What happened to the militia movement?

I started off thinking I was going to write about the militia movement but now I feel like talking about something else. Maybe I'll get back to it in some round about way, but later.

When I was in high school I was interested in the growing militia movement, and militant anti-authoritarian movements in general. I was also interested in UFOs, conspiracies, anarchist philosophy and mysticism. I've never felt any of these things were flaking and always tried to keep a rational, if a heated and enthusiastic, approach to them.

When I was 10 or 11 or there abouts my father was working for RAND, in one of their think tanks. I don't know exactly what he did or what projects he worked on specificly, but around this time he held a family meeting. In fact, this is the only family meeting we ever had, at least officially. We were a family that, while we commonly ate in different rooms, spent time with each other often for company and enjoyment, and family meetings were just not something we did. He told us that he was only going to say this once, and that beyond that there would be no discussion. "Aliens are real." That was that, and thus began my fascination with ufology.

He began buying me books on cryptozoology and ufology - the ufo encyclopedia being the one I remember most. I eventually became as much as an expert as you could with out being either in the field investigating reported sightings or actually meeting an alien. I would even go so far as to say I was as well versed in the phenomenon as just about anyone. But that took years of attention. At 10 or 11 I was mostly afraid of aliens as monsters and being helpless in their inhuman control. What did they want? Did their presence make us special? Were they even real? Many of those questions were laid to rest, not by answers, but the revelations that came with age. How could we know what they want when we don't even know what other humans want? Yes we're special, whether they're here or not as life is special in a universe that is mostly empty. Yes, they are real, even if they're not here.

To me ufology was not the question of aliens. It was a question of what's really going on? These flying things, these saucers and disks and cylinders are real. I've seen them myself and there is to much evidence for an intelligent person not to understand that these things are flying around and are a real phenomena. I haven't seen what I would consider good evidence that aliens fly them and to me it's just as reasonable to say the government is, or time travelers or Santa Claus. What's important about it to me has always been that they are proof that something extraordinary and yet totally hidden is going on. Squareman meeting the sphere. Whatever is behind the UFO phenomenon, the fact that these flying machines exist is interesting enough and important enough.

Another aspect of my interest was of a purely sociological nature. Here we are with these things, to the public at least, of totally unknown origins flying around and defying what we would think is possible and yet no one seems to be interested. At least not most people. It still amazes and frightens me that nothing has really come out of this. Even if it was only to discover that aeronautics, here on earth, was 50 years more advanced then we thought.

In '97 there were over a million witnesses to a large object in excess of a mile wide over phoenix. It was on ABC, CNN and CBS. At least I saw it on those channels. I don't remember now if it was Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings, but one of them described it as something that would change us all forever. And it did change me. I lost a lot of faith over the following months. I was shocked that this wasn't the biggest thing to ever happen. Even if it was a man made craft - it hovered, it was over a mile wide and it was on the news! That's when I understood that people didn't really care. There were lots of things that they didn't understand that they never questioned in the first place. It was only a few of us, it seemed, that wondered about how things worked and what was going on. So the sociological curiosity faded. I had my answer.

During that long period at the end of the '90s a lot of other things faded away too. The militia movement went underground, as a corpse some would argue. The world was set further along a path of neo-feudalism under clinton and the money elite. And all was covered in a serene snow. The economy was on track. There was an impressive job bubble and new money seemed to be making a new elite who were young and progressive. It seemed for a while that the revolution was here and it wasn't what anyone expected. Then the bubble burst. Florida did it's thing. The towers fell. The world was in shock and the trauma came again and again. Bush won a second term and silence fell as many realized something terrible. This snow was not serene and it was threatening to be a long, long winter.

Which brings me closer to today and what originally inspired this, now that I read it, kind of rambling stumble down memory lane.

The militia movement. What happened to it? What was it? A lot of people really don't understand it at all. I won't claim to be an expert, but I have many memories of this time, had several occasions to meet and speak with militia members and actively read and participated in their discussions online, way back when.

The militia movement was a populist movement. It had strong ties with the right and emerged when it did and how it did, because of this. However, it in no way is truly tied to the right, as it's but one moment in time in a long history of the peoples struggle against those who would be the aristocracy.

What you may have heard about the militia movement is they were racist, gun crazy, anti-semitic extremists who were either anti-federalist, white power klansmen or religious nuts. Exploring these common perceptions is as good a way as any to start.

