The Horror of Ft Lauderdale Shooting

You first see her around the pool. You are all refugees from the shooting waiting to get out of Florida. She is being held up by the hotel people. It is the kind of grief you have never seen and that is when you know she is one of the victims of the shooting. She goes away and that's when you decide to get a drink. It has been a long day and there is nothing to do but wait for your flight in two days back to Chicago. So you go into the hotel bar and a man walks in with red eyes and the bartender says he can have anything he wants and that the hotel will pick up the tab for his room and order dinner. He just mouths thank you.

You take your drink and someone asks him just then. Were you there. Yes. My father in law was shot through the eye and it went through his brain and out the back. There is silence. Was his wife there? My mother in law has passed. You don't know what to say. The small hotel bar is quiet. Even the bartender has red eyes. You take your drink but the heaviness is so bad you go back to your table and pull out that Cuban cigar you picked up in Honduras. Anything to get rid of this.

And then you see them again. The woman who lost her mother and maybe her father is in the middle surrounded by family. They are a silent procession around the pool with their suitcases. They are leaving for a hotel closer to the hospital. So that is what a shooting really looks like. You finish your drink and light your cigar because nothing can dull the horror.

Madam President

Zimmerman lawyer declares he is not a racist....who cares.

So Zimmerman is not a racist. Trayvon Williams is still dead. Was he a Klansman going after an African American that night? No. He was a vigilante packing heat who came upon his fantasy target. If you have a gun you want to use it. You are carrying your gun and have watched a lot of movies and you see yourself as an avenger. You are going to have to pull out that piece of hardware and have your Dirty Harry moment. Well...do you feel lucky...do you punk?

We all know what really happened. You can piece it together from the conversations and the tapes. Zimmerman was cruising around and saw the black kid in the hoodie. He started to follow him. Trayvon calls his girlfriend and says this dude is following him and tries to get away. Zimmerman calls the cops and feels his pulse kick up and the adrenalin starts pumping. Real life baby. And he has a gun. He trails him even as the dispatcher tells him not to. And then he gets out of his car and approaches his perp.

And Trayvon sees a guy with murder in his heart looking for a crook, looking for a bad guy and like any highschooler he wants to escape the weirdo coming his way. But Zimmerman engages and here is where we have to use our imagination and plug in the pieces. He asks Trayvon what he is doing. He demands identification. Trayvon tries to escape. Zimmerman and he scuffle. Now the tripwire, the safety off for Stand Your Ground stupidity. He pulls out his piece

Trayvon knows what is going to happen and begs for his life (it is on the 911 tapes) but Zimmerman is possessed and fires. And Trayvon goes down with a bullet in his chest. And according to witnesses Zimmerman knows what he did and is over him, staring down. So maybe he was a racist and maybe he wasn't. And maybe it doesn't matter. He shot a kid armed with nothing more than a pack of Skittles. And killed him. Dead. Seventeen.

Isn't that enough?

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