You don't mention the Southern Poverty Law Center down here in the
South and you certainly don't want just anyone to know you're a
supporter. You'll be ostracized at best because they are on the shit
list of every right wing group from top to bottom, all with their own
pet hate, usually centering around that bogeyman : the United States
Government.
SPLC's Hate Watch Blog had been tracking the pair of raving lunatics who murdered
two
policemen, declared a revolution and killed themselves in a Las Vegas
Wal-Mart. They were part of the idiotic standoff between the Bureau of
Land Management and Cliven Bundy this Spring and are fond of spewing the
apocalyptic, revolutionary idiocies typical of a huge number of armed,
hostile and bellicose Americans identifying themselves as "patriots."
SPLC is right to do so and too bad more attention wasn't paid to the
warnings. The as yet unnamed couple is hardly unique either in their
armaments or attitudes and if the flood of e-mails I've been getting
addressed to "fellow patriots" is an indicator, there are a number of
them out there. A week hasn't gone by in years without a prediction of
something horrible that Obama and the Liberals were about to do that
fellow 'patriots' needed to be aware of.
No need to
elaborate -- suffice it to say, none of their predictions have ever come
true to the slightest degree, the FEMA concentration camps or the
National Guard rounding up guns, although people like that will still
still hang on to hope that there will be an excuse to get into the
fortified bunkers and the armored vehicles and get out the big guns. I
have no idea why these people chose today over yesterday or tomorrow,
but perpetual predictions of that financial collapse and that gun grab
would only make sense to a psychotic spoon fed hatred and lies by not
only the militias and survivalist groups, but Karl Rove and Fox News and
the Republican Party.
It's hard to crack down on
people who haven't yet done anything and of course the above mentioned
groups make it harder, portraying the subhuman hordes as heroes, but
it's time we admitted we have a problem more serious than making sure no
one ever says anything racist, or misogynistic or insensitive and it's
time we pay attention. History seems to be trying to repeat itself and the cast of characters is already in costume.