Firstly the militia movement was not racist. Militias in the south spent, perhaps, more time trying to distill racist groups from their movement then it spent in anti-government activities. Of course in the south it was a larger issue as these racist groups were firmly entrenched and were already organized. Militias in more urban areas and in areas not suffering from such a problem with hate groups had much less trouble.

In it's own way this myth reveals a certain amount of bigotry outside of the militia movement. Even though it was a movement on a national level people only saw largely white and rural militias in the news and assumed they must be a bunch of cousin fucking racists. They never heard of the largely black militias in urban areas or understood that several influential militia leaders were black, women and/or liberal. Although the militia movement was largely white, and this is exactly what the power structure wanted and exactly why the media focused on racism within the militia movement.

What would be most apt to say is that white power groups saw the militia movement as something they wanted to take over and subvert toward their own goals. By and large they didn't succeeded.

Really these groups were in anathema to the militia movement. Not only because militias had many whites, blacks, hispanics and [insert ethnic group here]s, but because these white power groups were nationalistic to say the least and the militia movement was a populist and therefore anti-nationalistic movement. There are countless examples of the militia movement as being in direct opposition, both demographically by their membership and philosophically, to racist groups.

The militia movement was pretty gun crazy. Although there are plenty of counter-examples, by and large it was gun crazy. That shouldn't suggest necessarily that they wanted to over-through the government or the status quo through violence. Many of them did, but even those who didn't saw that no matter how they attacked the system, it would attack back and it would use military action. I remember that many very influential militia personalities at the time realized that while an armed revolt may be necessary at some point it wasn't what would make or break the movement.

Really the racist and gun crazy sides of the militias were used to scare the left into staying the hell away from this weird right-wing movement. Gun control has always been a divisive issue between right and left and accusations of racism or anti-semitism are great ways to poison a debate. What the power structure feared then and now was that the right and left would join forces and create a large populist movement that would be hard to suppress. A great example, actually, of this happening was with the protests against the WTO.

So what about the anti-semitism in the militia movement? It was there, sort of. If you can see the difference in being jewish and being a zionist then you'll be along way toward understanding the issues involved. The militia movement was, definitely, anti-zionist and I think there are two main reasons for this. The first is that zionism is a nationalistic movement. The second is that Israel influences American foreign policy and by extension, some feel, has engendered a much more nationalistic home front. I don't think Israel is to blame for this although I do think they take advantage of it, but who can blame them. However, there is a connection in so far as a country can not be nationalistic abroad without being so at home. focusing on this connection is not in itself anti-semitism but could easily be seen as such by one who feels that jewish survival is dependent on a jewish nation state. In that I feel for people who are targets I understand this tendency toward nationalism, but nationalism is harmful in the long run. It makes people into a sort of political currency and devalues their individuality. Which is why nationalist and populist movements are often at odds.

Honestly this was just an after-thought. All of this kind of came to mind as I realized something pretty strange and sort of funny. In the early and mid-nineties the right was anti-zionist. Now they're very pro-zionist. The left, which was pro-zionist, is now increasingly anti-zionist. Then it struck me - the right in the early to mid-nineties was disenfranchised and because of that suddenly very populist. Now the left is disenfranchised and suddenly very populists. The right, at the time, had a government controlled by democrats, the left now has a government controlled by republicans. The worm has turned and somewhere deep down this anti-nationalist tendency has sprung forward once again. And like before it seems to have displaced it's criticism toward our own nationalism squarely on Israel. Although the issue of why anti-nationalism is so tied to anti-zionism is interesting and needs to be addressed, I don't want this to turn into another god only knows how many more lines, so I'll move on.

So what happened to the militia movement? It died. But in a much more important way it still lives. There is still the same spirit that inspired it at work in the common persons struggle for their own individual identity and sovereignty. Even if that spirit seems a bit fickle at times.

A dictatorship is a democracy of inaction and a democracy is a tyrany of the masses.

We refuse to think and we head straight for the abyss that against all warnings we insist is heading toward us, not we, toward it.

When I have nothing else to write, which seems to often, I write whatever this is.

A weed is a flower out of place. I read that somewhere in 1952, or it was written in 1952 anyway. A book about a honkey tonk spree killer pretending to be a good ole' boy pretending to a be a deputy sheriff in a dusty Texas town. "Watch us grow" the author writes, as his villain hero gazed down over the Texas night, "watch us grow." Like a flower out of place.

