It appears to be our right to play soldier and prepare to overthrow the government and rave about American being for "Christians" only because Jesus wants it that way. Of course there's no law against believing or teaching that the President of the United States is the child of an imaginary horned god of evil and is here to destroy everything good, including the good Christian militias who train for a mythical battle of the gods cribbed from Zoroastrian splinter sects and Gnostic fant
asies. It's a free country -- so far.It sure is scary shit though. If you're a resident of rural Martin County Florida, you might be a redneck, but even if you're not, there's a chance you're buying all the .223 and 7.65X39 you can get hold of at inflated prices and squirreling it away for Armageddon and the next Presidential election or for whatever the Mayans allegedly forsaw in the stars. There's also a good chance you're just a nostalgic and frustrated old Confederate and that decal on your pick'emup and the flag waving over your cracker shack indicate a serious longing to try it all again.
At any rate, if you're any of the above, you're not alone and you're less alone than you were a few years ago when the right hand of Jesus presided over his crusade and his omnipotent presidential powers. Militias are prospering as they haven't since 1861.
"The only thing on earth to save the testimony and those who follow it, are the members of the testimony, til the return of Christ in the clouds. We, the Hutaree, are prepared to defend all those who belong to Christ and save those who aren't. We will still spread the word, and fight to keep it, up to the time of the great coming."It's the credo of the Hutaree, a Christian Militia, who are waiting and training in anti-Satan warfare for the end of time just in case God can't handle it himself; all the Jew killing and rapturing and devil chasing ain't easy, and needs reinforcements. The Anti-Christ Obama is damned near omnipotent after all, even if he has such a hard time getting the Republicans to behave like adults. No, if you want to stop Satan you need lots of camo and lots of ammo and it won't hurt to kill some cops and their families either. I know it sounds a bit questionable, but it's all there on their website. Hutaree, explains the camo clad site means Christian Warrior in some undisclosed language. Moronish, perhaps?
It was that plan that prompted the indictments today of 9 self-styled "patriots" after a series of raids in Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. The idea was to spark some kind of war against the police by killing at least one and them blowing up his funeral so as to help bring on whatever it is they think needs bringing on. Sounds a bit like Charles Manson's strategy, but I'm sure they thought of it independently.
Meanwhile, back in Michigan, the allegedly unrelated Michigan Militia still pla
ns to hold their "Open Carry Family Picnic & Tea Party" to be held on April 10, 2010 so while the bomb making classes at the Hutaree house of hate will be on hold for a while you can still take the family to Michigan for a good old family time and play games like pin the mustache on Obama, kill the gun grabbers and Let's Pretend our taxes are going up.And while we're playing games, does anyone want to bet that more commenters will bash me for "misunderstanding" the teabag patriots than will be concerned about armed madmen and trying to take over the government by killing the police?
I'm confident you will come out against Violent leftist Jew haters as well.
ReplyDeleteCriminals are criminals, regardless of ideology.
Responsible conservative gun owners hate it when a Democrat gains the White House if only because the doomsday wackadoos go on a guns and ammo buying spree, causing shortages and driving up prices.
I don't condone nor support any Christian militia. But I must commend them for their determination. They believe they are fighting the forces of evil and I say, "why not?" At least they are proactive, unlike some complacent Christians.
ReplyDeleteThe best and most powerful weapon against Satan is prayer, fasting and not being silent, even under great persecution.
Silverfiddle, an atheist cephalopod of Jewish origin does not approve of violence from any quarter (although methinks Eric Cantor has a history of crying ‘wolf’ just a but too often).
ReplyDeleteSome months ago, Cantor appeared at a tea party event where Hitler and Holocaust signs were carried openly. I was so incensed, I called Cantor’s office and sent a scathing fax condemning his failure to condemn the spectacle (I blogged about it here to). Days later, he begrudgingly condemned the signage.
The best decision I ever made in my life was to change myself from a human into a cephalopod. A few weeks later, a miracle happened: My foreskin grew back.
BTW: Who let in the Leticia troll? One of the house cats, I presume, who likes to torment mice.
SF,
ReplyDeleteI hate haters, period.
Sometimes I even hate myself for hating haters, but that only makes me hate myself the more....
Capt. Fogg,
Funny you should bring all this up, because I was just now thinking about how I might promote my open-tooth and unsheathed-claw gathering of all paranoid, predatory dinosaurs in some prominent location. Nothing to worry about -- no, nothing at all. Except that, of course and as that scientist feller says in Jurassic Park, "the attack comes from the side -- from the one you didn't even know was there."
