ON THE AVENUES: If you really want to be my friend.

Let’s begin with the acknowledgement that social media is one of the best ways ever devised by mankind to enable anti-social behavior.

Can this statement be doubted? You know it. I know it. The man in the moon knows it, and so do the Russians, because after all, they’re watching every breath we take, and monitoring every keystroke we make.

Certain useful aspects of anti-social media are the exceptions that prove the rule; the medium is a fine way to stay in touch with genuine, real-world friends; to share photographs and memories; and indulge in occasional, purely recreational voyeurism.

Guilty of the latter, your honor.

But the worst angels of our nature have long since discovered anti-social media’s proficiency when it comes to the creation and dissemination of odoriferous bile and sheer disinformation, although it isn’t clear whether a platform like Facebook has become a proxy partisan battleground for reality, or the other way around.

Venom, poison and toxicity; it’s enough to make the Grinch’s three-decker toadstool and sauerkraut sandwich with arsenic sauce look more like a Faberge egg.

Sticking to the Facebook paradigm, it is no longer surprising when a complete stranger parachutes into a conversation, dispensing f-bombs, threats and insults, having watched carefully for the perfect opportunity to be the sort of living human penis that we’d quickly eject from the barroom without a moment’s second thoughts.

As the kids say, trolls and their masturbatory trolling (eyes rolling).

However, what still causes me to scratch my head is when this starring role of ill-tempered instigator, played typically by furious white men, most of them old, who case the joint from the very same vantage point in the bushes where they deposit the urine borne of so many Bud Lights, emanates from one who wishes to be known as one of my “friends.”

This strikes me as strange, not to mention magnificently, mentally unbalanced.

Understanding that 40-odd years of cutthroat, robber baron, end-stage-capitalistic and neoliberal economic doctrine has removed most vestiges of etiquette from human discourse in America, it seems to me that “friend” is one of those words that really should be meaningful. Otherwise, don’t use it.

Perhaps what is ultimately most depressing about anti-social media is the cheapening of this word.

I have almost 3,000 “friends” on Facebook, 60-something of whom are dead; allowing for multiple accounts and other weirdness, as well as “friends” who last posted in 2012, the whole shebeen boils down to a few hundred persons known to me on sight, and if defined properly, are in fact casual acquaintances, along with a few dozen more who truly are close friends in any emotionally quantifiable way.

Now, if you’re eager to troll me on Facebook by hijacking a thread – to refer to me as an idiot, a liar, a commie dupe, or any of many other disparagements, all the while waving your arms like a raving lunatic as the accumulated wisdom of 10,001 barnyard sunrises flows from your aged countenance like raw sewage into yonder gently winding river – well, then it’s difficult for me to view you as a “friend” on Facebook, or anywhere else, for that matter.

It would be relatively easy to apply the universal anti-social media solution to this problem by erasing this “friend’s” very existence, and ceasing a dysfunctional ‘friendship” that obviously isn’t, by blocking and publicly scourging the serial offender.

And yet, to me, this course of action is both tedious and unrewarding.

Blocking might remove a squawking troll who lacks basic manners. But it also eliminates my lingering belief, crazy as it sounds, that any of us can choose to accept rationality and change our way of thinking.

Bizarrely, my viewpoint mirrors that of traditional religious faith, in the sense that anyone can be saved, except I reject the supernatural element and replace it with this: Anyone can choose to save themselves, by opening their eyes and seeing another side of the story.

Returning to Facebook, this means that my generally preferred solution is to unfollow those “friends” who clutter my feed with regurgitations of someone else’s falsehoods via memes and everyday thoughtlessness.

“Friends” who are capable of communicating in their own words merit a step higher in my hierarchy; their continued presence is negotiable. We may not see eye to eye, but we’re capable of communicating. As yet, there are possibilities.

But the “friends” who insist on being cancerous conveyors of pure malice?

It’s still a tough call. I don’t go to their anti-social media feeds and raise a ruckus, just as I don’t walk into anyone’s house or apartment and begin spray painting graffiti on the walls or pelting the cat with garbage.

In fact, I don’t even behave this way with non-friends. Why, then, are some of us unable to grasp this distinction? Be my guest and claim that your insanity stems from a love of country. To me it sounds a good deal more like blind fear and self-loathing.

It’s hardest when the trollish, insulting anti-social media “friend” is someone who you remember as being interesting, which in my world usually implies a person I can recall having beers or coffee with, conversing, and being capable of learning something from.

Now these pleasant memories aren’t jibing with the angry electronic interjections, and I’m left to wonder what went wrong. What changed with them?

After all, a mind surely remains a terrible thing to waste.

---

Shifting gears, for a great many years I delighted in informing listeners that I could far easier imagine a week-long pleasure trip to then-hermetically sealed, radically communist Tirana, Albania than being compelled to reside for the same length of time in Jeffersonville, just five or so miles away from Nawbany as the crow flies.

Then Albania went and shook off the commie yoke, and no longer could I use it as an example. When Tirana defected, I had no choice but to embrace Pyongyang as the counterweight to Clark County. It wasn’t quite the same.

Consequently I’m prepared to concede that this joke has long since ceased to be relevant. Living and working in Jeffersonville isn’t far-fetched, especially since my grand scheme of 30 years to render New Albany habitable for intelligent human life has proven to have yielded mixed results, if not outright failure.

The very fact that I cannot risk explaining the reasons for this feeling for fear of reprisals from today’s elite New Albanian cadres, whether political or social, perhaps summarizes the depth of the issue. The prevailing mediocrity is like sand storms in the Sahara.

Back when it all started, a (real) friend used to insist to me that I was wasting my time; New Albany simply could not be reformed, as it persisted in being a dirty little river town, and couldn’t/wouldn’t rise above its underachieving history.

In retrospect, yes. Even before Facebook existed, my friend was exactly right.

In two months, we can expect Donald Trump to win the city of New Albany by at least 20 points, and if Trump manages to secure re-election, the first emissary likely to arrive in our bare city will be Ben Carson of HUD, to be welcomed by our Democratic adfarm-near-me/">ministration and given the ceremonial role of pushing the button to ignite the implosion of low-income housing at Riverview Tower.

Local progressives will say absolutely nothing, because they’re not progressive. The Dixiecrats will chortle with delight, chugging their Lites.

Somewhere, a dog will bark.

---

Recent columns:

August 27: ON THE AVENUES: Structural racism, white fragility, and my old school.

August 20: ON THE AVENUES: When love and hate collide – or, my father and the governor.

August 13: ON THE AVENUES: In My Merry Oldsmobile.

August 6: ON THE AVENUES: Surrender.

Miracle Man.

Religion and politics intersect at the point of power, and how best to keep it. Hypocrisy only seems to be the inevitable consequence. In fact, it can't really be hypocritical if power was the basis for the equation from the very start.

Jerry Falwell Jr. might well have been telling the truth about his unzipped trousers. But this isn't the point, is it?

The Last Temptation of Jerry, by Jeet Heer (The Nation)

A scandal at Liberty University proves that white evangelicals are starting to copy Trump.

Jerry Falwell Jr., recently deposed as president of Liberty University, is a new type of Christian sinner. The figure of a pious hypocrite is as old as religion itself, an inevitable by-product of the fact that any moral system will be upheld by flawed people. But usually godly miscreants try to keep their transgressions secret.

A prime example is Jimmy Swaggart, who was disgraced and defrocked after revelations of hiring sex workers in 1987. Furtive, sweaty, twitchy, and given to wailing, “I have sinned,” Swaggart acted like an escapee from the fictions of Fyodor Dostoevsky or Flannery O’Connor: a God-haunted and superstitious primate driven by compulsions he could neither understand nor control. As creepy as he is, Swaggart has given every evidence of a complex and tormented inner life.

Falwell Jr., by contrast, is a shallower creature who has not tried to hide his misdeeds. Rather, he has flaunted them. The latest scandal involving Falwell Jr. grew out of a photo he himself posted on Instagram, showing him with his arms around a woman who was not his wife, both parties with their pants unzipped. “Yeah, it was weird,” Falwell admitted in a radio interview. “She’s pregnant. She couldn’t get her pants zipped and I was like trying to like… I had on a pair of jeans I haven’t worn in a long time and couldn’t get zipped either. So, I just put my belly out like hers. She’s my wife’s assistant, she’s a sweetheart. I should have never put it up and embarrassed her. I’ve apologized to everybody. I promised my kids I will try to be a good boy from here on out.”

This explanation wasn’t sufficient, coming as it did on top of a long list of previous scandals, including still unexplained land deals he made with his pool boy and photos seemingly showing him drinking and dancing at a Florida nightclub. These photos were a problem because Liberty University holds its students and staff to strict moral standards. Students can receive demerits if they dance with a partner of the opposite sex and be expelled for drinking. Sex outside of marriage is prohibited for students.

As Politico reported last year, Falwell Jr. was notorious for flouting these rules, taking an exhibitionist’s glee in lewd conversations ...

Wait -- I'm getting a pulse ... The Movement and Say Their Names, coming Saturday to NA.

These two events are occurring almost simultaneously in New Albany on Saturday morning.

The Movement peaceful protest (above)
Say Their Names: Chalk the Sidewalk (below)

More than a few downtown New Albany businesses have expressed support for Black Lives Matters (generally) and these two events (specifically). More than one of these businesses has pledged to distribute water on Saturday morning, or to try to help in other ways.

It's highly instructive to contrast the overall positive, principled vibe of these two events with the predictable comments from those who (shall we say) "oppose" the principles being espoused therein.

Like these.

Shopkeeper: "You look thirsty. Here, have some water."

Angry specimen: "If that SHIT turns violent I blame YOU."

What a way to live.

The resistance is unwelcome on newspaperman Morris' porch.

Graphic credit.

Chris Morris has no idea why Rosa Parks refused to yield her seat on the bus to a white man, or why the Stonewall riot occurred, or why the Ludlow Massacre took place.

But wait -- how can I know these things?

In fact, I'm unfairly judging the author from afar, characterizing his annoyance with "the resistance" as the typical response of an older white guy just like me, who woke up on third base and thought he hit a triple.

Fact is, I can't really make these assumptions unless the two of us have a chat, or I send him an e-mail.

Which reminds me.

Maybe -- just maybe -- the professional journalist should ask someone who has a "resist" bumper sticker on his or her car, and who professes allegiance to the "resistance" as currently defined, exactly what the terms means to them before going off half-cocked about the damage to his sense of old white male propriety.

Then again, the vast majority of the newspaper's columnists are old, straight, white males.

Diversity yet, Mr. Bill?

Ever?

MORRIS: Swap resist with peace, by Chris Morris (Tom May Land)

Resist!

I’ve heard that word used a lot in the past 16 months. But the other day, while in traffic, it took me back to another decade of unrest.

One fine afternoon at the army surplus store.

A collector friend in Europe had a request, so earlier today there was an exceedingly rare occurrence in metro Louisville.

I went shopping at an army surplus store.

The man on duty, who I took to be the owner, was helping a customer. Technical jargon aside, they seemed to be talking about flamethrowers.

Their conversation turned to current events. I wasn't paying much attention until the customer said, "Well, they'll have to get past us, won't they?"

"The liberal assholes will say it's Trump's fault."

"Did you hear that actress talking about the hurricanes?"

"You mean the bitch from Louisville?"

"Yeah, she said they were punishment for electing Trump."

"I get so tired of the redistributive socialist media pushing those people down out throats."

