Let's git us up a posse

Yesterday Chloe was momentarily embarrassed to be an American. Her host father was reading a popular Sunday magazine. She wrote

On the front cover was a picture of a man, about 50, with a
cheap cowboy hat, two guns in his suspenders, and a shirt that said, "Some people are only alive because it's illegal to kill them." Then there were more pictures of people sitting in their cars, guts hanging out, with their little pistols and binocs, waiting to catch'em some Latinos. No wonder everyone hates America.

This is not representative of America, but we Americans are expected to answer for it - and, please, let's answer for the misplaced "only" on the t-shirt while we're at it - because if we don't we appear to condone the behavior. One of the organization's Web sites is here, where you'll find this in the FAQs (where there is a distressing lack of hyphens and closed compounds): "And of course the greatest fear that lurks in the dark corners of our minds is another 9-11 attack, or worse, a suit case bomb." Yeah, we're afraid of that, but I'm more afraid of ignorant sovereign citizens with multiple firearms taking it upon themselves to defend our nation. Also on that Web site is a photo of a camera that belongs to a "Spanish journalist" and I wonder if that was associated with the Spanish article Chloe read. Another site is here, where there's an article that says, "President Bush is, literally, ripping this nation apart." Politics aside, literally, you flaming moron? On which coast or border did he start tearing up the land? And won't things get, literally, a wee bit damp when he rips through the Mississippi river?

A link to an article about a TV news crew going undercover with this group is here. As is usually the case, the organization's practices when they think they aren't being filmed differ from their mission statement. What to do about all those helpful shotgun-toting sovereign citizens of these United States who are itching for a piece of the vigilante action?

I've heard people around here complain about "all those Spanish people." They mean, of course, Mexican people because there are very few Spaniards in this neck of the woods and they lack a border in common with us to facilitate their illegal entry into our country. It seems like if one were conscientious of one's effectiveness as a bigot, one might want to take a look at a world map every so often. It's the map where the United States is but one part of a whole. And, if it's a map published in the US, the United States will be smack in the center, arbitrary divisions of continents be damned.

Comments

[Katy]

lol
I love it when you are on a mission.
Hilarious and frightening at the same time.