What Lessons did Trayvon Teach Us?

I just got word a few minutes ago, about the Trayvon Martin verdict.  

This is going to be a strange blog entry, as I honestly don't know what to make of this.    I feel for Trayvon.   I feel for the family and the supporters.  I feel for those who felt that justice was not served.  And I feel for the jurors. 

I was a foreman for a jury trial last year.   Being put in a position of juror for a criminal (or for me, civil with criminal overtones) case, especially one with as much emotional payload as this, puts the jurors into a lose-lose, damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don't, situation.    Someone is going to be upset with this verdict, regardless of which way it went.     Had George Zimmerman been found guilty, then the gun nuts and the entirety of the right wing would be up in high dudgeon, trumpeting their anger and racism from on the heights of 1211 Avenue of the Americas and elsewhere.   The white supremacists would have likely come out in force.   

But that's not what happened.   

But here's the truth -  I wasn't at the courtroom.    I don't know what the judge allowed or disallowed for evidence.   I don't have the transcripts, and I could not observe how the jurors (only 6??  For a criminal case?  I find THAT interesting...) were acting during the course of the trial.   I know that in some areas of the trial, such as that involving whose voice was on the tape, there were conflicting claims as to whose voice it was screaming.    The bottom line is - I only know what the press filters out to the public, and that's not sufficient to potentially put a person behind bars for life.

I could speculate till all things that go "moo" come home.    I suppose that in the coming weeks, we'll be hearing about "Flori-duh" and the culture down there as far as race relations are concerned, and about the police, and about George Zimmerman being the right wing's new hero, and about "stand your ground", and about how this verdict opens the floodgates for race-based murder disguised as "stand your ground" self-defense, and on, and on, and on.    But guilt or innocence is not what I'm concerned with here.

I'm concerned about our country's love of sensationalism.  It sells - at the expense of all of the affected parties;
I'm concerned that "stand your ground" will now be opened for misuse, especially with our nation's sordid history of race relations;
I'm concerned that this case will form a stone paving the path to future race-related violence;
I'm concerned that our justice system will now be seen by more as an unfunny farce.  

The only winners here are George Zimmerman, the American Right Wing, and the 2nd-Amendment-Solutions crowd.    Nobody else is celebrating in the zero-sum game we play in the Gladiator's  Stadium of America.