The culture of extremism and paranoia these insane bastards promote may appear ludicrous for the most part, but I think we all understand that their conspiratorial ravings contribute to a climate that could easily produce or encourage the kind of person who longs to do severe damage to the bodies of our elected officials and to the body politic more generally. I feel much the same about the 9/11 Truthers, by the way -- it's hard to take their slanderous garbage as anything but a call to assassinate the elected officials they consider responsible for murder and treason. But for the most part, today's loons come from the extreme right, not the left. We scarcely have a "left" worthy of the name these days. You want Left? Try the Red Brigades of yesteryear in Italy, or the Baader-Meinhof Gang of Germany, or some of the murderous cults we had here in the 1960's and 70's, like the SLA group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst. Remember those guys?
In all seriousness, these idiots are dangerous. Something I find jarring about them is their extreme hatred of America. They sometimes use the rhetoric of patriotism against us weak, soft, commie-lovin' internationalist liberals, but they can't hide how much they hate this country's institutions, the best in its history, and above all, its PROMISE and potential to improve upon what it now is.
They are anti-American pseudo-tribalists to the core, and entirely the creatures of the oligarchs and plutocrats whose interests they unconsciously serve and whose category-name they probably couldn't even pronounce.
"They believe they are fighting the forces of evil...."
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that the most wicked and depraved people in human history have almost invariably believed that's EXACTLY what they're doing.
Such dangerous idiocy (left, right, Islamic, whatever) thrives in the hothouse of absolutist ideology. Intellectual insularity breeds virulent strains of irrational thought.
ReplyDeleteFor this reason I am against all forms of speech codes and restrictions.
It upsets me to see my religious imagery mocked, but I have no right to not be upset. Also, the people who do it really only make a powerful statement if they have mocked a true god. And if My God truly is God, he is not diminished by such acts.
Dino:
ReplyDeleteIndeed. Calls to mind a C.S. Lewis quote:
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."
Our esteemed colleague TomCat has this story about a hate group disbanding. One down, still too many to go.
ReplyDeleteOcto,
ReplyDeletethanks for the link.
SF,
C.S Lewis is a worthwhile read, as always.
Capt. Fogg,
I'm hearing that this group they've busted is quite convinced that Jesus has been telling them to stock up on the Sam Andy Survival Food, so to speak, and to keep their rifles cleaned. Yep, seems like that there Jee-zis feller was always a great proponent of violence, to hear them tell it.
This is all a giant left-wing plot to make the right look bad, you know.
ReplyDeleteI am a Christian and I have a simple rule: If God is telling me something that would violate one or more of his commandments, it's probably not Him talking...
ReplyDeleteI despise Jesus Jumpers. They are not your good ole day to day Christians. They are your fundamentalists (fanatics). They are the creationists, the world is only 6K years old nutters, and [those who believe] that you can only go to heaven (silly notion) if you embrace Jesus. Well, I think we could take judicial notice of the fact that he lived a great life, was killed, and that was that. So embracing could be difficult.
ReplyDeleteEnough of my rambling. These people, the militant fundamentalists, are dangerous. At some point innocent people will be hurt or killed because of their twisted hypocrisy. I hope that the FBI is not in the line of sight when it comes to cutting the budget.
Only in America.
ReplyDeleteI know how Coleridge felt. I posted a very lengthy, exquisitely eloquent and beautifully trenchant comment here, which Blogger promptly ate. I can't reproduce it.
ReplyDeleteBut in general, I mentioned to Elizabeth that the US is only one stop on the endless Loony Tunes world tour.
I mentioned to Leticia that "Satan" isn't real, but that human idiocy and insanity, which includes the belief in demons, are too real. The Devil is us and evil is a meaningless term without us.
I mentioned to Silverfiddle that he's correct, I don't have warm feelings for Jew haters or anybody haters except perhaps for hater haters. I mentioned that responsible Liberal gun owners feel the same way and that I consider the second amendment to be about the most Liberal clause in our constitution since it gives great power to the people and is a mark of trust.
I nodded at the C.S. Lewis quote and added one attributed to Justice Brandeis that "Morality is not the Government's business, it's God's business. God can handle it."
Of course nobody wants to be censored, but speech that endangers
life and property is a different matter, IMO. Someone who incites criminal activity is an accessory and co-conspirator at some point, in my opinion.
And as to whether Jesus was a proponent of violence, he certainly must have been opposed to it as a lifestyle or a way of dealing with people we don't like, although we can interpret the little we know to say that violence against the Roman occupation and its collaborators wasn't out of the question although not without divine help could it be contemplated. Somehow I don't think God needs the Bozo Patrol for much of anything.
