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What's disturbing to me about the Mother Jones article is that this concern for preparedness hinges on the issue of martial law. If the Obama government were to do so for any particular reason, it seems this group would construe that as some sort of excuse of the government for taking its "socialist totalitarianism" to some kind of "Phase 2." It's as though they view Obama's option for martial law as the one significant move that would enable him to galvanize his Stalinesque rule over America, placing people in concentration camps and perhaps executing those who become too resistant.
Though I don't doubt the existence of facilities for detention centres for both federal and military use, I can't think of a single nation who'd I suspect doesn't have these sorts of things. It's not that the concept of law and order is new or anything.
All of this to me is simply ludicrous. What makes it more so is the fact that these people are members of the armed forces, both military and civilian. To serve and protect, right?
What's funny to me, in the end, and no matter how sardonic, is the connection all of this has to the Tea Party movement and how it views the Obama administration as a socialist machine gearing up to take its agenda to Nazi-like proportions if necessary.
I don't know what to think anymore. At first the Tea Party movement just seemed like a bunch of whiny conservatives upset because their guy lost the election. Now I think the group under which the Tea Party flag flies is far too fragmented and multifaceted to apply any one value to it.
My greatest fear is that it's being co-opted by extremists: the kind we should be far more concerned about than anything that would come out of a decidedly centrist president. And it all starts with propaganda, as did most things to be ashamed of in our human history.
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Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön
Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot
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