The closer you look the more every thing looks to be out of place and in place all at the same time. You can imagine yourself, if you like, way out where the earth looks small and blue only when you squint. Coming in fast towards it, satellites, ozone, clouds, sprawling cities surrounded by dirty red eroded farmland, a neighborhood island against a black sea of asphalt and rushing cars, a pedestrian beneath a street lamp as the sun goes down and it flickers on, their hair loose wisps playing in the wind, blemishes on the tops of their cheeks, cells of skin like honey comb, red blood vessels flushed with the cool night breeze, cells and atoms and on and on. Maybe strings or other near magic intangibles.

A flower out of place jutting through a crack in a sidewalk unimaginably unlikely to be here, deep and way out in a dark and deep universe that barely seems possible.

And she stood there. Waiting for a ride or maybe not waiting for anything. Maybe she was just there enjoying this breeze. It's been cold lately, but not for so long as she can't remember the hot summer that has finally been cooled. Her hair played in the wind, a few wisps here and there and her eyes played with the passing lights jumping from car to car to sign to sign. Closed, open, buy now, neon pink, relaxed blue, yellow saying look over here and red with fury. Some were to many colors, some were burned out and entropy, that great poet says something with the letters that are left bright.

The world outside, upside down against the window, reflected over her. Her sweater and messenger bag and brick colored pants loose over her body folding in the breeze that whether she waited for a ride or not she was obviously enjoying.

A night unlikely to ever visit us again. Its calm, infectious, and I want to be out there. Letting my eyes dance like hers over the lights and let them be drawn up toward the sky. The moon reflected back as she gazes up at it, appearing through a hole in the overcasted slate ceiling cities in California always get.

But, instead I sit back and look deep into the bubbles popping out of my soda and moister condensing on the sides of the glass. I drink and let it burn it's way down my throat and forget why I'd want to leave this anyway. The smell of coffee and french fries and the soft laughter of a late night diner.

The shadows of doubt that hide unspeakable callousness have already been cast over Katrina.

On the far right god and the devil did battle over the south, fear of blacks and the darker side of the capitalist system fuel counter-conspiracy theories of "tribes" and "snipers" taking over a city demolished and flooded. Holy warriors unable to quell the unfortunate savageries of nature and heathens. A public apathetic to the great struggle over the darkest of evils, hampering the efforts of the righteous with questions of accountability and doubts about the inequity between the classes. Classes often divided by race.

Further left along the spectrum of shallow politics, where holy wars and their evangelical warriors are seen as slightly embarrassing, that shrinking shadow exposes the failure of the local government, the city and state level fuck ups. You begin to hear about school buses and an overwhelmed city's lack of responsibility. How they didn't meet FEMA half way and how they expected to much. You hear a cold disregard for the everyday struggle of the poor to survive in a country that exploits them and ignores their need. A need artificially created.

Traveling ever leftward, to the middle of the road, things get confusing. These simple reasonings don't resonate. They don't know who to blame or if to blame. They are angry and frustrated and they sense that blame lays everywhere. How could it not with a catastrophe so wide spread with such a long history inevitably leading to this past dark week that grows longer against all reason. No enemy to blame, nature is above reproach, they struggle to find a side. Uncomfortable being between the experts and academics.

Left of the middle, blame is squarely placed on the president. His war and his incompetency finally exposed. They are perhaps uneasy with exploiting the misfortunes of this disaster but they see this as but part of a larger disaster beginning with an anti-populist corruption of government and ending with the near total erosion of the countries ability to act even when action should be assured. They were shocked that things have gotten this bad and are dismayed that their counterparts on the right aren't equally appalled. They are slow to question or blame the capitalist system, the basic structure of government and society. They are as embarrassed by the anarchists, communists and militants as the short right is with it's evangelicals, constitutionalists and race hate groups.

Finally approching the far left, where this is nothing less then the creak before the gallows door swings open hanging capitalists society by the rope it bought itself. The war, big business, dispassionate religion and apathy - all leading to this past week. To them the system didn't fail other then to be exposed as it's truly is. Unable and unwilling to help the people, it's slaves and sycophants.

A country divide by shadows. FEMA didn't fail. The government didn't fail. New Orleans didn't fail. These are just contracts and names on maps. They are inert. We failed. People failed.

We disaffected ourselves of responsibility. We let stupidity and apathy be our tyrants. We let our world become a game and let the political become issues and sides rather effects and action. We watch but do not act. We spend but do not build. We agree but do not participate.

When I have nothing else to write and I'm reading about pirates and really bored I write about existential panic.

It's all true, he thought. