It was so, so far from unexpected and such a perfect fit that the American right would embrace George Zimmerman as folk hero and  victim of injustice. Avatar of bathetic pleading for the cause of white victimization in the era of putatively oppressive minority civil rights, as well as of juvenile, unaccountable, rankly stupid gun idolatry the man seemed to have it all.

He’s a metaphor that keeps on giving. Displaying all his essential characteristics and basic character and theirs, there was Mr. Conservative action figure: macho, tough talking, stereotyping, wannabe cop bad ass masking a hapless pussy who gets his ass beat in an actual conflict, able to prevail only with an enormously disproportionate and unfair advantage, in this case the armed against the unarmed, man against boy.

They rallied around him, gave him money and championed his plight. Yes, those weaklings who labor so arduously to suppress voting in order to avoid unfavorable democratic judgments, what would you expect? They love a good one-sided fight when they can get one, which unfortunately is much too often in Washington, and especially so in those state governments where their rise to power has brought all manner of sneaky, weaselly, pusillanimous maneuvers to exact the petty cultural and economic revenge they stay awake at night thinking about.

Who a better champion for those who believe the rich and powerful, the banks, the financial giants and the oil companies are righteous victims of our all but unarmed and defanged regulatory regime than George Zimmerman? Who better to carry the flag for powerful polluters who irresponsibly and greedily fill our neighborhoods with gunk in order to save a buck, but claim their liberty will be infringed upon when required by regulation to respect the liberty of fellow citizens not to be sickened, than George Zimmerman, the cowardly bully with a gun who stalks and murders the innocent black child, yet just can’t seem to catch a break?

Why wouldn’t those who claim, including the Zimmerman defense team and their many advocates that the teenager with the Skittles minding his own business walking home from the store is the stone thug, not the fat, gun-toting busybody who stalked and shot him, be the same people for whom the American government was Daddy, until it began to represent not only them, the enfranchised white minority, but all the rest, after which it became awful? Who a better symbol for conservative Republicans who have clutched the white backlash and racial resentment bequeathed them by Richard Nixon and George Wallace close to their bosom, propagated it, politically manipulated it and made it the staple of their electoral politics, than George Zimmerman?

What with the Supreme Court’s conservative majority taking their Weed Whacker to the Voting Rights Act, it’s been a good couple of weeks for petty white victimhood, sniveling cowards and reactionaries’ abiding dependency on the rigged game.