Hey Buddy! Get That Thing Off the Highway!!

That's what another driver might say.  A police officer might say "you'll have to pull off the road, sir.  License and registration, please."

I have a certain kind of conversation that gets really old, really fast.  It's usually about politics, and it's with certain people.  I have occasionally had this kind of conversation about religion, but I've learned to stay away from it.  It gets just as old, just as fast.  Do you want to know how I know?

The problem is people who are rigid, presbyopic, and intellectually primitive.  The interesting fact is that these people are in no way generally stupid.  It's only that they constrict when it comes to certain topics, like politics.  And these are neither necessarily right-leaning nor left-leaning people.  I've encountered it "on either side of the aisle," so to speak.  The right-leaning ones are the usual caricatures, and they're easy and comical, if unnerving, to spot.  (I have a good job, so you don't need any support, and if you do, tough.  Go find your own good job.  You can't?  Tough.  I'm not a homosexual, so homosexuality doesn't exist.  If you think you've decided to act homosexual, decide not to.  And whether it exists or it doesn't, or you are or you aren't, you don't get to have the same rights as heterosexuals.  Because, um, well just because.)  But I've had exactly the same experience with some lefties.

For all of Obama's first term, no one was allowed to disagree with anything Obama did or said, and certainly not criticize him, in my sister's presence.  If this kind of expression occurred, she would announce that she wouldn't have it.  Most commonly, the settings were gatherings she hosted in her home.  So literally, "not in my house," as they say.

Recently, I've been getting lots of petitions to challenge the almost-no-abortions-after-20-weeks Republican proposals.  Are these liberals crazy?  Republicans, who typically want no abortions ever, even in cases of rape or incest, are willing to ignore any abortions up to 20 weeks, and even some after?  What a gift!  Liberals should kiss conservatives for that massive concession and compromise.  But they're so rigidly focused, they don't know what they've been given.  Sign the petition?  No way.  They get a challenging letter back from me instead.  And they accuse conservatives of being rigid, pseudo-doctrinaire, and obstructionist!

Not that the topic matters, but in recent days, I've had this kind of conversation with conservatives, regarding the Zimmerman case.  All they can see is that Zimmerman was not convicted, that's right with them, and there's no other view, understanding, or angle to take.  Case closed.

The sad thing is that these people are allowed to function in society.  They can vote, and they can even run for office.  And they do.  We tend to see more right wing whack jobs than left wing whack jobs elected to office, but that may be because human nature, and all animal behavior, is conservative, or right wing.  As Tip O'Neil rightly said, "all politics are local."  And as local as one gets is oneself.  From the moment of birth, it's all about "me."  They don't call it "infantile narcissism" for nothing.  If you don't do anything, you'll be born conservative, and you'll die conservative.  If you're to become anything else, you have to outgrow your infantile, narcissistic conservatism.

Which is not to say that all liberals are mature.  Many are, and some are not.  Some of them simply expand the concept of narcissism, and their own personal narcissisms, to include something or someone else.  But it's the same narcissism, just configured differently.  Instead of "it's all me, me, me," it's "it's all me, me, me, and my advocacy of you."  It's like the old joke: "enough about me; lets talk about you.  What do you think about me?"  Orthodox Jews are not allowed to use certain things, including keys, during their sabbath.  Once they step outside their homes, they can't have locked the door, because they couldn't get back in.  So they have devised a manipulation to extend the concept, and territory, of "home" to include lots of places that aren't their personal houses.  They do this by fashioning a system of strings around territory that includes their own personal dwellings, and anything within the strings is considered "home."  So now they can leave their house, lock the door, take the key, and use it to reopen the door without having used it other than "in the home."  That's what liberal narcissists do.

These people, righties and lefties, are like a driver whose transmission is broken, and he can't get out of first gear.  But because he wants to go where he wants to go, and he's in as much of a hurry as he thinks he is, and the interstate is the most direct route, he decides to take the interstate, and drive in the left lane.  In first gear.

These people need to stay off the road.  They're not fit.  They shouldn't be in office.  Or vote for someone who wants to be.  Or even have conversations about politics.  Or much of anything else.  They can't handle it.

Guns Don't Kill People. People Do.

So say the gun rights advocates.  And of course they're right.  More specifically in this instance, people with guns kill people.

How to understand George Zimmerman.  Zimmerman, a concerned neighbor without a gun, sees an unfamiliar black kid with a hooded sweatshirt, calls police, and maybe hangs around, at a distance, to see what will happen, and what this unfamiliar black kid with the hooded sweatshirt will do, when the police arrive.  Or he contents himself that he has made the call, worries for his safety around this unfamiliar black kid with the hooded sweatshirt, and prudently goes home.  He'll call the police later, to find out if everything was OK.

Zimmerman with a gun is an entirely different animal.  He's fearless and cocky.  His gym trainer says Zimmerman is no kind of specimen.  But with a gun, he's a powerhouse.  With a gun, Zimmerman gets out of his car and confronts this kid.  The unfamiliar black kid, with the hooded sweatshirt.  The kid who might himself, for all Zimmerman knows, have a gun.  How is it Zimmerman isn't worried about this possibility?  Is that what carrying a gun does?  It makes you not only aggressive, but stupid?

He approaches the kid, demands to know who he is, what he's doing, where he's going.  He doesn't show his gun, though.  He's just at the kid.  He's pushy, insistent, unrelenting.  It's the kind of cockiness you have when you're carrying a gun.  The fact is, that gun divides Zimmerman into two people.  The unarmed Zimmerman calls the police again, three minutes after the first call, to see if they're on the way yet.  Ask his gym trainer.  Zimmerman with a gun is a vigilante, fierce, an army of one.  He's not at all the softie his gym trainer knows.

"Mind your own business," says the black kid with the hooded sweatshirt.  Maybe "leave me alone, Mister."  Or maybe "fuck you."  For all we know, it could even have been "I'm visiting my aunt."  But Zimmerman, the big shot with the gun, the wiseguy who's prepared to "stand [his] ground," or is maybe even looking for a fight, isn't satisfied.  It's not OK with him that this black kid, with a hooded sweatshirt, is there, on Zimmerman's turf.  It's not OK at all.  He knows all about black kids, especially the ones with the hooded sweatshirts.  "Punks," who "always get away."  And he, and that gun, aren't going to be side-stepped.

What does Trayvon Martin do with this interaction?  He wants to go home, and he's being accosted by some cracker who won't leave him alone.  Does the cracker get in his face?  Is there any contact from this fearless, cocky, (gun-toting) white dude?  Does Trayvon Martin feel threatened in any way?  Does he, by any chance, push back?  Why shouldn't he?  It's not like he has anything to fear. Zimmerman turns out to be easy to overpower.  There's a scuffle, and Martin, who's stronger, and maybe bigger, winds up on top.  He's scared, but he's proud to have defended himself.

As the gun people say, guns don't kill people.  People do.  Any time they want to, if they're carrying a gun.