Trayvon Martin

[beeblebrox]

The question should be why this isn't always a big story - why and how the corporate media and the dominant cultural and societal institutions have successfully distracted from and ignored widespread systemic, group and sometimes (as in this case) exemplary individual violence that serves to maintain racist stratification, starting from the top with the racial targeting of the bogus "war on drugs" to feed the prison-industrial complex with young black men (mostly) who are as a general result punished, disenfranchised and cut out of the economy for life.

I agree, I wasn't questioning the legitimacy of this issue, just the MSM's motive in covering it. I was thinking more of along the lines of generating a conversation similar to what Simulist wrote about earlier:

Trayvon Martin's murder highlights a number of realities in America that most-assuredly should not exist. While I do not think it's a "staged distraction" either, I do think it is already proving USEFUL to those who shape opinions in America — useful especially on the would-be "Left," as do-nothing "liberal" politicians once again try to woo their base back into believing this election year that there really is a functional two-party system in America, that there really are appreciable differences between these "two" political parties two wings of the Republican Party, and that Obama and the Democrats really are "on our side."

On second thought, however, I believe I may have been focusing on the wrong aspect of this situation. I wasn't trying to downplay the importance of a discussion about Trayvon Martin, and other similar cases, it's just that I've grown cynical and apathetic in regards to media and polotics in this country. I've gotten to the point that I no longer watch or read mainstream news outlets in order to find out what going on in the world, I only watch them find out what angle the corpocracy is going to try to take on a given issue, and how their going to try to manipulate things to their own ends.

Hopefully this time it will be different.

[Nordic]

The media is exploiting this, as are politicians and the Powers That Be in general.

It's stories like this that fool people into thinking they still have some legitimacy left. But they don't.

[JackRiddler]

The media is exploiting this, as are politicians and the Powers That Be in general.

When are they not?

It's stories like this that fool people into thinking they still have some legitimacy left. But they don't.

What is the right posture in regard to this? Should we condemn them for the occasional truth, because it might make them appear to have legitimacy in the eyes of those for whom "fool me five million times" is still not enough?

The current prevalence of the Trayvon Martin story is entirely thanks to the persistent struggle of the people who took it up as a cause, in defense of their own communities. This was also true of Troy Davis, the Jena Six, Sean Bell, Oscar Grant and Amadou Diallo. You wouldn't have heard much of any of these cases beyond an initial story without movements that took them up and finally got them in the media. The media are not planned to the minute, plenty of truth can get through. Any media-politics spin or exploitation of the Martin story is their daily business as usual, but it is not proving to have a single purpose. I also see the right-wing spin that's still out to presumptively defend the self-appointed superhero who stalked the boy and finally gunned him down.

[JackRiddler]

Trayvon Martin's murder highlights a number of realities in America that most-assuredly should not exist. While I do not think it's a "staged distraction" either, I do think it is already proving USEFUL to those who shape opinions in America — useful especially on the would-be "Left," as do-nothing "liberal" politicians once again try to woo their base back into believing this election year that there really is a functional two-party system in America, that there really are appreciable differences between these "two" political parties two wings of the Republican Party, and that Obama and the Democrats really are "on our side."

There are appreciable differences between these one-and-a-half wings of the Capitalist-Statist-Imperial Party of Whatever Is Thought to Most Benefit the Corporate Ruling Class. This observation need not mean that "Obama and the Democrats really are on our side" or that the "two-party system" is in any way "functional," at least in the sense of a working democracy, but there's no need to deny that appreciable differences exist.

[Simulist]

Trayvon Martin's murder highlights a number of realities in America that most-assuredly should not exist. While I do not think it's a "staged distraction" either, I do think it is already proving USEFUL to those who shape opinions in America — useful especially on the would-be "Left," as do-nothing "liberal" politicians once again try to woo their base back into believing this election year that there really is a functional two-party system in America, that there really are appreciable differences between these "two" political parties two wings of the Republican Party, and that Obama and the Democrats really are "on our side."

