It's been a minute since America's Favorite Shitbird, walking ham sandwich George Zimmerman, has done something stupid, but like the sun being forced to rise in the east to watch us collectively abuse the planet one more blessed day, it was inevitable that Zimmerman and stupid would be paired up again.
Since one would assume that Zimmerman is virtually unemployable at this point -- I mean, it's not like any of his mouth-breathing supporters have stepped up to, you know, offer him a fucking job -- it makes sense that he'd try something like this. Joining up with some other Florida doofus, this one a gun shop owner who has bravely (and illegally) declared his bidness a moooooslim-free zone, seems almost made-to-order.
When it comes to judging art, I am pretty much aligned (believe it or not) with Rush Limbaugh, of all people. Limbaugh, in a Playboy interview many years ago, once said (more or less verbatim): "Look. If I can do it, it's not art. Okay?" As someone whose artistic output is strictly limited to musical instruments, and only then after thousands of hours of hard work and practice, I am not fond of the notion that just because someone puts a frame around a turd, that it suddenly won't stink.
And near as I can tell, Zimmerman's magnum excrementum looks like he spent about an hour slapping paint on a slab of OSB with a used Ace Hardware pig-bristle brush. He might as well have been painting a chicken coop. The stenciled letters are a nice touch, though his free-hand needs some work. I mean, there are guys in every small town across this great land of ours who do shit like this with much better lettering, for about a hundred-fifty bucks a sign. This fucking maroon thinks he's going to split high-five/low-six G's with Maynard for this thing. And knowing this country, he's got even odds on that. Nothing surprises me anymore.
But Zimmerman's yard-sale sigil is useful in plumbing the continued teleology of southern apologists and unrepentant rednecks. Why does Zimmerman choose that particular symbol, what heuristic purpose does it serve? Or, working in reverse, what does the traitor loser battle flag have to do with the pudgy killer who painted it, or the islamophobic business owner the painter has allied himself with? The answer there, of course, is absolutely nothing, except that it will piss off Those People. Which naturally answers the first question as well, its heuristic purpose in the first place.
This has been one of those summers where random internets keyboard warriors have bravely declaimed the "offense" that others have taken against their traitor loser flag. This is purely anecdotal, but everything I've seen has indicated the opposite: countless Facebook memes whinging about how a good ol' boy jest cain't have his flag anymores without someone complainin' 'bout it, and more variations on that theme than anyone in their right mind would care to contemplate.
Maybe the best part about all of this is just how hilarious the history of the traitors' various flags really is. They kept having to change the design, first because the original flag was too close to that of the nation they were betraying, and then because there was so much white it looked like a surrender flag. I think this bespeaks the utter ineptitude around which the entire concept of this vile slave-holding traitor despotism took hold.
The biggest problem is that the south never had a true reckoning, not one that meant anything. Sure, Sherman went scorched-earth en route to Atlanta, but that was about it. The southern states spent the subsequent 100 years persecuting the people they had enslaved, kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered, and plundered for the previous 200 years. They were unrepentant of all crimes in both eras. They have never apologized because they are not sorry.
Once again, let's simplify the entire dynamic for the cousin-fuckers out there:
Frankly, I don't put too much stock in delving into the "mindset" of these cretins, anymore than I get the idea of trying to "understand" child rapists or animal torturers. It's a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned. But some folks of a more scientific bent like to tilt at such windmills, as if it will help in the fields of psychology or penology or what-have-you.
Once again, I'll take the liberty of repeating one of my many mantras, as they are central to understanding people and life, and we should repeat them often, to remind us of what should be obvious: It is a waste of time trying to deal rationally with irrational people. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't try to figure out what their deal is, if only to deal predictively with their behavior, if nothing else.
But converting them, talking sense into them, showing them the light -- it ain't gonna happen. They find out on their own, when life breaks one too many off in their ass, or they never figure it out at all, dying angry and embittered at their imaginary demons. These traitor-loser-flag folks have been voting against themselves for going on three generations now. Your facts mean nothing to them.
Since one would assume that Zimmerman is virtually unemployable at this point -- I mean, it's not like any of his mouth-breathing supporters have stepped up to, you know, offer him a fucking job -- it makes sense that he'd try something like this. Joining up with some other Florida doofus, this one a gun shop owner who has bravely (and illegally) declared his bidness a moooooslim-free zone, seems almost made-to-order.
