Did police scramble in the wake of the verdict to prevent anything from going sour in the cities? Yes. It just seems noteworthy that very little went sour. "Urban blacks may riot when X goes wrong for them" is a perennial story, one that got written in the run-ups to elections in 2008 ("Police fear riots if Barack Obama loses US election") and 2012 ("New threats to riot if Obama loses the election"). An act of civil disobedience that blocks traffic—on a Sunday, not even rush hour!—isn't an act of fury that tears a country apart. Honestly, don't the panic-mongers remember what it felt like when peaceful Tea Partiers were accused of incipient anti-government violence?
Some crazy Twitter trolling has advised me that I should take a moment's pain here to spell out for everyone that I believe the Sanford, Florida incident to be a terrible miscarriage of justice. A young man was murdered because an armed rent-a-cop, informed by a set of pervasive racial prejudices and bullying tendencies, acted on his disgusting paranoia. Said rent-a-cop went free because we have terrible laws regarding what stupid paranoid rent-a-cops are allowed to do with the weapons they are stupidly allowed to carry.
But even this horror is further perverted by the media whores who demand a circus and expect the worst from all of us. Apparently they weren't rewarded with the violent outrage they tried to manufacture. Sucks to be them.
No matter. Eric Holder might bite and give them a stupid conspiracy theory as a consolation prize, though.
Zimmerman has perversely become a folk hero to some conservatives, many of whom also believe Holder wants to confiscate guns and is perhaps a Manchurian candidate operating DOJ on behalf of the New Black Panthers.
A federal Zimmerman prosecution would thus fuse two fringe views into one giant conspiracy theory. And it could happen.
Anything to keep the circus going.
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