Scariest read of the day

Shockingly, it isn't about Yemen (yup- I am going to go one post not talking about Yemen).  Barton Gellman in Time has an up-close and well-reported look at extreme right-wing militias, many of whom think war against the government is both inevitable and desirable.  It is unsettling- you want to think of these guys as toothless (literally and figuratively), but they have weapons, oftentimes a feverish religiosity, and a deep-seated conviction that the government is illegitimate and that they are the representatives of the people's will. 

OK, maybe this is about Yemen.   The parallels with AQAP are pretty striking, anyway. 

Here's a money quote, and a perfect example of cold-blooded sociopathy wrapped in a bogus cloak of Constitutionalism. 

Regardless of what conscience tells them, what chance do would-be armed rebels possibly have of prevailing against the armed might of the U.S.?
One answer comes from former Alabama militia leader Mike Vanderboegh, who wrote an essay that is among the most widely republished on antigovernment extremist sites today. In "What Good Is a Handgun Against an Army?" Vanderboegh says the tactical question is easy: Kill the enemy one soldier at a time. A patriot needs only a "cheap little pistol and the guts to use it," he writes, to shoot a soldier in the head and take his rifle; with a friend, such a man will soon have "a truck full of arms and ammunition." Vanderboegh is hardly a man of action himself, living these days on government disability checks. Even so, when he wrote a blog post in March urging followers to protest the health care bill by breaking windows at Democratic Party offices, they did so across the country.

Anyone else love that this clown lives off the government?

I think it boils down to self-pity, in the end, and a rage against your own impotence.  Regardless of the proximate cause- taxes, the ATF, the scourge of insurance companies no longer being able to deny pre-existing conditions- it is about bored people trying to make something heroic about their lives and being desperate to blame others.  Which I get, and there is certainly a lot of truth in thinking that large and powerful forces don't give a good goddamn about you.  However, that, among other reasons, is why I am a liberal.  For all the massive flaws of elected officials, I trust their response to citizenry a damn sight more than enormous corporations.  It is a bit disgusting and a large part terrifying that there are some people who disguise treason in the cloak of patriotism.