racism. This is an involution of the posture vis-a-vis crime which we have been encouraged to take as a nation since becoming the victims of terrorist acts, namely, one of reasonable caution and vigilance. Florida highways have state-sponsored billboards which urge citizens to be alert, and not afraid. It is a foolish entropy to encourage a naive approach to one's safety.

Vigilantism has been a part of our society since its inception, and actions like tarring and feathering loyalists served many functions, primarily identification and ostracism of The Other. Neighborhood watches are not vigilantism, for The Other is already identified qua his Otherness.

The function of the watch is to identify possible criminal behavior before the action takes place, the purpose not to punish, but to identify. When one enters such a community, one can expect to be asked about one's purpose within the gates; the residents therein have usually paid a premium to feel their safety will be enforced. When an outsider enters the perimeter, he can expect to be identified as such; this is not racism or vigilantism, though it is vigilance.

Profiling has become taboo as it has become conflated with racism, but profiling is the basis of solving most crimes. In Zimmerman's case, the community had suffered numerous robberies and criminal situations in the preceding months. Surely he was aware of the descriptions of the perpetrators in these cases, and it would be sensible to identify figures which match those descriptions and confirm their intent.

And Zimmerman is not alone. Our own President racially profiles every time he sends a Predator or Hellfire downrange in the sandy regions of the world. Mr. Obama acts as the Neighborhood watch captain of the World with every missile strike. Yet when Obama approved the strike which killed another 16-year-old United States citizen, Abdulrahmen al-Awlaki, no liberals cried crocodile tears.

In fact, no one did, despite the sad fact that our President made two kills on that day -- one of the young man, and one a direct shot through the heart of our Constitution.  The young man's grandfather recently wrote a plaintive letter published in the NYT 17 July 2013 asking "Why?",  but there will be no answer ... State secrets, you know?

As a nation, we are an easily-distractable crew. We are suffering an en masse plague of ADHD, and we get our daily feed of pap through the umbilicus that leads to the online and on screen "news" outlets.

Here is the reality on neighborhood watches: Community-based policing has always been the center of our police functions; as citizens we can and must participate in ensuring our own safety. When neighborhood members shut their doors and roll into automatically-controlled garages and don't know their neighbors, you have a community ripe for crime.

Since the events of 9-11-01, U.S. police forces have been degraded as the military and contractors have bled off personnel who now work for Counterinsurgency (COIN) and Foreign Internal Defense (FID)-sponsored programs. At the same time public safety funds have shriveled on the home front, and community-based policing has been drastically reduced.

The Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©) has come home to roost.

If we as citizens do not have the right to ensure own safety in our own neighborhoods, then we have crossed into a police state mentality. When the death of Trayvon Martin is criminalized by a witch hunt trial, what is the message? When the police are not on the scene, the safety of the streets devolves to the citizens.

One may argue til the cows come home why young black men constitute the pages of most police blotters -- hint: economics -- but nonetheless, there you have it. It is a sad fact, but if you live in a vandalized community and see a black youth appear to be scoping out residences, you have reason to suspect. The comic Chris Rock has a skit, "You can't have shit when you around niggas, you can't have shit." referring to the high burglary rates in black communities. We laugh in recognition and then walk out of the theater.

Why pretend it is not a problem?

We Are Zimmerman

The “difference … between man and other forms of life”
is that man has invented what he calls
“morality’ and ‘reason’ to justify what he is doing. …”
--Patriotic Gore, Edmund Wilson

If you have the facts, argue the facts;
If you have the law, argue the law;
If you have neither, pound the table really loudly
--old lawyer's adage

The range of what we think and do
is limited by what we fail to notice.
And because we fail to notice
that we fail to notice,
there is little we can do to change;
until we notice how failing to notice
shapes our thoughts and deeds
--R.D. Laing

War is the spectacular and bloody projection
of our everyday life, is it not?
War is merely an outward expression
of our inward state,
an enlargement of our daily action
--The Causes of War, J. Krishnamurti
_________________

The U.S. serves as the neighborhood watchman of the world, proudly and without apology. We figure we are the Good Guys for trying to keep order and teach the heathens a better way. Unfortunately, since they often behave in ways antithetical to our neatly arrayed protocol and are full of tribal enmity and such, they get killed sometimes.

This neighborhood watchism of the U.S. is related to the outsized news coverage of a discrete tragic event which occurred in late February in a small town in Central Florida, a story which has quickly fired up most of the blogosphere.

We are outraged as a nation over the death of a single young black American shot by a supposedly self-appointed "neighborhood watchman." We know nothing beyond this fact, and the loud and persistent calls to bring Zimmerman to justice hinge on the following claims:

• Trayvon Martin (TM) ™ did not present a mortal threat, therefore the killing was a criminal act

• TM ™ was just a convenient target for Zimmerman's (Z) fantasy of being an American Super Hero

• Firearms are too readily used in our society

All of these are clearly articulated presumptions of a civilized society and a liberal democracy -- hard to refute on the abstract level. All life is valuable, to include that of the most heinous criminals and low-life serial killers. The U.S. is a nation of law, and no individual transcends these precepts.

If TM ™ was not a threat to Z or to anyone's life, then his shooting was not justifiable and not in accordance with our societal values. However, into the simplicity of the legality of the issue creeps the fact that we are NOT a post-racial society, and we are a violent one pretending to be otherwise.

Returning to our neighborhood watchman analogy, If TM ™ was killed illegally, then so too every Afghan, Iraqi and Pakistani whom we killed simply for being Afghan, Iraqi or Pakistani, for we just as assuredly racially-profiled them, too. It's quite simple on that level: We are hypocrites because get morally outraged over one act of supposedly inappropriate violence while supporting a national policy of inappropriate violence.

Yet we project our collective moral outrage and guilt upon Z for his willingness to apply deadly force in what we interpret as an illegal use of violence while we as a nation habitually murder the moral equivalent of TM ™ every day of the week in the Phony War on Terror (PWOT ©), and do so without any self-mortification. And without the slightest irony, we figure if we stamp him (Z) out, we can gain some sort of vindication and atone for our transgressions. We love our martyrs, and if that were to happen, we would get a two-fer in the TM ™ saga.

The U.S. was on board with invading Afghanistan and Iraq and 10 years later is still killing people who posed no lethal threat to our national or personal well-being. Yet surely the Iraqis were simply trying to buy some Skittles and iced tea (biscuits and kaffir) with rags and not hoodies on their heads, and we killed them as frivolously as Z. supposedly did a helpless, cookie-baking young man.

While the Afghanis never entered the sanctum sanctorum of our protected personal lives -- the sacred gated community -- they did enter the symbolic sanctuary of our sacred financial and business lives when their supposed charges attacked the Twin Towers in 9-11-01. As a result of that violation and intrusion, our taxes and lack of outrage have allowed the U.S. to "go Zimmerman" on tens of thousands of hadjis.

We are all Zimmerman.