"They'll find out soon enough."

At this juncture, your eyebrow surely is arched: really, this guy used the word redistributive aloud?

Yes, he really did.

It occurred to me that as an older Caucasian male with a fairly short haircut and clad in a white t-shirt, I was undercover for all intents and purposes, looking (though not thinking) just like them.

They felt no need to censor their chat with me standing nearby, although maybe thoughts like these aren't out of the ordinary coming after a conversation about flamethrowers. They might still be there, having moved on to tactical nuclear weapons.

Still, it's just as ridiculous to blame natural disasters on this or any other president as it is to suggest an unknowable God is punishing us for gay marriage, or any other such rubbish.

Before I had much of a chance to introduce climate change as a topic or further contemplate my status as a sub-human liberal, albeit one camouflaged suitably and unthreateningly pale, the owner came up, smiling.

"What can I do for you?"

After I showed him my checklist, we transacted business. It almost felt normal.

I wonder if he knew?

Anger and mourning "Inside the Sacrifice Zone."

You're so angry that you consistently vote against your own health?

The book's ultimate aim is to explore the emotional state of the American "right", but importantly, this review helps to remind us that as we've focused on the personal demerits of two horrible presidential candidates, whole areas of critical importance have gone unaddressed.

Climate change?

Environmental concerns?

Anyone?

Inside the Sacrifice Zone, by Nathaniel Rich (The New York Review of Books)

Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild

 ... After seeing his house, neighborhood, and way of life destroyed by corporate greed and state-sanctioned contempt for the natural environment, and many of his neighbors diagnosed with cancer, (Mike) Schaff was forever changed. “They think we’re just a bunch of ignorant coonasses,” he told a Mother Jones reporter. Schaff became an environmental activist, railing against the “disrespect that we have been shown by both Texas Brine and our state officials themselves.” He marched on the statehouse, wrote fifty letters to state and federal officials, granted dozens of interviews to local, national, and foreign press. When state officials claimed they had detected no oil in the bayou, he demanded that the EPA check their work.

But Schaff continued to vote Tea Party down the line. He voted for the very politicians who had abetted Texas Brine at every turn, who opposed environmental regulation of any kind. He voted to “abolish” the EPA, believing that it “was grabbing authority and tax money to take on a fictive mission…lessening the impact of global warming.” The violent destruction of everything he held dear was not enough to change his mind.

Schaff’s story is an extreme but representative example of what so many Louisianian voters have brought upon themselves. “The entire state of Louisiana,” writes Hochschild, “had been placed into a sinkhole.” When confronted with the contradictions in their political logic, Hochschild’s subjects fall into “long pauses.” Cognitive dissonance reduces them to childlike inanity. When asked about catastrophic oil spills that result from lax regulation, one woman says, “It’s not in the company’s own interest to have a spill or an accident…. So if there’s a spill, it’s probably the best the company could do.” Madonna Massey says: “Sure, I want clean air and water, but I trust our system to assure it.” Jackie Tabor, whom Hochschild describes as “an obedient Christian wife,” says: “You have to put up with things the way they are…. Pollution is the sacrifice we make for capitalism,” which is a gentler way of saying that premature death is the sacrifice we make for capitalism. Janice Areno, who worked at Olin Chemical without a facial mask as an inspector of phosgene gas and suffers mysterious health ailments that she believes are “probably related to growing up near the plants,” finds comfort in an anthropomorphic analogy: “Just like people have to go to the bathroom, plants do too.”

But Hochschild is not interested in merely documenting the familiar ways in which this stratum of white Americans has consistently voted against its own interests, economic and otherwise. She wants to understand the cause. She finds all of the familiar explanations lacking.

"The best worst president ever."

The propensity to laugh out loud comes even more quickly when the speaker is a chicken announcing its eternal fidelity to Colonel Sanders.

The old angry white guys don't want to think about economics, even if their daily working lives are testament to the sacrifices necessary to maintain the 1%.

