Lunatic mainstream
by Tom Sullivan
Newsweek examines how Timothy McVeigh’s anti-government ideas have crept into the body politic since he bombed the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. What once was the lunatic fringe is now the Republican base:
Militia sympathizers today have the ears of many Republican politicians. Texas Governor Greg Abbott vowed to keep watch on the U.S. military this spring as it runs a series of war games called Jade Helm 15. Some Texans sensed an armed federal takeover of the Lone Star State and demanded action. Senator Cruz said of their fears, “I understand the reason for concern and uncertainty, because when the federal government has not demonstrated itself to be trustworthy in this administration, the natural consequence is that many citizens don’t trust what it is saying.”
As the Jade Helm 15 nonsense demonstrated, from the militias to the gold bugs to the Agenda 21 nuts to the Cliven Bundys to the Tenthers, the fringe has gone mainstream. Laws nullifying federal gun laws – even banning their enforcement – have sprung up in red states across the country:
Besides freeing guns from Washington’s control, there are also bills nullifying Obamacare, the National Security Agency and Common Core, as well as federal laws on other environmental standards, marijuana and tracking license plates. The federal government is “diving off into areas unchecked that they’re not supposed to be involved in,” said Montana state Representative Krayton Kerns, who introduced a bill in 2013 to limit the ability of local police to help enforce federal laws. “Not only is it our right in state legislatures to do this, it’s our obligation to do it,” Kerns told NBC News. “Somebody’s got to put a ‘whoa’ on it.” Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt is such a nullification enthusiast that he created a separate “Federalism Unit” devoted to fighting federal government “abuses of power.”
Oklahoma, once the victim and symbol of where the paranoia leads, now leads the way in furthering McVeigh’s anti-government agenda. Newsweek reports that last year Oklahoma lawmakers passed an Agenda 21 nullification act. In 2014, it made any federal gold coins legal tender.
There are some intriguing similarities between the current political climate and that of the mid-’90s, when McVeigh gathered up the fertilizer for his Ryder truck bomb. Back then, as now, a Democratic president presided over an improving American economy, and his popularity provoked the fear and loathing of an edge of the right-wing political spectrum contemplating—and occasionally engaging in—armed resistance.
Leading Republicans both feed and feed off of the government-as-enemy sentiment. As Newsweek makes clear, GOP lawmakers and presidential candidates such as Ted Cruz, Rick Perry, and Mike Huckabee are all too eager to feed the anti-government sentiment against the beast they themselves want so badly to ride.
It reminds me of George Burns in Oh, God! sending a message to a popular televangelist that he’s a phony: “If he wants to get rich, tell him to sell Earth shoes. But personally tell him I’d like him to shut up.”
[h/t Dave Neiwert]