It may be time to name the dead elephant in the room....you know, the one that smells and has been swept under the rug. Everyone PRETENDS there is no smell and walking across the room has ALWAYS been up, down and around.
Stop it. The only way things will improve is to name the issue and drag out the carcass.
Why are we having all this right wing militia activity now?
There are several factors. The economy stinks, both at the shorter-term, unemployment level and on the longer-term, outsource anything that can't be nailed down level. Also the racial component of having an African-American as President has definitely torqued off a whole bunch of people, despite the denials. But I think there is another reason:
The President is a Democrat.
After the 60's ended (the last time anyone was worried about left-wing armed activity, according to the somewhat biased source of J. Edgar Hoover) America settles down under the 2nd term of Richard Nixon. One of the original Red-baiting anti-communists, Nixon actually visits Red China, meets Mao Tse Tung (on the theory that 1/5 of the human race cannot be ignored.) While some of his rabid followers are confused about this the (left wing/radical/liberal) press is acting like journalists. The Watergate affair continues unfolding, lapping ever closer to the Oval office, while at the same time the nightly news carries stories from Vietnam showing not just the withdrawal of US forces, but the advance of the Red Menace.
These fringe members of the Republican party, John Birchers, the sort who think the rising star from California, Ronald Reagan is a passable moderate, watch Nixon resign in disgrace in '74, and the (in)famous helicopter evacuation from the roof US Embassy in Saigon in '75. Having absorbed Hal Lindsay's "Late Great Planet Earth" and other apocalyptic pulp, they "know" the end is at hand.
When Jimmy "I Will never Lie to You" Carter, (the WRONG sort of Democrat from Georgia; NOT sound on the race question) is elected they begin to mobilize. The "Posse Comitatus" movement starts recruiting through the Midwest, committing arson in the Tigerton, WI area and attempting a takeover of the municipal government. Charles Olsen of Phoenix prints a propaganda booklet called "The Citizen's Rule Book" (which rules of the Constitution you need to follow---2nd amendment---- and which to ignore: 13th, 14th, 15th). In 1978 the apocalyptic "Turner Diaries" appear. In a spectacular case in Decatur, AL in 1979 100 Klansmen attack a civil rights march in broad daylight. The FBI claims there is not enough evidence to prosecute anyone. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) files a civil suit that causes the FBI to change their minds and prosecute. They eventually convict 9 Klansmen.
In 1980 Ronald the Republican Reagan is elected, in time for 2 terms, followed by George "Rolodex" Bush I. A certified "good guy" is in charge, who busts unions (PATCO), wins little wars (Grenada), talks tough despite soft actions (withdrawing from Beirut after a terrorist bombing; the Achille Lauro piracy and the Lockerbie bombing of a Pan-Am flight left unavenged). George the Effete wins little wars (Panama), and a medium sized war a bit too quick (Gulf War 1; tell me again why the Iraqi Republican Guards were allowed to walk home? Because the war would take more than 100 hours if we actually captured them?)
The militia movement? Pretty quiet. Gordon Kahl is killed in a police shoot out in 1983. Otherwise its mostly back to the usual racist crapola from the Klan (White Patriot Party of North Carolina; United Klans of America in Mobile, AL; White Aryan Resistance of Portland, OR---all of whom lost major court cases to the Southern Poverty Law Center in the '80s.)
Now 1992: Bill Clinton, Democrat, elected and later re-elected. Another Southern white guy who doesn't look at race the way the militia types think it should be seen. Another sign of the end of the ages. So in 1992 Peter Peters holds a major Reichving conference in Estes Park, CO, attracting all sorts of Aryan Nations guys, the Texas Klan, various Christian Identity types.
Randy Weaver (of the Reichving persuasion) is besieged and his wife and child are killed in a confrontation with federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, signaling to Reichving that George the Effete (it was on his watch in August, '92) would back up federal agents instead of kowtowing to the "real Americans" of the militias (and Perot and Clinton looked worse). Doubtless the end of days was here. We'd better hunker down in the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, TX to wait for the END, brought in by Clinton.
And you know, said Linda Thompson of Indiana, Clinton has help from all those rat bastards in Congress. She calls for an armed "March on Washington" (this sounds familiar!) on September 19, 1994 (Constitution Day) to arrest all the members of Congress for treason. (No one showed.)
In 1995 Ken Stearn publishes "A Force upon the Plain" to whip up militias in Kansas. Next door in Oklahoma Tim McVeigh conducts a strike against the "Occupation Government" by killing 168 people in a federal office building in Oklahoma City.
The endless crapola continues against people of color, but the SPLC wins spectacular judgments against 2 Klan chapters in Manning, SC in 1998 and against the Aryan Nations of Idaho the same year.
And then.....the end of the world, the crashing of all computers because of the Y2K bug....the year 2000, the millenium.... oops, none of that happened like so many of their leaders said it would.
AND...... George the (So Much) Lesser was installed in the White House. And George and his evil henchman Dick, being real Americans, would keep us safe from furrin' terrists (9/11), who send anthrax from a US Army base to 2 senators who don't think the Patriot Act is given to us by God, who will start 2 wars against "those people" and wave the flag furiously and call traitor against anyone who doubted.
But now that a Democrat is again in the White House (and he is the "wrong color" and has "that Democrat woman" in the State Department and "that other Democrat woman" as Speaker of the House...) well, they are arming again.
They don't think anyone other than one of their own is an actual American. They can't argue it (because it is absurd on its face), so they move to simply strike out blindly, like a brat being carried from the table to the chair in the corner...
I'm sorry to say I anticipate worse to come, but let us keep our courage and continue to answer back....answer with deeds of love and kindness, acts of real patriotism.
Shalom.