The old angry white guys just want someone to tell them that it's okay to hate their pre-selected  convenient targets, ranging from the gays to the coloreds to the ragheads.

I'm an old angry white guy, too. It's just that I reserve my anger to be directed at the old angry whiye guys. They embarrass me, and I wish they'd either grow up or ... that's right ... move to Putin's goddamm Russia if they don't like it here.

NOTES & ERRATA BY MARK MORFORD: The best worst president ever (SF Gate)

“Obama is the worst thing to ever happen to this country,” declares the wealthy, rakish, silver-haired Newport Beach white guy to his small group of perfectly tanned 50-something females sitting just a few feet away from us at a stunning restaurant patio overlooking the sun-kissed California coastline, just off of Highway 1, as he sipped his pinot and adjusted his wraparound Ray Bans, flush from the economy’s spectacular recovery that has benefitted his exact demographic most of all, stroking his purebred dog and taking various selfies with their $500 phones, oblivious to the furious swirls of irony and hypocrisy fluttering just above their heads.

I laughed out loud. Couldn’t help it; I had just overheard Mr. Newport Beach say something about how Obamacare is an unmitigated disaster (despite how, of course, it’s not), and if America were to somehow actually develop a health care system similar to, say, Canada’s, that would be the end of America for certain; we’d never recover from such a devastating blow. Or something. And then came the “worst thing to ever happen” quip, and I couldn’t hold back.

ON THE AVENUES: Learning from the Warehouse.

ON THE AVENUES: Learning from the Warehouse.

A weekly web column by Roger A. Baylor.

Two weeks ago, the Warehouse Bar abruptly closed its doors. To put it mildly, this outcome was unexpected, given what seemed to be overwhelming positives during the period of its resurgence.

In fact, the establishment’s short-lived reinvention as an overtly, all-closets-barred LGBT bar truly was the talk of the town. When NA Confidential mentioned the Warehouse, the ratings in terms of blog and Facebook page views and shares ventured into numerical stratospheres never previously witnessed.

The local chain newspaper’s SoIn supplement did a whole story on the phenomenon, in which the bar’s two managers reported huge revenue increases. Comments and feedback came from far and wide, posted by people seeing something new and interesting about New Albany, perhaps for the very first time.

But the most gratifying reactions came from several of my younger acquaintances, who merely shrugged, yawningly attributing the Warehouse’s LGBT makeover to no higher motives than a mercantile desire to place customers in seats: “Duh. They turned it into a gay bar to make money.”

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Without so much as referencing the judgmental social baggage carried for so long and annoyingly by their grandparents, to the effect that there might be something intrinsically evil, immoral or threatening about an LGBT bar located within stumbling distance of Bob Caesar’s pastry shop, what they found noteworthy was a business embracing the profit motive by catering to a neglected market.

Talk about revolutionary!

Arguably the most fascinating aspect of the Warehouse’s no-frills reinvention overnight, from an indistinct bar with virtually nothing of originality to distinguish it from any number of other area licensees into a must-visit shooting star attracting more visitors to New Albany than any number of civically-endorsed weekend one-offs, is what it actually cost to facilitate the transformation.

Basically, it cost nothing.

The bricks, mortar and fixtures were the same as before. In terms of reinvestment capital, the only need was an attitudinal shift – a difference incalculable in dollars and cents. In effect, this was nothing more than a statement of intent to customers: You are as you are, so come as you are. Be who you are. No biggie. Nothing more, nothing less.

Simple dignity, accompanied by a beer or cocktail. What a concept.

It really shouldn’t be difficult, should it?

---

I’ve never thought about these issues very much as they pertain to business, probably because I’ve always taken for granted that my own personal goal of better beer was egalitarian and inclusive, allowing folks patronizing my own two establishments the freedom to be what they are, too, with further fanfare unnecessary beyond the better beer itself.