The US isn't occupied by foreign troops, nor our churches or synagogues or mosques or public libraries occupied by pantheistic pagans although Leticia and her ilk abound. It's occupied by Americans and we need to remember that.
Well Silverfiddle I can see you aren't going to run out of material any time soon. Your quest for false equivalences turns out to be the journey of a lifetime. As the American right daily ratchets up its ignorant rhetoric and as the typical suburban tea-partier is indistinguishable from a 1960's John Birch Society fanatic those equivalences demand a, shall we say, greater inventiveness, I for one feel you're up to the task.
ReplyDeleteA happy blogging life of 'yes, but' and 'well, they did it too'.
the US is only one stop on the endless Loony Tunes world tour
ReplyDeleteOh, sure, Captain. But this particular Loony Tune, with a bunch of middle-age men, who are not from an oppressed racial or religious group, arming themselves in hopes of starting an anti-government uprising for purely paranoid reasons is uniquely American. I can't think of its equivalent anywhere else.
P.S. Blogger does not like lenghty and eloquent responses, so you may consider writing one elsewhere, and then copying and pasting it to the thread. This way you (and we :) won't lose it.
Octo, I'm responsible for Leticia's appearance here -- sorry! Didn't read her comment in full when I clicked "publish" and I thought she was the same Leticia who frequently visits Dissenting Justice.
ReplyDelete(Obviously, she's not. Amazing how two Leticias can be so different. Who'da thunk? Sigh. So many trolls, so little attention capacity.)
Elizabeth, it is easy to mistake Leticia for Lucrezia. Shall we let the house cat have some fun or just 'delete?'
ReplyDeleteOcto, I had no idea we have a house cat!
ReplyDeleteI'm thinking that as long as trolls behave (yes, I see the contradiction), we should let them be, with or without the cat's involvement. On the other hand, idle cats scratch furniture and eat unsavory stuff, so maybe the cat should have a go at the troll...
I dunno... You be the decider. :)
Elizabeth - "I dunno... You be the decider. :)"
ReplyDeleteOh dear! There is that 'decider' word. Are you sure you want to entrust a cephalopod with that much power? Look what happened last time.
Uh-oh... What happened last time? (And do I really want to know?)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, you own the cat, so you decide. There. :)
"Somehow I don't think God needs the Bozo Patrol for much of anything."
ReplyDeleteAmen to that, Capt!
From Hutaree: Why is the Midwest a hotbed of militia activity?:
ReplyDeleteNationwide, the patriot movement has grown dramatically since the election of President Obama. Between 2008 and 2009, the number of such groups increased from 149 to 512, SPLC numbers suggest.
(...)
"There are a number of regional factors that, over time and at various moments, helped the militia movement take hold in different parts of the country," says Chip Berlet, an analyst at Political Research Associates, a think tank in Somerville, Mass. "It certainly has emerged strongly in the upper Midwest."
(...)
Michigan’s militia history is among the longest in the nation, says Heidi Beirich, SPLC’s director of research. Several extremist groups were formed following the 1992 election of Bill Clinton, and they were active during his presidency.
The Michigan Militia, in particular, gained a national profile when Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh attended one of its meetings. (The group was cleared of any involvement with the 1995 bombing, which killed 168 people.)
Despite a cooling down period during the tenure of former President George W. Bush, Michigan continued to see militia activity during the last presidential campaign cycle, SPLC says. Groups like the Hutaree and others were able to recruit members easily because the of the strong militia tradition in the area.
(...)
Experts say a combination of factors contribute to the rise in militias: a faltering economy, changing roles within the traditional family structure, and shifts in the racial makeup of the country's population.
Mr. Berlet adds that shared anxiety among lower-to-middle-class people is often a catalyst for generating conspiracy theories, which have the potency to provoke people to take up arms and commit violence.
“The candidacy of Obama – when it looked to become serious – prompted a lot of anxiety, and the anxiety continued to rise up to the inauguration,” Berlet says.
Several high-profile murders have occurred since then, including those of Kansas abortion doctor George Tiller and a Holocaust Museum guard in Washington.
“This is really getting out of hand,” Berlet says. “It’s a serious problem when people decide the solution to political problems lies in arming themselves and going underground.”
There is concern that this current wave of militia activity is more potent than it was during the Clinton era. The Internet allows conspiracy ideology to travel faster and marginalized individuals to connect with one another across greater distances. Meanwhile, there is increased political polarization.
“While you can look at the Republicans and right wing and say, ‘you let things go too far,’ the Democrats use very demonizing language and aren’t interested in a policy debate, either,” says Berlet. “They’ve been interested in bashing the Republicans and right wing as crazy and ignorant. So it’s a mess.”