The Well-Defamed Militia
By Mitch Berg
The arrests of nine “[insert inflammatory catchphrase here]” “Christian Militia” members in Michigan have focused America’s attention the American media and those who still pay attention to it on the “problem” of “militias” which, by the way, have been shrinking since their heyday in the 1970s through early 1990s.
During the 90s, “militias” became the Democrat boogeyman, after a number of well-publicized and very ugly incidents; the Medina shootout, the Ruby Ridge massacre, and of course the Oklahoma City bombing. Under fire during his first term before his epic setback in the ’94 elections, the Clinton Administration sought to distract the nation with a huge, sinister, conspiratorial internal enemy, the “militia movement”; the 1994 Crime Bill, larded with civil rights violations that dwarfed much of what had the left up in arms during the Bush administration, was at least partly in response to this huge “movement”…
…that, except for the actions of Timothy McVeigh (who, says the government, was not acting as part of a huge shadowy conspiracy), had almost no affect on crime or any other area of life in the US – certainly not as compared to the “war on drugs”, which was a product of a perfect storm of social engineering from both the right (“drugs are bad”) and the left (decades of welfare dependence and warehousing the poor in the inner city).
At any rate, even though the numbers of people involved in the lefty boogeyman version of “militias” was never big, and has dropped since the nineties, the image that the left propagates – paunchy, hate-clogged, drawling, white rednecks in camouflage with AK-47s – is a control panel full of hot buttons for the left, purpose-designed to scare – is back, for the moment at least, bigger and badder than ever.
Because with a Tea Party afoot across the land and the President’s poll numbers falling faster than Hillary Duff’s career bell curve, there are lots of center-to-left voters to be scared back into line.
And fear’s first cousin is ignorance. I’m getting deja vu all over again from the comments, the blog posts, the talk show calls; the left is duly frightened of the great, unwashed horde (and the tiny, unconvicted band that was the excuse for the left to declare “militias” the boogeyman of the month again).
It reminds me of something I wrote two years ago about the 25th anniversary of the Medina Shootout, and Hollywood’s reflections on all those crazy people between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre:
But the Hollywood take on the area, and the locals, was bemusingly warped. Part of it was the Central Casting version of small-town people; although North Dakota is a place where you can hear the Fargo accent (”Yah, sure, you betcha”) in a hundred little main street cafes and bars, the show had the local farmers speaking with cornpone Arklahoma drawls. The locals, to Hollywood, were out of Gomer Pyle or, given the sinistry of the subject matter, maybe Deliverance.
Worse? While there was support for Kahl (and even more criticism of the Feds’ heavy-handedness, arrogance, and occasional contempt for due process in the way they carried out the manhunt in the immediate wake of the shootout), Manhunt in the Dakotas showed something that was almost an active guerilla movement, with rocks and shots aimed at passing police cars, threats, Gross (and Larry Hunt as “Chief Walters”, a composite and sympathetic Jamestown police chief) being harrassed while driving in the countryside, and – in the movie’s climactic scene – the two walking, nervous, down “Jamestown”’s main street as the “local radio station” played the pro-Kahl song (with a cheery intro from the DJ), both of them keenly aware of the hateful gazes of the locals (by now all of them seemingly Kahl-sympathizers) boring through them both, as if they were fully-bedsheeted Klansmen scurrying through Compton.
It was nonsense, of course – and, like the “militia” mania that served to distract parts of America from Bill Clinton’s foibles, and is being rolled out now to distract us from Obama’s economy, and scare “moderates” into line behind The One, it’s a cynical lie.
More tomorow.
April 1st, 2010 at 1:02 pm
They need a “Crisis” to distract from the real “Crisis” they have created for themselves, and us. I’m betting that most folks aren’t gonna fall for it this time around.
April 1st, 2010 at 1:33 pm
Remember the ‘church burnings’ of the 1990’s?
When it turned out that there was no way they could be tied to racist conservatives they just stopped reporting the story.
April 1st, 2010 at 1:36 pm
Terry, that’s because it wasn’t a story anymore. The liberal media are profoundly racist, and they invest much of their capital trying to bolster their preconception.
Look! A Nazi!!!
April 1st, 2010 at 2:26 pm
Right. Scare tactics are soooo exploited by the left.
