Men with rifles yelling at us
Hundreds of people protested outside the Michigan Capitol building in Lansing on Thursday, with some pushing inside while the Legislature was debating an extension of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s state of emergency in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
Protesters held signs, waved American flags and even carried firearms, while some chanted “Let us in!” and “This is the people’s house, you cannot lock us out.” Others tried to get onto the House floor but were blocked by state police and sergeants-at-arms, according to NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit.
Some were carrying guns.
Michigan United for Liberty organized the protest, dubbed the American Patriot Rally, to call for the reopening of businesses.
Men with guns. Big angry-looking white men with guns.
Remember Tamir Rice? 12 years old? Playing with a toy gun in a park? A cop shot him dead. Tamir wasn’t white though. You gotta be white to get away with the threatening legislators with guns thing.
I sometimes wonder if this is the sort of problem that would solve it self if someone set off some firecrackers… not worth the collateral damage I’m sure.
And not just any guns–military style assault rifles that are specifically designed in both form and caliber to do just one thing: efficiently kill human beings.
As someone commented on twitter, if a bunch of bearded shouty middle eastern looking men dressed in black and carrying guns tried to enter the building…
During the suffrage movement, women who staged peaceful protests were dragged to jail, sentenced to brutal terms, and put into a situation where they were violently assaulted, beaten, and treated like garbage. They weren’t carrying guns. They weren’t doing anything but standing there holding signs and passing out pamphlets. White men much like these shouted and beat them and screamed obscenities at them.
Yeah. The poor, oppressed, abused and forgotten white man, who is not listened to, so disenfranchised that the pundits were falling all over themselves to express sympathy during the 2016 election…and since. Always explaining that the reason we get Trump is that the white man in the midwest, the abused, mistreated white man in the midwest doesn’t get his say.
These are men who want freedom to spread lethal viruses all over the world just so they can go to the barbershop, the gym, and the gun range. They elected Trump so they could call people names – black people, female people, Muslim people…yeah, they have been so oppressed, not having freedom to shout “bitch” at a female when they felt like it. Oh, wait, they could do that? Yeah. It might lose them a job if they did it at the wrong place and time, but oh, well. And we’re not supposed to call them deplorables.
Well, I will. Deplorables! Deplorables! Deplorables! Deplorables! Deplorables! (There. I’ve filled my quota of uppity for the day, so maybe I’ll go work on my editing now.)
I guess I don’t have a rich enough imagination. I mean… what about this is patriotic? It seems like a real non sequitur to me.
Ben, you have be pretty far down the rabbit hole to understand how these militia creeps think they’re being patriotic. The fact you don’t is a good sign. The fact I do reflects poorly on my relatives.
They’re patriotic to an imaginary country. That country doesn’t exist, has never existed, but they’ve been convinced it really does, or did, somehow.
The real country around them – full of people who are not white, and sometimes governed by people who are not male – is somehow preventing their imaginary country from coming fully into being. The laws of this real, imposter country, insofar as they infringe on these mens’ feelings and desires, prove how evil the imposter country is, and how urgently it must be opposed. This thinking is fundamentally religious in nature; they are motivated in similar ways to the Islamic extremists who want to establish a new Caliphate.
These y’all quaeda yokels don’t see the coronavirus lockdown a discrete response to a single problem; their complaint is not about a single policy mistake. They see it as part of a conspiracy to deprive them of the ability to establish their imaginary country. Hence the guns: they will need lots of guns to establish their imaginary country. They are explicitly fomenting a second civil war, or second revolution, after which they will be able to establish their imaginary country.
In this foolishness they are supported by numerous American politicians, such as Trump and Rep. Steve King. Abroad, they are supported by Russia, because Putin both loves to screw America up and loves right-wing extremism. Numerous Faux News talking heads also fortify their rhetoric.
In distinction to the kind of racist policing exemplified by the murder of Tamir Rice, these people pose an actual threat to America and its citizens. Also in distinction to movements like Black Lives Matter, the militia freaks have not just sympathizers but members in law enforcement, and are duly emboldened.
Papito, I had no idea we shared the same relatives! Welcome to the family .;-)
That is such a cogent analysis, but one thing I’ve also noticed is that they feel this country has somehow been stolen from them. In their minds, it is the country we wrenched from England using ragtag militia groups with no help from anyone at all anywhere (Guess the French don’t count). First we had to clear away the illegally squatting “Indians” and kill off the bison that were inconsiderately grazing “our” farmland. The winning of the west is an icon to people who don’t understand AT ALL how the west was won. They seem to believe that it was forged by independent actions of John Wayne and Clint Eastwood working all by themselves against hordes of native populations, villainous bank robbers, and pretty ladies who wanted to subvert them through sex. Nevertheless, they persisted, and the west was seized for real Americans…but then it was seized by weak, sob sister liberal elites who just want to make movies, have sex, and eat tofu…while wearing sandals, of course, and mocking Christianity.
The idea that the main reason John/Clint was able to do this is a slew of government handouts, forts full of government soldiers, and lots and lots of government land giveaways is lost on the John/Clint fan club. The fact that we were not, in fact, entitled to land already occupied by others is lost on them. The fact that much of the building of the west was done by African Americans, Asian Americans, and Mexican Americans is lost on them. The fact that women worked alongside the men in grim, dirty conditions and didn’t spend their lives as dance hall girls in saloons that tempted men to sin is lost on them.
They feel like THEY (well, John/Clint, both white men) built a country that was then stolen from them by subversive elements who have this peculiar idea that others who work and slave and die to keep this country running should have the same rights and consideration as all the John/Clint/Ammon Bundy “Real Americans”.
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