However, I may have been mistaken in this assumption. Better beer’s higher unit costs always nagged me, and then a few months ago I was taken down another notch when it was reported to me that an anti-gay slur was uttered by a customer at the Grant Line location.

Unfortunately, staff didn’t hear it, and the perpetrator could not be identified. That’s too bad. If I’d have been on hand, heard the comment and had the opportunity, someone’s boorish butt would have been unceremoniously removed from the premises and asked not to return.

Of course, neither our workers nor the company’s ownership sanctions such doltishness, and yet this incident remains bothersome to me, probably because it illustrates how elusive simple human dignity can be, even when one tries his best to espouse an atmosphere for it.

At any rate, the Warehouse’s managers put out a literal flag of welcome, and customers came streaming through the door. The story should end happily, but it hasn’t, at least not as of this writing. The reason for this appears to be the sad fact of the managers being merely managers, and not actual owners.

---

The actual owner of the Warehouse as a business entity, who purchased it on contract from Matt McMahan and was renting the space from Matt, apparently made the decision to close it. He turned in the keys to Matt, skipped the contract and gave it back, even though business was much better off as an LGBT bar than it had been before.

It appears likely that his reason for doing so testifies to the existence, hitherto unknown, of Americans who genuinely do value personal principle over profit, although in this case, a better way of phrasing it might be “value personal prejudice over profit.”

At least that’s the way the story was told to me; after all, a homophobe might not be the best choice of LGBT bar owner. I looked at his Facebook profile, and staring back at me was a white, bearded, presumably heterosexual male of 55, wearing a Duck Dynasty shirt. Faster than it takes for John Rosenbarger to emit noxious lies, I felt the familiar, all-embracing revulsion toward ignorant, clueless, thoughtless white guys of that approximate age.

Of my age, that is, because I’m 54, and guys like this are an embarrassment, and a veritable albatross around the necks of the rest of us, not just here, but in the entire nation. To me, the sooner my cohort is outnumbered, the better.

To be sure, I’m operating on second-hand testimony. However, it would be entirely believable to me if the former Warehouse owner in question would say aloud: “Sheeee-it, boys, I only did it because I knew it would fail, and when it didn’t – well, I’m not about to let a bunch of faggots help me succeed!”

Make no mistake: He didn’t say this, at least not for attribution, but I’ve heard words to this effect so often in my life, as spewing from white male morons my general age, that it has left an indelibly negative impression.

Let’s just be happy this one is gone.

I’m not sure what will happen next. Whether at the Warehouse or elsewhere, it has been proven that an LGBT bar is viable in New Albany. Like any bar, it would need to be well-managed, and maybe more than any other bar, the regulars would double as active stakeholders worthy of consultation. I had coffee with Matt yesterday, and he seems amenable to such a course.

Get a nice Pale Ale on tap, and the sky’s the limit … even in this town.

Dude looks like a baby.

As Brandon pointed out when sharing this link, Herr Heimbach currently lives in Paoli, and as LinkedIn helpfully verifies, Paoli counts as part of the metro Louisville area.

Great.

Allow me to observe that as a "white" person, Heimbach and his ilk are a disgrace to my race.

The Little Führer, by Ryan Lenz and Keegan Hankes (Southern Poverty Law Center)

... In many ways, it is Heimbach’s embrace of every manner of pro-white cause and faction that has cemented his popularity as an up-and-comer in some sectors of the radical right. But his ideas didn’t come from his family or friends.

Heimbach’s racism is self-taught.

"Race is central to the fear and angst of the US right."

Of course it is. What's even funnier, or perhaps more chilling, are the hundreds of comments assuring Younge of his errors.

