Being Punished: What does the future hold for the Punisher Skull.

When it's too important:

As you might guess, this is going to cover issues that encompass more than just The Punisher Logo and its use by third parties.  Let's start with that though.

The co-opting of the Punisher Skull by the suburban white "tough guy" crowd has been an ongoing process that we all noticed, but couldn't figure out how to react to.  Like a doctor confronted with a condition that could be a deadly infection or a severe allergy, there was no way to tell what the cure for the condition was, and so what action could be taken was never evident.  

A good look (not a perfect one) into this phenomenon can be seen in the About Face piece by Nate Powell published well over a year ago.

Worth the read.

Of course this is because of Baby Boomers:
So how did we get to a society where a dangerous amount of people think wearing a virus prevention mask is government oppression, but Ahmaud Arbery and George Floyd would "still be alive" if they had just "obeyed commands" of these out of control nutjobs...?  Well those of you who regularly read this blog (which is no one), might expect me to instantly blame the baby boomers.  And you're right this is their fault.  40 years of having their hands on the wheel of this country and in 2020 they finally drove into the farmer's market and into a brick wall while asking "is this the Dairy Queen" and all that.  Thanks for the forever wars, baby boomers. 
 
SJW Failure:
But there is a bit more than just baby boomers here.  Something that is equally destructive.  SJW nonsense.  Yep, the ineffectual hydra of emotion that was the SJW movement which attacked everything from white guys in dreadlocks to the wrong kind of Halloween costumes, and from the word "picnic" (yes I was there when that happened), to the Melissa Click school of physically attacking news videographers and journalists, they missed their own point completely.  While Gillette was busy insulting its own customers and you thought boycotting Nathan's Hot Dogs was gonna do something, the entire effort was wasted.  What was mistaken for "micro aggressions" and "toxic masculinity" was indeed something far more dangerous.  A resurgence in the exact kind of anti-intellectualism that always precedes and enables a very real manifestation of real fascism.  Italy, Germany, Spain, China, Cambodia... all began with a whirlwind cascade of anti-intellectualism.  Hoards of people, more than proud to be stupid.  The SJW movement was anti-histamine prescribed for tuberculosis.  The mark was missed, and the harm is done. We skeptics told you. 

The perfect army for a Dunning Kruger President.  "Poorly" Educated means there was an educational standard that WAS there, but wasn't met.  Un-Educated means that someone simply never had that opportunity in the first place. That's a game-changing difference.  The wanting to be stupid, to better fit in... I guess?

Education:
Modern Education in America is an entire school system which basically criminalizes the very existence of teenage identity, treating students as if they were inmates, incarcerated in educational institutions subject to the whims of the most incompetent Karen type micro-tyrants.  Whether intentional or not, whether realized or not, it is now a firmly entrenched factory of The Third Wave, not as a top-down structured goal, but as a natural result of what goes on in there.  These "teachers" and "administrators" are shielded in their criminal and immoral actions habitually taken against students by powerful unions, hellbent on nothing more than preserving a system that enriches them to the fullest while providing them with unchecked power (sound familiar?).  Is it no wonder that this environment creates such balkanized social categories that produce masses of young adults who only know authority as an unchangeable vehicle for social and economic elevation.  With a higher education industry that only offers worthless diplomas at a price of lifetime debt, a job and housing market left destroyed by the baby boomers and their greed without consequence, hostility of SJWs (real or imagined), the option of being a cop or military simply for the sake of "now no one tells me what to do" is attractive to the exact kind of mind that should never be given that authority.   Basically, it's obvious at this point that anyone who wants to be in law enforcement should ipso-facto be prohibited from doing so.

If you think that's an exaggeration... just remember that cops did this about 10 minutes before they murdered George Floyd. 

ACAB

The idea that the country will be able to pass a federal standard for a 4 year degree combining criminal justice and behavioral studies as a requirement for all law enforcement, has about as much chance of passing as the Green New Deal does with Dianne Feinstein in the Senate.  This one is a long haul that we're gonna have to add to the list of things we can only do once the Senator for-life boomers are out of the way.

No, you can't have it:
Nothing pisses of the cop animal mentality more than wanting something and being prohibited from having it.  Not because the thing they want is impossible, or that some natural force has made it unattainable, but because it is kept from them by an authority over which they can exert no influence.  To have that dynamic turned on them, is something they can not comprehend and so they react like an angry chimpanzee.  But like all situations of this nature, there is but one single way of succeeding, no other endeavor will reach said goal.

