I might as well put my prediction on paper so I can't pretend I expected something else.
Will there be riots in LA if George Zimmerman is acquitted of murdering Trayvon Martin?
No, there will not be. And the reason is, Zimmerman will instead be convicted of manslaughter. An appeal will follow. Zimmerman might very well win that one. But it will be 18 months down the road. No one will closely follow the appeals process. There won't be breathless dispatches from the courtroom and bloggers (and the mainstream media in general) won't be demanding Zimmerman's head. Any outrage at that point will be too attenuated to cause a riot.
Now in the off-chance that Zimmerman is acquitted both of murder and manslaughter, Attorney General Holder will try to head off riots by immediately announcing a civil rights prosecution of Zimmerman and the family of Trayvon Martin, including mother, step-mother, father, brother and numerous relatives will sue Zimmerman,, just as O.J. Simpson was sued by the families of the two he murdered.
Will that calm the waters?
Probably not. Obama could help by announcing in advance that this country won't work if people don't respect the rule of law. But frankly Obama doesn't respect the rule of law either. Otherwise he wouldn't continue to give aid to Egypt in spite of the coup and in the face of an express law prohibiting this. He also wouldn't delay implementation of certain provisions of Obamacare despite his having no authority to do so. He wouldn't try to use executive orders to implement new rules in place of getting bills through congress.
In short, if we have riots after a Zimmerman acquittal, they will look a lot like the ones Obama didn't lift a hand to try to prevent.
No comments:
Post a Comment