[lbo-talk] Obama Speaks Out on Trayvon Martin Killing

Michael Smith mjs at smithbowen.net
Sun Mar 25 09:52:12 PDT 2012


On Sun, 25 Mar 2012 12:05:12 +0200 Joseph Catron <jncatron at gmail.com> wrote:


> On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 2:58 AM, Michael Smith <mjs at smithbowen.net> wrote:
>
> Replace all the existing prisoners with one: George Zimmerman.
> > That's my plan.
> >
>
> But the reason *why* shouldn't be too much to request.

Keep that politics/policy distinction in mind. Of course I'm not seriously proposing a policy for the courts and the prisons; I'm just making a polemical point. To the guy on the neighboring barstool, to borrow Doug's pons-asinorum.

The underlying logic, if you like, is something like this:

1) Prisons are supposed to keep dangerous people off the street.

2) Any one loon like George Zimmerman is a lot more dangerous than any number of potheads or turnstile- jumpers or deadbeat dads or graffiti-painters.

3) So why is dangerous George Zimmerman a free man and so many less dangerous people are not?

4) Can we infer that the prisons and courts we actually have are about something other than the advertised program?



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