These are the people on the wrong end of what I'm talking about.
See, I can reconcile my own faith in guns and emergency preparedness with my fairly liberal ideology by looking at the Government as a service provider, my stockpiled spam and bottled water as my consumer alternatives, and my guns as my advocate counsel for consumer rights. e.g, should "the Revolution" ever happen, then I have means to survive without having to endure checkpoints or registration or whatever, and should some anxious young turks get the idea to barge in my door guns blazing, I can make them think twice as they duck for cover.
Ha ha ha - wish OUR department had one of those, amirite?
But this lot of tinfoil-hat crazies decided that the end of days was near upon them, and so it was their good Christian duty to, according to one of their nefarious schemes, kill a policeman, then kill everyone at the funeral in an attempt to make "the masses" rise up against the government. Screaming "Wake up SHEEPLE, 9-11 was an INSIDE JOB!" was not explicitly part of the plan, but I think it's a safe bet.
Arthur Schopenhauer (Arty Farty to his friends) once said "Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world." I can't help but think that this is the case with these sort of wackjob groups. I've spent time in the part of Michigan that these guys come from, and there's not much there - a lot of trees, a lot of cornfields, a little incest, a sprinkling of meth labs, that's the upshot. It would be easy, given such a small and insular world, to watch the news (not gonna name the specific channel) and think "OMG gubmint gonna come down and take my jeebus!"
More like MSNBC is the fascist and NObama is the president and the money bag says "Freedom" and lady Liberty is a hot chick with a gun and an eagle kicking some ass! Fucking Liberal fascist communists!
I used to dip my toe in that pool myself - these were the baby internet days, before all the 2012 crap - the prophecies of Nostradamus and the Anarchists Cookbook were in vogue, and you could not find anyone vaguely right of center who didn't think that Bill Clinton was the Antichrist. In defense of these friends and I, we were smoking an awful lot of dope at the time, and we grew out of the sentiment.
Still, the circumstance is comprehensible, if deplorable. I don't know a lot about the Michigan 9, but I can make assumptions - not particularly well educated, not well traveled (Army tours if anything), and utterly convinced of their own righteousness. All they ever needed was a few good books, a plane ticket, and a thai fusion restaurant in their town.
Or so I'd like to hope - one of the guys was my age, 33, and I'm amazed at the divergence. I always am when I see someone my age doing something so radically different than what I am doing, and I would dare say that the arrest of these people did sort of wake up this sheeple...sherson..shoop? I'm still not sure of all the forms of that noun, but I do feel my world has been broadened a little bit by my glimpse into the lives of these miscreants.
Oh whatever, I'm just here for the free buffet
I don't know what's to be done with these 9 alleged terrorists (and yes, that is the right term to use here - this isn't like calling anyone who disagrees with your politics "the T word" - they were plotting acts of terror). My sensibilities of the legal system are not so puissant as to know what sort of trial or penalties they will face. I hope the penalties are severe, and constructive - these guys were organized, equipped, and ready to defend themselves. Couldn't that be put to some good?
Alas, where are the covert black-ops mind-wiping super-soldier projects when you need them? Goddamn LIE-berals, cutting military programs AGAIN!
Universal healthcare? Not if my Universal Soldier can stop it!
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