Death panels
Take battle to [Iraq] terrorists before they attack us here
Homosexuality man on dog thing
BTW, Rep. Bachmann is urging people to slit their wrists over the whole Google/Topeka thing…
April 1st, 2010 at 2:29 pm
Oh, wait, I’m sorry, you were being sarcastic. My bad.
April 1st, 2010 at 2:31 pm
Or maybe just projecting….
April 1st, 2010 at 3:06 pm
We’ve got a live one here folks.
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.
afoaofa, shield your eyes! Never look into teh crazee eyes of teh Bachmann!
Bwwwwaaaaahahahahahahahaaaa!
April 1st, 2010 at 3:11 pm
Whoops, sorry about the busted links above. guess my HTML coding is not the best. sheesh.
April 1st, 2010 at 3:29 pm
We’ve got a live one here folks.
Yeah, baby! Let the ad hominem attacks begin!!
Bring ’em on!!
April 1st, 2010 at 3:47 pm
Aw, jeez, Mitch. Your blog attracted ANOTHER ONE of these guys? And he links to circa 2003 news articles, even?
After hashing and rehashing all the same old tired shit for nearly a decade with the likes of Penigma and Dog Gone, we have to start all over again? Damn.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Yoss, how do you know “loofa” is not one of Peeve’s new tags?
April 1st, 2010 at 4:13 pm
once you figure out how to link, perhaps you could link to the “slit your wrists over google/topeka thing”
We’ve got a live one is now a ad hominem attack?
April 1st, 2010 at 4:17 pm
Nah, couldn’t be Peev. The most obvious tell is that the comments aren’t 75,000 words long.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:21 pm
afoaofa is right. There won’t be “death panels”. It will be one lone bureaucrat making the decision unilaterally.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:22 pm
perhaps you could link to the “slit your wrists over google/topeka thing”
Sure, once Mitch provides a link to the following….
In related news, Steny Hoyer has demanded that House Republicans repudiate the climate of violence the Tea Parties have brought to hockey.
Oh, wait. that whole sarcasm thing only works one way… crap.
April 1st, 2010 at 4:34 pm
The term vigilante has also been grossly overused as well. The way I have always understood the term was that someone appointed themselves Judge, Jury, and executioner.
The Minute men down in AZ being the most recent example of a poor use of the term. They went to patrol the border and assist Law Enforcement. When they found an illegal they turned them over to the BP. They were not Judge, Jury, or Executioner.
Another example would be Curtis Sliwa and the Guardian Angels. They patrolled city streets and called the Police when they encountered criminals or had suspicion of a crime.
April 1st, 2010 at 5:47 pm
afoaofa offers:
perhaps you could link to the “slit your wrists over google/topeka thing”
Sure, once Mitch provides a link to the following….
In related news, Steny Hoyer has demanded that House Republicans repudiate the climate of violence the Tea Parties have brought to hockey.
Oh, wait. that whole sarcasm thing only works one way… crap.
Let’s try to understand this one piece at a time.
1) Mitch’s joke works because Hoyer was out there all last week caterwauling about nonexistent violence. Mitch was mocking an actual event.
2) Your joke doesn’t, because no one was especially concerned about Google’s April Fool’s joke. You are mocking nothing.
3) That makes your remark something other than sarcasm. I believe the term we’re looking for is “non-sequitur.”
On the bright side, your screen name is a fine palindrome.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:12 pm
wow who is this troll and how did he find this website. If the best he can do is linking up to 7-9 year old articles about the Iraq war and stuff is I think that this battle has been won by us.
April 1st, 2010 at 6:26 pm
Sarcasm only works when one is not foaming and spraying spittle.
April 2nd, 2010 at 8:43 am
afoaofa: All Full Of Applesauce Or Fatigued Analogies.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:13 am
Oh, oh! There goes the lib narrative! Wonder how they are going to spin this one:
http://toledoblade.com/article/20100401/NEWS16/4010369
If link does not show up as a link – sue me.
April 2nd, 2010 at 11:14 am
Phew – another lawsuit averted.
April 2nd, 2010 at 2:09 pm
Oh, wait. that whole sarcasm thing only works one way… crap.”
Ah, you were being sarcastic. So hard to tell with you little guys. That’s cute.