The only reason it didn’t turn into less than “mini” is authorities arrived too soon for plans, and were too clever: Jerad and Amanda Miller had had hundreds of rounds of ammunition with them. Imagine if all it really did take was “a good guy with a gun.” But this proves it often takes more than that. This time we had two of them.
With a very sad emphasis on “had.”
To review, after a couple dropped off their cats at a friend’s so they would be taken care of they went into a restaurant and murdered two cops: armed professionals. Unlike too many armed Americans, the two policemen had training: but to no avail. Their training with weapons still didn’t save them. Then the couple ran to a WalMart and murdered a bystander. Eventually the couple committed suicide. They had obviously been anti-government types who, rumor has it, spent some time with the crew “defending” Bundy’s “right” not to pay taxes, and his “right” to not recognize the federal government. They also added a swastika and a Don’t Tread flag to the murder scene: flag draped over a murdered policeman.
Meanwhile Indiana seems interested in making it easier for citizens to kill cops. More on that later.
Once again we will be told this is just two people and that certainly other anti-government groups, or anti-government talking heads, had “nothing” to do with any of this no matter how suggestive, how encouraging, or aggressive their rhetoric may have been. We will be lectured that this is a case of personal responsibility and asked why we insist on blaming others… disregarding the fact that “personal responsibility” is exactly what many of those who use these talking points are trying to avoid like the plague.
To address them directly, if you’re so damn sure words mean nothing, have no affect, then why don’t you shut the hell up?
Of course you won’t. I don’t expect you to. I wouldn’t insist you do. But your own insistence on mouthing off all the time, trying to influence others, means you don’t mean this crappy talking point that what you spew can’t translate into something you might be partially responsible for. Words have affect, and people should be held responsible for what they say. Otherwise some of the worst, most evil, humans in history would mostly blameless.
However leaving those who talk up hate blameless is certainly a talking point that can encourage others to go on the rampage, much like any cheerleader encourages others…
Hmm… Sean, Rush and Bill in skimpy cheerleader outfits. There’s a picture I wish I won’t have trouble getting out of my head.
But, you know, maybe they have a point if part of what they really mean there’s a bigger picture here…
Years ago Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols woke me up to The Turner Diaries and those who follow the path set forward by a book, which to me, uses a fictional tale to provide a road map for others to work as loose cells of revolutionaries desiring to return America to its “roots.” In this case very racist, anti-Semitic, worst than the Nazis, kind of “roots.”
That’s the way McVeigh viewed it.
Think this is hyperbole? It’s not. A short synopsis is required here. Please pay attention to how the revolution is started…
In The Turner Diaries the revolutionary groups are divided into cells: cells as small as one or two. You know, like the husband and wife? That way the movement won’t be directly connected to such acts, denial is easy and, get this, those who try to connect the dots and warn others can be declared as conspiracy nuts, hate mongers… you know like every time the right wing goes nuts when some off script pol or talking head labels people just like the couple as right wingers, teabaggers, militia-types?
Their agenda in Turner? Well, once they win: take over the country. Then line up all the liberals, moderates, college professors, Jews, blacks, Hispanics, gays, lesbians, non-believers, women who are “too assertive,” those who had anything to do with abortion: or even slightly supported the right to have one, plus everyone not fundamentalist Christian. Then put a bullet through their heads, hang them from lampposts. Meanwhile those yet to be disposed of dig the mass graves.
Hitler was just a bad boy in comparison.
People like Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr. who shot up a Jewish Center (assuming he was killing Jews: he was wrong), Jim David Adkisson who shot up a Unitarian Church, and Eric Rudolph could be little more than foot soldiers in a bigger war. Groups like the Georgia militia group caught plotting to bomb a federal building and release ricin in Atlanta no more than cells in a bigger: Turner-like, beast. Meanwhile the extreme right wing certainly seems involved in propaganda campaign with the intent to belittle, destroy or at least divert attention when someone suggests there may be some “vast right wing conspiracy…” going back to Hillary’s statement.
Of course this could have nothing to do with those who attempt to commit mass murder in the name of anti-government theology, except that’s exactly what happened with the couple and in Oklahoma City. Eric Rudolph certainly was a one man anti-government, anti-gay, anti abortion-ite who fit the bill here. While 9/11 was a bin Laden affair it certainly inspired many to kill those who didn’t fit the pure profile the Turner-ites prefer, like Hitler envisioned a perfect Germany under the rule of the Ayran “race.” The liberal hater: inspired by FOX talking heads like O’Reilly and Hannity, who marched into a Unitarian Church in Knoxville certainly would be welcomed as a hero at the end of any Turner revolution.
Perhaps skinheads, sovereign citizens groups, Tea Party Nation, some Patriot groups, some Militia groups and more are no more than, as Joe McCarthy called them, a case of “fellow travelers.” And I have no interest in any effort by the left to recreate the McCarthy-ism of the 50s to make everyone who has similar, but not the same, opinions guilty by association.
We have too much of that out of the rotting, filthy pieholes of the Becks, the Limbaughs, the Hannitys… and admittedly not all of it spews forth from the right. But watching legislatures like Indiana recently giving those who loathe authority a right that goes beyond the right granted Michael Dunn and George Zimmerman: in this case the “right” to murder cops when they can claim they’ve been threatened, falsely targeted, makes me wonder. Are they, if nothing else, enabling those who are eager to create a more Turner Diary-like society?
Here’s a short list of groups and individuals involved in such incidents.
I am not insisting there absolutely must be some massive Turner Diary far right, secret conspiracy afoot.
But I am watching.
And from what I’ve read, from what I’ve seen, none of this gives me great comfort in assuring me I’m wrong about continuing to be concerned either.
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Inspection is a column that has been written by Ken Carman for over 30 years. Inspection is dedicated to looking at odd angles, under all the rocks and into the unseen cracks and crevasses that constitute the issues and philosophical constructs of our day: places few think, or even dare, to venture.
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