March 25, 2012
Gary Stein
The Sun Sentinel

RE: What’s To Be Done? - Some comments on your column about the killing of Trayvon Martin.

Big Stein,

Allow me to use the opposite of one of my favorite Rhetorical devices. Please note the capital R. I used to be astonished when modern American Liberals thought Rhetoric and Sophistry were the same. I know better now. The reason is simple: Sophistry better suits the aims of people who confuse feelings with ideas. After all, why confuse the issue with facts. They can be such damned inconvenient things.

You say that the only reason Trayvon Martin is dead is because “he was born black”. Let us assume that your premise is both valid and truthful

[In my multi-cultural “quilt” I always capitalize Black and White.]

The 20th century’s first successful community organizer asked, in a most unRhetorical manner, “What’s to be done”?

#1 – We can snatch the decidedly nonCaucasian George Zimmerman out of jail and string him up. Maybe it’s time to update both “The Ox-Bow Incident” and “To Kill a Mockingbird”.

#2 – What if he can neither understand the charges against him nor can he assist in his own defense? That didn’t stop the Clintons from wiring up Ricky Ray Rector and frying him anyway.

#3 How about legislation – city, county, state, federal – specifically banning the shooting of 3rd world hoodie wearers?

#3 – We can appreciate in the Holy season of Lent – Islam does not own the word Holy – that there exists a real palpable thing called evil. In 35 centuries of legislation all we have done is define it and punish it. Polio, leprosy, macaw noses, rickets, erectile dysfunction, male pattern baldness, itty bitty little titties, small pox, inter alia, all have been treated successfully by science. Total extinction, as long as it does not run afoul of the Endangered Species Act, is within sight for some of the aforementioned.

#4 – When the radio character in the ‘30s began his broadcast with the chilling words “Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?” he spoke better than he knew. When that “low, dishonest decade” ended the number of people killed on a whim was already approaching something so incalculable as to numb the counters. It was just a taste of what was to come.

#5 – If the races were reversed another chorus of outrage would have been mounted.

What motivated the shooter? Was he the product of a broken home? Were his schools properly funded? Was he responding to the siren call of rap music? Did he have slave blood? How about nutrition? Did the CIA flood his neighborhood with drugs? Did racism take away his ability to reason? If only White America had been attentive to his needs this wouldn’t have happened, right? If only we had programs for youth that could have predicted and prevented these things. If only we had built one less carrier. If only the rich had paid their “fair” share of taxes.

#6 -
“After the first death there are no others.”

And what was the name of the 6 year old Black child in Chicago who was shot and killed last weekend? Police have ruled out the possibility of a Lexus filled with White teenagers from Winnetka coming in for a taste of street life, drive by shootings, and all that. The word tragedy is tossed around so much it loses its impact.

They are both going to be dead for a long time.

God rest their souls.

“How sad of all the things that men endure
how few Laws or Kings can cause or cure.”



KEVIN SMITH
WARRIORBARDIT@BELLSOUTH.NET