VIGILANTE JUSTICE AND TRAYVON MARTIN

Trying to put Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, racism, gun laws, stand your ground gun laws, and rogue Gov. Rick Scott into the context of social biology has been trying. Although it is economically centered, the Republican Party mantra of “hate the government” has to fit into the picture. It seems as if the solution to my dilemma can be found in the rationalization vigilante justice.

Republicans are advancing the idea that inadequate mechanism for criminal punishment are either insufficient or nonexistence.  This grows out of the idea of individualism: the Marlboro cowboy. The people who see themselves as the tough hero wearing a big white hat setting astride a large horse who is ready to climb down and punish anyone who disagrees with him. The reference here is pointedly to “him” and not the politically correct “him or her”.  In their minds, these people do not need anyone but themselves, which means no amount of police or army protect will ever be adequate. It is based on self-preservation, the individual right to protect ones self and all costs. Such people have a way of extending these feelings to the community. What they are doing is justified because it is a fulfillment of the wishes of “the community”; protect the family, the community, the state and the nation—exaggerated chauvinism. This is where the patriotism and the hero label come in. True or not, they feel they and “theirs” are better than everyone else is, and it is their job to do “conserve” what is theirs.

Republicans, the guys on the big horses, easily define the community as themselves (1%) and everybody else (99%). In a strange sort of way, they seem to see minorities as being weak and needing protection. In the extremes of slavery, they were selfishly protecting their property. This is, for example, where the idea that slavery really helped black people by bringing them out of Africa and into the great and wonderful world of the Untied States. This is why a company CEO sees workers as needing them; they see jobs as if they are doing something nice for the workers. The rich see themselves as the makers and see the poor or takers who need them to suvive.

Of course, they cannot protect anyone if there are not bad guys. The first warning sign of a bad person is if that someone is somehow different. Skin color, language, religion, or anything else that would tell them that the person of persons they are confronting are from a different tribe, hence have not proved their trustworthiness. Every time there has been trouble, a stranger has caused it, someone who is somehow different. No proof of misconduct is need, in fact in the interest of self-protection; shoot first, and ask questions later is the basis of frontier justice.

Psychologists use the term xenophobia meaning fear of something but a big tough cowboy cannot be afraid of anything, especially being afraid of those he is trying to protect, which would be to admit that he is not a big tough guy. If they are to fulfill what they see as their commitment, they must have the means to do so. A 98-pound weakling can have the Republican mind set but only if he has a gun and is willing and able to use it.

Outside of the bestial world of our knuckle dragging ancestors, we have established social order, hierarchy dominance with the police as our representative authority and not the self-appointed guy on big horse. The inherent conflict in all of this is obvious. If the folks who mistrust the police, therefore feel the need to take law enforcement into their own hands must have the legal right to do so or suffer the consequences. When the voters gave Republicans the power, for example Rick Scott, stand your ground laws were enacted along with legalize handguns, concealed carry, assault weapons, etc. The National Rifle Association motivated by greed, the strongest of all genetic traits, joined in to satisfy other genetically based traits fueled by the needs of individualism: big weapons, the sense of being a protector and therefore hero, the sense of being a force of right, etc.

All of this has consequences. We have George Zimmerman, a self-appointed unpaid neighborhood security guard; with a legally owned gun in his pocket, accosting and killing a black youth who he assumed was escaping justice. The vigilante, protected by law, walked away from the incident a free man. Thus, we have another case of wrongfully administer “vigilante justice”, a lynching really. 

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