Patriot Games - From blowhardery to nihilism to...treason?

[Dover]

Mar/Apr Mother Jones




IN THE FALL of 1964, not long after Barry Goldwater had clinched the Republican nomination for president, historian Richard Hofstadter penned an essay for Harper's called "The Paranoid Style in American Politics." It was an instant classic—not because it was so elegantly written, but because in just a few pages it described with deadly accuracy one of the major strains of our national dialogue.

"The paranoid spokesman," Hofstadter wrote, "is always manning the barricades of civilization...Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date for the apocalypse...He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised...Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish."

Oath Keepers, the group featured in our cover story, would seem the classic case in point. Its members are cops, sheriffs, and military men and women determined to resist the tyrannical orders they believe are imminent from the Obama administration. The fantasies they spin—a "globalist" leadership intent on declaring martial law, putting God-fearing Americans in detention camps, and asking UN blue helmets to keep order while it imposes health care reform and who knows what else—replicate almost exactly the fears far-right cranks have peddled for generations. Replace "socialism" with "communism" and you are pretty much back to 1964 (or 1934 or 1884, for that matter).


But what was true then is true now: Dismissing one's adversaries as wing nuts is myopic, both intellectually and politically. Like it or not, the Oath Keepers, and the myriad other "patriot" groups now emerging around the edges of the Tea Party movement, are tapping into a real strain of popular anger. ...cont'd


http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/03/editors-note



Check out the other good articles in this issue:
http://motherjones.com/

[pscot]

1. This kind of shit worries me a lot

The sight of cops rushing around in full tactical combat fig is a very bad sign for the health of a civil society. Crime is decreasing, and we're spendeing more than ever on cops and prisons. These asshole are just waiting for things to break down sufficiently so they can jump into the breasch and start giving orders to the rest of us. For our own good. They need to be taken seriously and opposed forcefully. Few politicians seem to have the guts. Talk about cutting police budgets are always met with shouts of alarm by concerned citizens, usuallly the same crowd who don't want to spend another dime on schools or parks or feeding the homeless.

[FSogol]

5. I was having lunch at the local "Five Guys" the other day and there

were 2 Fairfax County Cops having lunch. Fairfax County is one of the richer counties in the country and has a very low crime rate. The cops looked like normal cops with normal uniforms, equipment, weapons, etc. Then in walked another cop , much younger and smaller dressed more like military special forces with one of the biggest hand guns, I've ever seen. His patches identified him as George Mason University Campus Police. It was incredibly strange to see such a juxtaposition between the real professional police force and the play cop hassling the frats at a local school.

[pscot]

6. I had a friend who was a mailman

and he applied for the postal police or security or whatever it's called. He was accepted, and he immediately went out and bought himself a glock-9mm to wear on his hip. He'd always been kind of a jerk, so the immediate transformation to complete asshole wasn't a total surprise.

[tom_paine]

2. Of course, when the Palin Administration asks them to pack the Liberals into concentration camps

they'll happily agree and do it with a smile.

History. No matter how many times the same story repeats, it never gets tired.

:rofl:

[Blue_Tires]

3. kick

you may want to post this in GD

[Joanne98]

4. All dressed up and nowhere to go.