While the rest of the Twitterverse pays close attention to the self-important wordsmithings of both Glenn Greenwald and David Sirota, yours truly has never been up for watching both intellectually masturbate themselves and each other into smug, self-satisfied ecstasy. It's only when one or both do or say something so irretrievably stupid that The Man bothers to take a closer look.
Today, Sirota performed that epic feat of intellectual stupidity with one of his Salon articles. Seriously, Sirota thinks that a racially-motivated killing done under the cloak of a flawed law and institutional racism is the equivalent of the president's decision to eliminate a top-ranking American-Yemeni terrorist via Predator drone:
Remember, in the same year that saw Zimmerman kill Martin, Zimmerman’s president, Barack Obama, extra-judicially executed Anwar al-Awlaki and then his 16-year-old son, without charging either of the two U.S. citizens with a single crime. The two were simply presumed guilty, without any evidence being officially marshaled against them. Not only that, such a presumption wasn’t hidden from view in shame, as if it was something to be embarrassed about. Instead, Obama openly touted the extra-judicial killing of the father and then his spokesman haughtily justified the extra-judicial killing of the child.
Explaining the Zimmerman-like aggression against the Awlakis and thousands of others who find themselves targeted by U.S. drone strike missiles, the federal government later offered up the Zimmerman Principle, repeating the same sentiment that Zimmerman expressed during his cellphone call to non-emergency responders.
Whereas Zimmerman told non-emergency responders that Martin “looks like he’s up to no good,” the New York Times reported that Obama’s indiscriminate drone bombing, which “counts all military-age males in a strike zone as combatants,” presumes that people in a targeted area are “probably up to no good.” In other words, when it comes to military policy, the Obama administration is George Zimmerman perceiving the world as filled with Trayvon Martins supposedly “up to no good” — and who supposedly therefore deserve to die.
It is, of course, no coincidence that, whether African-Americans like Martin or Arabs like the Awlakis, those most affected by the Zimmerman Principle’s presumption of guilt tend to be people of color.
So, whereas all Zimmerman had to do was stay in the car until the police could arrive and roust Trayvon Martin with legal sanction, all the president had to do was put the drones away and apparently commit billions of dollars and thousands of troops to a manhunt and hopeful arrest of al-Awlaki, where he could then be tried and convicted in a civilian court (given his status as a U.S. citizen) as Sirota apparently intended.
According to Sirota, America, or the president, to be more precise, is that neighborhood watch doofus with his fat finger wrapped around the trigger, waddling towards al-Awalaki as he walks home with Skittles and Arizona iced tea in hand.
Whereas Trayvon Martin was just an ordinary 17-year-old young man, conservatives, Zimmerman supporters and other unreconstructed love painting Martin as some sort of weed-smoking thug-in-training for whom Zimmerman did the world a favor of ridding. Meanwhile, al-Awlaki willingly integrated himself into the Al-Qaeda network, calling for the deaths of American civilians and soldiers alike. Perhaps that was just bluster to make his American-Yemeni self appear more palatable to his backers. Not Safe For Work Corp had a story on this very premise of image and communication to bolster one's image as a "true believer," but that's beside the point. Point is, Sirota attempts to rehab al-Awlaki's image into a Martin-like bystander who's only true vice was being in the path of the president's Zimmerman-like drone-assisted rage.
One always runs into comparisons of one highly charged event or historical figure to another, sometimes as a springboard for someone's pet causes. The constant comparisons of the LGBT movement to the Civil Rights movement for black American equality is one. The GOP's constant attempts to repaint Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as a conservative figure for their own purposes is another. Sirota's attempt to conflate Zimmerman's current state of freedom to the president's freedom to call on as many drone strikes as he pleases fits the bill to a tee.
I don't think Davy here understands his history well enough to understand that (1) there's centuries of racial antagonism behind Zimmerman's actions that serve as a round hole to his square peg of a drone narrative and (2) it is highly offensive to use Martin's death at the hands of Zimmerman to push forward a message attacking the president for his use of drones in the waning War on Terror, as opposed to keeping thousands of active troops on the ground.
Speaking of which, I think I get Davy's premise. With drones, there are no U.S. casualties covered with flags on homebound transport for Sirota and others to use in order to pressure the president to cut the War on Terror short and bring the troops home. With drones, the incentive for any sort of immediate withdrawal nearly vanishes. Fewer dead U.S. soldiers means less pressure to pack it all up and bring everything home, just as they thought the president promised back in 2008/2009.
It's no surprise that Sirota thinks the president is just as much of an unabashed racist and failure as George Zimmerman is. As far as he's concerned, the president failed to bring home the emoprog bacon when he decided to push forward with the War on Terror instead of putting an immediate end to it. These and other non-actions on part of the president managed to land him on the emoprog shitlist. So much so, in fact, that guys like Cenk Uygur have called for the president's arrest and conviction as a war criminal. Sound familiar?
Bob Cesca's Daily Banter piece points out three important things:
- The above is the latest attempt for Sirota and his fellow emoprogs to step all over the president for being just another George Bush, in their own humble opinions.
- Yet these same morons are more than willing to stand with the likes of Ron and Rand Paul. Sirota loves Rand's stand on drones (at least when it comes to terrorists overseas) while blithely ignoring Rand's position on the Civil Rights Act, states' rights and a whole slew of classic Dixiecrat views and opinions on race.
- Sirota and the anti-Obama emoprog collective's misappropriation of Martin's image further isolates them from the remainder of the left, while making them the perfect patsies for any milquetoast conservative wanting to lead anyone from the fringe left off the proverbial cliff.
Next thing you know, Glenn Greenwald will start crying about how the Trayvon Martin case sucked all the oxygen out of the room in an attempt to distract people from Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