When it comes to judging art, I am pretty much aligned (believe it or not) with Rush Limbaugh, of all people. Limbaugh, in a Playboy interview many years ago, once said (more or less verbatim): "Look. If I can do it, it's not art. Okay?" As someone whose artistic output is strictly limited to musical instruments, and only then after thousands of hours of hard work and practice, I am not fond of the notion that just because someone puts a frame around a turd, that it suddenly won't stink.
And near as I can tell, Zimmerman's magnum excrementum looks like he spent about an hour slapping paint on a slab of OSB with a used Ace Hardware pig-bristle brush. He might as well have been painting a chicken coop. The stenciled letters are a nice touch, though his free-hand needs some work. I mean, there are guys in every small town across this great land of ours who do shit like this with much better lettering, for about a hundred-fifty bucks a sign. This fucking maroon thinks he's going to split high-five/low-six G's with Maynard for this thing. And knowing this country, he's got even odds on that. Nothing surprises me anymore.
But Zimmerman's yard-sale sigil is useful in plumbing the continued teleology of southern apologists and unrepentant rednecks. Why does Zimmerman choose that particular symbol, what heuristic purpose does it serve? Or, working in reverse, what does the traitor loser battle flag have to do with the pudgy killer who painted it, or the islamophobic business owner the painter has allied himself with? The answer there, of course, is absolutely nothing, except that it will piss off Those People. Which naturally answers the first question as well, its heuristic purpose in the first place.
This has been one of those summers where random internets keyboard warriors have bravely declaimed the "offense" that others have taken against their traitor loser flag. This is purely anecdotal, but everything I've seen has indicated the opposite: countless Facebook memes whinging about how a good ol' boy jest cain't have his flag anymores without someone complainin' 'bout it, and more variations on that theme than anyone in their right mind would care to contemplate.
The biggest problem is that the south never had a true reckoning, not one that meant anything. Sure, Sherman went scorched-earth en route to Atlanta, but that was about it. The southern states spent the subsequent 100 years persecuting the people they had enslaved, kidnapped, raped, tortured, murdered, and plundered for the previous 200 years. They were unrepentant of all crimes in both eras. They have never apologized because they are not sorry.
Once again, let's simplify the entire dynamic for the cousin-fuckers out there:
- Nobody cares about you flying your confederate flag on your truck or your house or your wall. Nobody is offended by it, they just assume that it's a signifier to like-minded halfwits, that meth and/or pit bulls can be found within fifty feet of the bespangled bumwipe.
- The Dukes of Hazzard -- a silly teevee show that no one in their right mind had even thought about in at least thirty years -- was taken off of TV Land ten days after its syndication run began, not because of some imaginary outcry by bien pensant libruls, but because Warner Brothers, which owns the rights to the show, had suspended sales of all of its confederate flag merch in the wake of the Charleston shootings. As with the Dork Density mishegas, this was not political correctness, this was pure business.
- The most outspoken supporters of your piece-of-shit flag are the worst fucking examples of humanity this country has to offer. They are straight from central casting for "someone who looks like they just got done fucking a farm animal". You are fighting a losing battle -- worse yet, for no goddamned reason at all. The biggest adherents to your lost cause are also the biggest arguments against it.
Frankly, I don't put too much stock in delving into the "mindset" of these cretins, anymore than I get the idea of trying to "understand" child rapists or animal torturers. It's a waste of time, as far as I'm concerned. But some folks of a more scientific bent like to tilt at such windmills, as if it will help in the fields of psychology or penology or what-have-you.
Once again, I'll take the liberty of repeating one of my many mantras, as they are central to understanding people and life, and we should repeat them often, to remind us of what should be obvious: It is a waste of time trying to deal rationally with irrational people. That doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't try to figure out what their deal is, if only to deal predictively with their behavior, if nothing else.
But converting them, talking sense into them, showing them the light -- it ain't gonna happen. They find out on their own, when life breaks one too many off in their ass, or they never figure it out at all, dying angry and embittered at their imaginary demons. These traitor-loser-flag folks have been voting against themselves for going on three generations now. Your facts mean nothing to them.
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