Maybe not.
Maybe it was a comment on The Bill Press Show where a caller suggested Trayvon should have expected this because of the “dropped pants look…” he didn’t have… and the hoodie with the hood over his head because it was raining: a hoodie no different than you or I might buy at WalMart to protect us from the rain, but does nothing to protect us from bullets.
The year: 2020, and we are living in a more Zimmerman-like, Neo-Con wet dream, world. Every wet dream the corporatist, gun focused, left hating, human rights loathing, Zimmerman-backing Right has has come true. The police have been privatized: armies of armed Zimmerman-like vigilantes roam our streets: barely trained. Some communities have upgraded to Blackwater, who has gone back to the original name they were most known by because image no longer matters.
Don’t look, or sound, threatening. You could be black and young with Skittles, or angry about what has happened to society, or just disagree with them and in their addled brains they translate that into “threatening.” That earns you bullets in the head or heart. If you are pregnant and rumored to be considering an abortion: now illegal, that earns you a bullet in the gut where you slowly bleed to death, baby be damned. If the baby is lucky you get snatched off the street, baby is ripped from your innards, and then you are executed. Baby, in a few years, goes to reeducation camp: just in case too much “bad” was passed on.
Gun ownership is not only allowed, but usage rights expanded to “protect the nation.” But, much like Nazi Germany, only “expanded” for the politically correct. Being on the wrong side and owning mean you are perceived as a threat.
Bang your dead, dead, dead.
Wear an unapproved fashion someone might consider thug-ish, or threatening?
Do you have burial plans? Hope so: or make damn sure you comply with approved dress codes.
Advocating for more corporate responsibility and actively protesting for it is considered an act of terrorism. Voting is a joke, unless you agree with the status quo. The voting machine companies are now part of mega-corporations who also own the privatized courts, politicians, the privatized law enforcement and the gun manufacturers.
It got so bad for young black boys that a small group started advocating for them to have guns. They are now in Guantanamo, some of them still alive… the rest died during waterboarding.
Oops.
America has been WalMart-ized, though WalMart is only one of the three or four mega corporations. But don’t worry: the same members are on all the boards. The differences, and the pretense of competition, are all for show. We all buy from corporate stores: whomever we work for… if we work at all. Our checks are now cards issued by the companies and a hefty chunk is taken out of them for trying to access the funds. The card issuing companies are owned by the companies we work for, by the way.
As Gomer Pile used to say: “Surprise!” Not unfitting: for we are all considered “Gomers” by the ruling corporate elite and their sycophants.
Newsflash! The last surviving official, card carrying, member of Nixon’s Silent Majority on his death bed said, “Oh, if only society was more like this back then. We could have gotten rid of those damn hippies, protesters and uppity niggers.”
The problem with all this that it is no dream. Much of this where some neo-Cons, and trigger happy people much like George Zimmerman, want to take us. This is where we are headed as a country, thanks to the Kochs, FOX, mega-corporations, ALEC, the gun lobby, pols like Cheney, the Bush family, those owned by corporations on both sides of the aisle, the Supremes, and the sheeple: otherwise known as “right wing cranks.”
It will be a brave new world… run by cowards who think shooting first is the answer, and their opinions plus their love for gun violence gives them the absolute right to lord over us.
But, for now: 2013, they must be satisfied with the fact it’s just a bit easier to kill black teenagers armed only with Skittles and a can of ice tea and get away with it.
-30-
Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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Ken Carman and Cartenual Productions
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