There are appreciable differences between these one-and-a-half wings of the Capitalist-Statist-Imperial Party of Whatever Is Thought to Most Benefit the Corporate Ruling Class. This observation need not mean that "Obama and the Democrats really are on our side" or that the "two-party system" is in any way "functional," at least in the sense of a working democracy, but there's no need to deny that appreciable differences exist.

OF COURSE there are "appreciable differences." (Well, up close.)

Just as there are valid and appreciable differences between "Shell A" and "Shell B" in a shell game — one may conceal the pea, the other may not.

The point is that, when you pull back a bit, it's a shell game! — and, if you're watching it that closely, you're probably being played.

[wordspeak2]

All true; you guys are saying it.

Check it- "A Song For Trayvon" by Jasiri X: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jOahRYtw ... ture=share

[JackRiddler]

It's not only a shell game. Like it or not, a nation of voters and non-voters make these decisions, as idiotically as they have generally behaved. The biggest differences between the parties are because they cater to and cultivate different voting clienteles. The differences may largely be for show purposes, but not entirely. (Are you sure President McCain would not have initiated a full war on Iran two or three years ago?)

In looking at this case I find it hard to consider the coincidental party politics of it as being a factor, or as mattering at all. It's just so horrible. But the Republicans are the ones who seem to think that non-black people have a basic right to stalk and confront black people, and to shoot them if they feel threatened as a consequence. If they don't want to shift away from this morally repugnant and insane position, because it might alienate their racist base, then that's their own self-made problem, and not because of some manipulation by the corporate media to strengthen Obama's hand in the election. Fuck the Republicans. Everything bad that happens to them is good, especially when they do it themselves. Whether or not it strengthens Obama is secondary. When the Republican Party is no more and the right wing ideology is discredited, we might finally have a political opening in this country.

[Simulist]

Like it or not, a nation of voters and non-voters make these decisions...

Prove it.

[JackRiddler]

Like it or not, a nation of voters and non-voters make these decisions...

Prove it.

Prove what? That a hundred-whatever million vote, another hundred million-whatever don't, and that most of the votes are actually counted? That most everyone accepts the results as accurate? That few question the system's legitimacy and even fewer question how it is structured to prevent reform, force false dichotomies and allow only a narrow range of policy options, if that? That most reformists naively hope to accomplish their aims by playing the game anyway? That sometimes, on rare occasions, thanks to the right constellation of power factors on a given issue, this naivete pays off?

[Simulist]

Like it or not, a nation of voters and non-voters make these decisions...

Prove it.

Prove what?

Prove that "a nation of voters and non-voters make these decisions."

You can't.

Because they don't. They just "think" they do.

(And that's the shell game.)

[kelley]

has anyone seen 'the adjustment bureau'? or read the PKD story on which it's based?

[JackRiddler]

Not so fast. I put up a lot more of an answer than that, and be it in the form of a series of questions.

I think the categorical framing is mistaken.

kelley:

Saw it. What about it?

[kelley]

jack, i still have to see the final ten or fifteen minutes (was interrupted last night) but something about the nature of the above exchange reminded me of the film in a kind of roundabout way.

[JackRiddler]

jack, i still have to see the final ten or fifteen minutes (was interrupted last night) but something about the nature of the above exchange reminded me of the film in a kind of roundabout way.

This is how it ends: When the humans succeed in deviating from plan and expressing their free will, the forces of hell suddenly break out and burn the planet! Everyone dies horribly after lengthy travails!

Actually, not. Just kidding.

[Nordic]

Two facts JR is overlooking:

National elections are a sham

Obama IS a Republican masquerading as a Democrat.

Our appointed national "leaders" are about 95 percent Republican, regardless of the letter after their name.

And their second purpose in life, behind greasing the rails for the Corpotocracy, is to preserve the illusion, especially in an "election" year, that we live in a Democracy, and that voters actually have a say.