Race is central to the fear and angst of the US right ... The shrinking white base of the Republican party cannot accept the country in which it now lives – so it shut it down, by Gary Younge (The Guardian)

... Their inability to craft a credible strategic response to these insecurities only serves to reinforce them. "You don't like a particular policy or a particular president?" taunted Obama last week. "Go out there and win an election." The trouble is Republicans can't because their racially charged rhetoric alienates minorities, leaving them more electorally isolated, prompting defeat – which leaves them ever more divided. Meanwhile, their reckless obstruction in Congress, which nearly triggered a default, makes the nation's descent into chaos more likely. Unable to come to terms with the country in which they live, they are complicit in creating the very future they most fear

Pierce: "And, of course, this was not about race because nothing is ever about race."

Pierce says it well, as usual. This is what this case means. That is precisely why so many seem happy about it. They are as paranoid and as fatalistic and as likely to be armed as Zimmerman. Their imaginations do not extend beyond the boundaries of their own fear and there is nothing they fear more than a disruption or recalibration of those boundaries. They have been validated by the system that created them, again. They are the system.

What George Zimmerman Can Do Now, Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

Calm is prevailing. For now. At least, that's something.

However, in theory, at least, here is what is now possible. Some night very soon, if he so chooses, George Zimmerman can load his piece, tuck it into the back of his pants, climb into his SUV, and drive around Sanford, Florida looking for assholes and fucking punks who are walking through neighborhoods where he, George Zimmerman, defender of law and order, doesn't think they belong. He can drive around Sanford, Florida and check out anyone who is dressed in such a manner as might frighten the average citizen who has been fed a daily diet of "Scary Black Kids" by their local news and by their favorite radio personalities, and who is dressed in such a manner as might seem inappropriate to their surroundings as determined by George Zimmerman, crimebuster. He can drive around Sanford, Florida until he spots an asshole or a fucking punk and then he can get out of his SUV, his piece tucked into the back of his pants, and he can stalk the asshole or the fucking punk, the one who is in the wrong neighborhood, or who is dressed inappropriately, at least according to George Zimmerman, protector of peace. If the asshole, or the fucking punk, turns around and objects to being stalked -- or, worse, if the asshole, or the fucking punk, decides physically to confront the person stalking him -- then George Zimmerman can whip out the piece from the back of his pants and shoot the asshole, or the fucking punk, dead right there on the spot. This can happen tonight. That is now possible. Hunting licenses are now available and it's open season on assholes, fucking punks, and kids who wear hoodies at night in neighborhoods where they do not belong, at least according to George Zimmerman, defender of law and order, crimebuster, and protector of the peace, because that is what American society has told George Zimmerman, and all the rest of us, is the just outcome of what happened on one dark and rainy night in February of 2012.

Inauguration 1: "We are made for this moment."

It was a day for celebration and mirth, because there's nothing quite like angry disgruntled "look at me" white guys to double me over with laughter, especially when they can only communicate only through incoherent grunts and Facebook memes.

My advice is to man up and get on with it. I've made it through Nixon, Ray-Gun and two Bushes (oddly enough, Bush Elder wasn't all that bad) ... and lemme tell you, you'll survive. Drink better quality alcohol. It helps.

Instead of howling at the moon, rigging the Electoral College and stockpiling ammo, how's about picking up some litter or something, er, almost communal, if you know what I mean.

Obama's second inauguration: 'We are made for this moment'

• President vows to reclaim the spirit of founding fathers
• Gay rights, climate change and immigration mentioned
• Crowd of about half a million watches Washington swearing-in

By Ewen MacAskill (Guardian)

... Attempting to debunk the rightwing interpretation of the constitution that has held sway in the US, Obama, in what became a near constant refrain throughout his speech, said the founding fathers did not intend the country to become enslaved by the constitution and that patriotism was not the preserve of the right.

"That is our generation's task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of life, and liberty, and the pursuit of happiness – real for every American. Being true to our founding documents does not require us to agree on every contour of life; it does not mean we will all define liberty in exactly the same way, or follow the same precise path to happiness.," Obama said.

It was down to the current generation to make the principles a reality, he declared. "For history tells us that while these truths may be self-evident, they have never been self-executing."