So how come we don’t have any wacko militia groups in these parts? Or do we?

November 16th, 2009 at 12:18pm Pat Cunningham

 

 Whenever I read of deliciously loony political uprisings in other parts of the country — book-burnings, anti-evolution campaigns against public schools, organized counterattacks in the so-called War on Christmas, the rise of vigililante groups, etc. — I usually rue the fact that we almost never get that kind of fun stuff here in Applesauceland.

 Rockford used to a pretty nutty town. There was a time when  chapters of the John Birch Society bloomed hereabouts like so many flowers in spring. Campaigns against water flouridation as a communist plot abounded. Subversion of one kind or another was suspected at every turn. The city was known far and wide as a citadel of right-wing extremism. We even had anti-integration campaigns when there weren’t enough black kids to fill more than a relative handful of seats in the public schools.

 But we don’t get much of that crazy stuff anymore. Oh, sure, the comment threads here at Applesauce are often filled with the rantings of paranoiacs and latter-day brownshirts, but these folks are disorganized wannabes. Theirs isn’t a movement so much as a would-be chorus in which nobody can sing on key.

 This absence of far-right political theater in these parts struck me again today when I read THIS STORY about how scores of new militia groups have formed across the country since the election of Barack Obama as president.

Of course, militia groups tend to thrive when there’s any Democrat in the White House, but apparently more so when the man in the Oval Office represents the dreaded Other. And Obama’s the whole package of Other. He’s not only black, but, to hear some people tell it, he’s also a foreign-born Muslim who hates America and hangs around with domestic terrorists like Bill Ayers.

 Yeah, we have our share of Obamaphobes around here. But where’s our home-grown militia? Where are our guys who dress up in camouflage outfits and pretend to be Rambos who are prepared to smite the internal enemy at the first sound of the bugle call?

 Either we don’t have such brave specimens among our menfolk, or they’re so cleverly secretive that they’ve formed a vast underground network of well-organized superpatriots without my having noticed.

 No, no! I shouldn’t think such thoughts. That will only scare me, and that’s exactly what the militia guys want. Yes, I must remain vigilant — but never fearful.

 On the other hand, they probably know that I’m not armed. Jeez, what should I do? No wonder some of my Applesauce commenters have asked where I reside. They’re after me, I tell you. They think that I, too, am the Other.

Entry Filed under: militia groups