I've written my share of diaries on the subject, starting back with one that referenced "Kristallnacht" that I was lambasted for. (all linked at the end of the body of this diary)
But my theory all along is this:
1.) Lunatic loners or small groups will increase their acts of lunacy to the point that government at all levels will be forced to react. Those reacting in fear will be mostly from the Right.
2.) Those on the Right will insist that any attempt by law enforcement at ANY level (local, state, or federal) will be de facto evidence of the police state that they've been bleating about all along...
3.) Which they ignore was only made neccessary by their actions...
4.) Which will nevertheless cause them to insist is proof that the government is out to crush dissent and destroy freedom and take away their liberty - cause them to go full-scale and start a conflagration of revolt...
...a revolt in response to a problem they created
Read this comment to one of today's headlines below:
Please
The Story: AP Sources: Militia suspected police-killing plot
(...authored by the AP and this comment posted in response to it at the Houston Chronicle.)
WASHINGTON-
Two law enforcement officials tell The Associated Press that members of the group in the Midwest had planned multiple attacks on police officers or other law enforcement personnel as a way of acting out their hatred for the government.
The plot allegedly was hatched by members of a Christian militia group called Hutaree. The charges are expected to be unsealed when some of the suspects appear in court later Monday.
In the comments:
DirtyDon wrote:
Okay... I think I got it now... time to start connecting the Tea Party people, Fox News, Talk Radio, any obama opposition, to the the Christian White Extremists Groups,,,
Forget the Muslim Extremists, the Anti Capitalists, the Anarchists, the Whacko Environmentalists.. it's those old White America Loving Christians clinging to their guns and Bibles...
They are the REAL Threat...
Watch the MSM aid and abet the obama administration in presenting and maintaining this concept...
(emphasis mine)
Here's a link to the Google News thread on the this Hutaree Christian Militia story
http://news.google.com/...
(above link may not stay active forever)
and here's a direct link to Hutaree itself. Fun stuff indeed.
Do you get it?
There are no violent extremists on the RIGHT in his mind; only on the LEFT. The only thing that he sees is the Obama administration and somehow the "MSM" (which Obama surely controls with his iron fist, see Michael Savage "Obama bought off G.E." and Boss Limp-Pawfor this meme), and the other Commies, anti-capitalists, Anarchists, and "Whacko Environmentalists" who are the REAL extremists.
Therefore "DirtyDon's" point seems to be that the violence of late is all a LEFT wing creation. In his mind all of this is not the actions of a rogue militia movement; it's a fabrication BY OBAMA and the COMMIE MSM to foist a LIE that there even is a violent Radical Right in this country now, and therefore (in the commenters mind) give the Obama government the illegitimate reason to crack down on otherwise peaceful and happy people just because Obama doesn't agree with them.
Pretty Sly Boy Eric Cantor has started this with his "the bullet bounced off my window, so that proves that there are terrorists out there on the Left coming to get Republicans, too"" idea, in effect saying that Democrats are inspiring the violence by falsely (Cantor implies) that there is any violence on the Right at all.
They are building a self-fulfilling prophecy, where a lone wolf or a few wolves act violently in anticipation of a government that would not be interested in them were it not for their revolutionary and incendiary threats and actions.
And in REACTION to the impetus they created for the government to come looking for them, they claim that is evidence that the government was always after them -
...and this is how a small fire becomes a conflagration.
"Such are promises
all lies and jest
still a man hears what he wants to hear
and disregards the rest"
Simon and Garfunkel - "The Boxer" Copyright 1970
And To all those at Street Prophets who think you've got me figured out,
to all those on the Right who call me "far left" because I stand stalwartly in opposition to you who are Far Right,
This is how we bullshit ourselves into thinking that the Titanic is an unsinkable ship.
Our country will not admit that it is capable of eating itself from the inside out until it will already have consumed itself.
And the reason I bring up Street Prophets is because they insist that they, as moderates and people of reason, are not responsible for their "Wingnut" outliers who go crazy in this way. But I can find no better evidence for the foundations of this kind of illogical thinking than the act of faith itself.
In logical circles it's called "Affirming the Consequent" and it is a fallacy.
Only in a supreme religion that considers itself incapable of error and therefore sacrosanct, is it logically permitted to establish the conclusion FIRST and then beat to fit and paint to match all the evidence whether it fits the conclusion or not.
That's why I think the fundamentalist Christians will indeed see their prophecy of the end of the world come true, becuase they are so convinced of it's inevitability that they are fulfilling it when it could otherwise be stopped by rational minds.
Go ahead. Take your shots at me and make the whole diary about what an angry atheist I am. If I really agreed with you that I was the only real problem in these rants, I'd solve it myself and disappear of my own volition - because I do not want to cause the world harm.
But when we have people who are arming themselves to prepare for a government attack on them that will only be launched (and would otherwise not exist) becuase they were using incendiary rhetoric and arming themselves - hey, we've seen this movie before and it's name was Waco.
Only this time the Tea Party lunatics are far more numerous and far more widespread than just David Koresh and his buried schoolbus shelter.
This is religous thinking, even if all the religious people disavow it and say "But they're not doing it right".
That's what got me banned from Street Prophets - I met a guy over there who says that when religious people go bananas, it's never the religion to blame. Those are just wayward belivers who left the reservation or who never had it right to begin with, but the religion itself is never to blame.
meanwhile that asshole who made that argument says that all the great wars of the 20th century were caused by atheists, therefore, he is arguing that it atheism that started the war, not the lunatic leaders themselves.
Get it yet?
When religion goes wrong, it's never the dogma, only the people.
But when apostates or atheists run amok, well it's never just the people, it's the ideology that made them evil from the start.
And for those of you who think you know what happened with me and the Street Prophets crowd, I doubt you'll take the time to follow all the links to find the one guy who I had a problem with who simply said to me
"Well, I'll never argue with an atheist again because they're just so stubborn and belligerent".
It takes two.
I'm sorry, but I cannot agree with you.
Meanwhile, whether religion/faith is transformative and can sometimes be said to have redeeming qualities, what I want is someone faithful with the intellectual integrity and honesty to admit that the MINDSET that a person can always find truth by running back to what they think they know (and disavowing any argument to the contrary) is the central tenet of monotheistic religions.
I know I can't argue the dogma, if someone could win the argument of who is right about Christ and who is wrong, I'm sure someone smarter than me or you would have done it in the last 2000 years. I'm not so deluded to think I can settle whether or not there is a "G"od. But I can argue that those who think as if there MUST be one can be easily brainwashed, and it pisses me off when people call atheism a religion. Free thought is the very antithesis of organized religion, and free thought is the central tenet of atheism, not "start with a conclusion and defend it at all costs".
I'm here to say that the mentality that allows a person or group of people to believe that they have all the answers from the moment they reach the age of reason, because that's what their daddy and their leaders told them, and that all evidence to the contrary is only proof of an unwarranted attack against them -
well for all the people who have called my suicidal essays exhibition of victimization - the faithful have got that act down pretty well themselves.
To the guy at Street Prophets who assailed me that far more death and destruction has taken place in the 20th Century by atheists than by people of faith, I say hoo-rah. If he's so blind as to ignore and disavow the religious mentality of the current struggles we face in 2010, be it from radical Muslims to lunatic Christians, all of them have one thing in common: They weren't atheists.
And I don't see the rabid "Militant" atheists of our day - the Sam Harris's, Christopher Hitchens, the Richard Dawkins, or the Dan Dennets or even the Bill Mahers inspiring anyone to stockpile weapons and declare war on the government of the United States.
I also dont' see ANY
read that to be ANY
atheists who believe that the end of the world is inevitable.
The rational amongst us, the ones without faith, think that when the worst blood and destruction and death the world has ever seen that it will NOT be a sign of the return of our Lord and therefore time to pray and hope he chooses us to go home with him (and not drown in the rivers of blood, which God has planned for the rest of us heathens) -
...it will be the atheists and the apostates and the free thinkers who will be out there yelling
STOP! We are supposed to be the smart animals - we're the ones who are supposed to be able to change our course of our own volition and save ourselves because we are more aware than all the other "lower" animals -
why must we keep believing that it is inevitable that most all of us are going to die and that "G"od wants it that way?
I can imagine an alien spacecraft discovering the charred, black, dead Earth after we've ruined it all, and reading our books that reveal that some of us thought (think at this moment) that this was inevitable.
Whether "G"od gave us free will or we evolved from the primordial slime and ooze in a fantastic accident of mutation and evolution, god damn it I'm not ready to concede that this is the best we can do.
We were supposed to be the smart animals.
Why is it that whenever a man - or mankind - does something stupid that nobody even acts surprised anymore? They just roll their eyes and say "well, that's human nature" and we are now regressing to be more stupid and predictable than the "lesser" animals we think we're so much better than.
Well, some of us anyway.
I dont' think we're going to get out of this one - not because it's in the book of Revelation - but because it's too easy to fool some of the people all the time, and now they're getting elected to rule the rest of us.
Links to my other thoughts on the subject
The paint, the corner, and what happens next
I believe in the end of days, but not in the Bible
They are building a movement to the next Kristallnacht
By the way, every time I take it to heart when a bunch of people condemn my thoughts in the comments section, I'm told by other people that I should not care what others think of me. (that's the end result of all that therapy they think I should be going to and the medication I should be taking - Don't worry so much about it)
So I'm going to let you all thrash and go bananas and act as if snafubar is the only guy who's lost his mind.
If I thought it was that easy to solve all our problems (that they could be solved if I, and only I, wasn't crazy) - well, you finish that sentence because that's when I always get in trouble.