My first thought.
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Iāve had conversations with gun enthusiasts that went something like this:
GE: I served in the military to preserve Americansā right to bear arms, including military-grade assault weapons.
Me: But why do American civilians need to have military-grade assault weapons?
GE: To protect themselves from the jack-booted thugs the government would send to take their rights away.
Me: You mean that same military you were just talking about?
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With those āriotā dogwhistles, i think itās pretty clear what war he thinks heās fightingā¦
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Roger That!
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Get it straight - the military protect the rights of Americans by taking away the rights of foreigners. The ATF are the jack-booted thugs who will take away the rights of Americans. Well, I guess the ATF and the National Guardā¦ ah, dammit.
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There is surely some level of irony in the mocking of this group by people who otherwise express lots of mistrust/dislike of the government themselves.
@fuzzyfungus your theory is interesting and seems to align with with a certain layer of the American zeitgeist. Dunno if its true but its worth thinking about.
@papasan somehow I suspect that Groucho would be a bit ashamed of your use of his face here. But what do I know? Iām just a Jew from Texas who doesnāt have a problem with owning guns and hugging kids.
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Like every single one of them. You need a warboner to participate. This isnāt SCA or historical reenactment.
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and the rights of the enemy within, the traitors who prevent the nation from realizing historical inevitability.
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Yep, that fear of racial rioting pervades society every 20 or 30 years, often enough to catch each generation. Coincidence?
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It is certainly pure speculation(though Iām not even sure what exactly would qualify as āevidenceā); but its the best analogy Iāve been able to come up with to account for the mixture of enthusiasm for state power and dislike of āthe governmentā.
I must admit that itās also based, in part, on my strong visceral sense of similarity between protestant writers talking about āthe primitive churchā and this curious juxtaposition of zeal for state power and antipathy to government hearkening back to the (mythical) period where āWe the Peopleā embodied some Rousseauian General Will and one could love both state power and state without contradiction.
Mystical synthesis never seems to work well in politics, though, so they make me a bit nervous.
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Yeesh. Iām glad these folks donāt live anywhere in my general vicinity.
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Regulated in this sense means something that is properly equipped and working properly. For example a well regulated watch has been taken care of and it is keeping time correctly.
A well regulated militia is trained and has all the weapons and gear to be effective. In the days when the standing army was quite small and they relied on calling up militias, if you didnāt know what you were doing or didnāt have the right equipment you went from being an asset to a liability. Iāve read some of the Militia laws from the 1780s and they had a long list of equipment each person was to have (from boots and bed rolls to powder and lead balls).
With all the bitching against the rich, this sounds right up BBās alley.
And while their logo is horrible, lets be honest, most people canāt draw their way out of a paper bag. I give them 3 points for at least not using comic sans.
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The āeliteā so hated by the Right are people like Freddie Gray.
Uhā¦ no. No one thinks Freddie Gray is part of the elite.
But yes there are people in the ārightā who feel the rich pull strings and control the government. Some of them even see it happening to both sides of politics, while others see the ābadā elites control the left.
āThe eliteā are basically anyone on the coasts or somewhere to the left of Ted Cruz. Itās not money, because (for instance) the Koch brothers (opera notwithstanding) arenāt āelite.ā And itās not income generally, because much the same applies to wealthy people in Kansas vs. the poor in DC. It really just means ānot Conservative,ā with the old canard that the āeliteā are running media/government/academia/etc. to suit their tastes which for incomprehensible reasons (other than hating God, America, and Baby Jesus) they pursue to their own detriment.
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Well you will have to ask them. Not everyone on the right thinks the same way. There are those who would consider Koch an elite - some as an alley, and some as someone to be wary of.
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Wonder whatās the chance that this particular state only includes folks without a lot of melanin.
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IMPOSTORS!
Everyone knows The Golden Triangle is in North Texas, with Denton at itās Apex.
We need our own militia and teach these goat-ropers a lesson before they come for our blessed beer and sacred music!
If it could be arranged that different tea-crazed American militias would fight one another then it should be arranged that different tea-crazed American militias shall fight one another.
Iām not a fan of reality TV butā¦
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