Fuck Your Breath

As more and more black men get shot by white cops for no goddamned reason whatsoever -- and more importantly, as these events get captured on video more and more -- I suppose the question begs as to what good it will do, for the most part. Catching it on video, I mean.

Out of all the people listed in the two articles linked above, only Walter Scott's killer has even a chance of doing any time. And, uh, given that that occurred in South Carolina, don't be too surprised if it turns out the prosecutor pulled a Florida and threw a charge at Michael Slagel that a jury won't convict him on. Look at Casey Anthony, or George Zimmerman. Don't be too surprised if the Slagel case whiffs on the murder charge, and instead settles for attempting to plant evidence.

Even if Slagel is convicted of something, he's in the (pardon the dismal, unintentional pun) minority. The cop that killed Eric Garner won't be charged or convicted, nor the cop that killed Tamir Rice. John Crawford's killer, and on and on. They all get away with it. I'm not sure what exactly people think would come from "cop cams" and such. Clearly people have decided to look at this brutal shit, over and over again, and shrug and say, "What else ya got?"

At least the video prevents Slagel from lying about how and why he shot Scott, shows what his bullshit story would have been. But then it goes into the hands of people who may be inclined to give Slagel the benefit of the doubt, to decide that Scott's half-assed excuse for a record mitigates the murder charge.

On the other hand, if you're white, you can fight with cops, and merely get subdued, rather than killed. Strange how that works.

Anger Management

Vigilante doughboy George Zimmerman, who once shot a kid in Florida just to watch him die, is having trouble controlling his temper yet again.

If Zimmerman were black -- or a little girl with a cell phone -- he'd already have been beat down or shot by the cops, on video, with random idiots rushing to copsplain that the video doesn't tell the whole story.

#copsplain

Magical Misery Tour

Remember when gun enthusiasts had George Zimmerman's back, so to speak? Welp, apparently that didn't pan out so well for ol' George, who is unemployed, deep in debt, and even claims to suffer from PTSD. As opposed to Trayvon Martin, who continues to claim to suffer from being, you know, dead, since it's difficult to stand your ground when you're armed with only Skittles and iced tea.

The only reason anyone's talking to Zimmerman is because of the Michael Dunn case, which, because Florida, the jury reliably managed to fuck up the verdict. Unlike Zimmerman, Dunn does appear to be headed to the big house for quite some time; like Zimmerman, Dunn seems to think he had no active role or volition in the sudden change of course his life has taken.

Given the apparent level of volatility in Zimmerman's personal life, to say the least, he seems to be on a trajectory that won't change until the world forgets about him and moves on to the next bright shiny thing, or he goes into hiding, decides to end it all, etc. Any number of things can happen, but the fact of the matter is, assuming he's telling the truth about the shambles his life has become, Zimmerman is at least paying some price for what he did. The people who found him to be a useful idiot for their ideological arguments have forgotten about him, his usefulness expended by this point.

One sees the same dynamic with the Duck Dynasty "controversy" (remember when that was a thing, seven or eight long weeks ago?). After all the stupid "stand with Phil" marginalia and hand-wringing, all the threats to make A&E hurt for the non-existent "suspension" they leveled at Phil Robertson, ratings are down substantially. There could be a number of reasons for that, ranging from more competitive programming in January than in July, to the possibility that there's only so much to be wrung from what was already a stale idea.

To the extent that "conservatism," as opposed to "liberalism," functions primarily as a narrative of mostly imaginary grievances punctuated with alarmist rhetoric and torch-and-pitchfork vigor, the shelf life for their token "causes" is mercifully short. Zimmerman is finding this out the hard way; if he thinks that his grousing about unfair treatment for opportunistic interviewers is going to translate into some sort of popular groundswell of support that will pull his dumb ass out of debt, he's in for an unpleasant surprise. He'd be better off coming up with a few snappy slogans and logos, putting them on t-shirts, keychains, bumper stickers and such like, and getting hisself a table at the next CPAC or NRA circle jerk. His vague "gubmint is out ta git me" assertions will play right into their core talking points.

Menace II Society

It's no surprise at all that a halfwit state like Florida should find itself in a quandary over the case of Michael Dunn. Dunn, you may recall, is the mouth-breathing dipshit who shot up an SUV full of black teenagers for the high crime of playing their music loud, killing one those teenagers, 17-year-old Jordan Davis. The idea that you can shoot up a car full of kids, head for your bed-and-breakfast, and order a pizza like nothing happened, is the essence of what Michael Dunn was thinking on that fateful day.

So of course we have to revisit what happened -- or what we think happened -- between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin, in that same state, not so long ago. Zimmerman got away with what, from a truly objective observer, was an egregious, violent over-reaction to what was most likely a provocation of Zimmerman's own making.

Similarly, Dunn is, via the reliable conduit of what is apparently an easily gulled Florida jury pool, about to get away with plugging ten (10) bullets into a vehicle in a convenience store parking lot. This is unacceptable, or is it? Common sense would dictate that this sort of thing could not go unaddressed, yet we seem as a society to have long since passed, on so many levels, the idea of "common sense."

Look. What kind of a piece of shit do you have to be to do something like this, to perforate a bunch of teenagers on the false threat of brandishing a shotgun, a relatively difficult weapon to mistake for anything else? What does it take for a jury of one's peers to determine that maybe not everyone is intellectually, morally, or reflexively equipped to have a concealed-carry permit, that maybe while the Second Amendment has value, incidents like this are worth reconsidering where the boundaries are?

The Summer of George

In a media-driven culture, one tends at the beginning of each calendar year to wonder what weird, unpredictable things fate (or, more practically, the media) will throw in our path. And so we are invited to watch the trajectory --  the downward spiral, if you will (and you just might) -- of one George Zimmerman.

Now, it doesn't help that his soon-to-be ex-wife comes off as a calculating, flaky shrew, changing her story at almost breakneck speed, and apparently insisting as part of the divorce petition that Zimmerman pay for a permanent life insurance policy on himself, with her as the beneficiary (is this a common thing, or a Florida thing?).

Let's just agree that both George and Shellie Zimmerman are reprehensible human beings, shall we? While George may be guilty of manslaughter rather than murder, his post-acquittal conduct seems by and large to indicate an asshole who seems to think he got away with something. I dunno, maybe it's just me, but even if I had justifiably killed an attacker who was legitimately threatening my life, I still would think at least twice before making my first stop the gun factory that manufactured the killing machine that protected me.

Actually, Zimmerman's visit to the Kel-Tec facility says as much about the corrosive nature of America's gun culture as it does about Zimmerman himself. Look, there are only two people who know precisely what transpired between George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin that fateful night, and anyone who says different is full of shit, and filtering what they think they know through an amalgam of personal assumptions and prejudices. But Zimmerman's visit serves as an affirmation to a the sizable contingent of folks who need and enjoy such an affirmation. And that, not guns themselves, is the problem.

Now that a husband-and-wife visit to The Biggest Loser seems to be out of the picture for George and Shellie Zimmerman, it will be interesting to see where George's path takes him. At the rate he's going, it's not hard to imagine him trying his tough-guy bullshit on some Florida cracker that sees him as just another fat Mexican, and gives him the beatdown he seems to be cruising for.