Not a copyright issue:
As has been established, there are no legal mechanisms that Marvel/Disney can employ to compel any police force, military unit, or individuals, to stop displaying the image.  They are not selling it or using it as commercial entity, copyright just does not apply.  No company can tell you not to wear a t-shirt you bought with their intellectual property on it to wherever you want in public.  They can not extend an office of ownership past the point of sale.  They wanna slap it on the car, or wear it on a shirt, then that's that.  The argument that such actions by police agencies somehow "hurts" the brand is not tenable because in court, a tangible price tag of a real dollar figure would need to be attached, and attached for each instance, of each police agency, in each jurisdiction and so on and on and on and on.

Is it a copyright issue?:
The Punisher blue-line merch is almost certainly unlicensed.  Marvel/Disney can definitely hit vendors and retailers (online or otherwise), with cease and desist orders with a nice friendly Disney "or else" bit at the end.  If that happens, many will stop, some will not.  The ones which are completely located in other countries where Disney doesn't have as strong a standing, or countries which don't even have mechanisms of copyright/trademark protections to enforce will remain sources for these products.  Furthermore, would Disney even think devoting the resources to research, contact, and potentially prosecute makers of unlicensed merchandise?  That's a lot of diligence work and diligence work costs money.  Don't expect them to open up an office dedicated to dealing with this perpetual whack a mole situation.

Totally a copyright issue:
There is one option they have.  If they have true moral convictions, true notions of what is required to be undertaken in an effort to withhold this meme from those that would use it for anti-humanitarian purposes, Disney will do the one thing they can do.  Suspend all licensing. Not stop publication, just physical merchandise.  Everything from pins to apparel, from decals to decanters, let no official license be granted. Anything made after that point is unlicensed and therefore actionable.  In short, Scorched Earth.  Will Disney do that?  Well you can't get Song of the South on DVD can you...?  It's not out of the question. 

Fuck copyright:
With 3D printing, home made applique, spray paint, power coating, stickers, stencils, photoshop, and whatever else, does it even really matter?  It won't stop them.  They will do it and take pride in any objections.  Such is the animal mentality.  To have protesters, BLM, and even the creator himself, object to what is being done with this symbol, serves as boner-fuel for those who have already started to use it for anti-humanitarian purposes.  They love it.  The "try and stop me" attitude has been ingrained in Americans that have had to endure the hypocritical tyrannical social meat-grinder foisted upon American youth by the baby boomers from D.A.R.E. to "Zero Tolerance" to Jack Thompson.  Just like telling a boomer to wear a virus prevention mask, telling MAGAS not to use the Punisher Skull for anti-humanitarian purposes is just gonna make them do it more.  It's not going to work. That leaves only one course of action.

 Authorial intent can fall on deaf ears.

Hara-Kiri:
Make it impossible for this to be used like that.  Kill it, kill what it stands for.  The writers and artists must begin a story line where in the comic narrative itself, the symbol is co-opted by a person or entity which uses it in a absolutely vile way.  Something like white-supremacist, violent, gay, child molesters.  It has to happen so thoroughly, and so permanently, that Frank Castle -The Punisher himslef- abandons the image.  The reviled group sees it as a victory as only the most unintelligent among us can, and that skull forever becomes a symbol of violent gay child molesting white supremacists.  Something that every cop and wanna be tough guy will forever want to be dissociated from.  Frank Castle must lose.  But Frank Castle is a loser in the literal sense.  He is the product of loss, the forever damaged aftermath of succumbing to the base instincts of a nature capable of recognizing the irredeemable harm of such a choice.  The willing step over the line of damnation is the unforgivable price to pay for the license to his actions.  To wield a sword with a handle just as sharp as its blade, cutting into the holder so deep until it can not be let go.  Forever in your grip, unceasing in its cries for blood.  It will be loss.  Fans and readers will now face that loss.  As such, there can be no greater purpose than the choice to accept that loss.

Frank did not lose his soul. He abandoned it.
The tragedy is that he lived in a world where he could.

 
What will happen?  What will be done? ...Nothing.  Because nothing ever is.  Any development, be it solution or exacerbation, will come from an external impetus not yet known.  But where things are headed in the broader sense goes beyond one replaceable symbol of an ideology in its death throws.  Writhing as it is smothered by reason, desperate to remain and thrashing in the most dangerous way as it is extinguished.  I've been an active member of the ACLU since 1997, and it's enough to have seen dangerous extremism from the right and the left, from lawful and lawless, and to know that all lasting change is slow and cumulative.  Loss on the other hand can come with the suddenness and severity of any disaster in the relative blink of an eye.  We must both instigate and support progressive change, and guard against regressive motion. 

Black Lives Matter.

And as I have said for years: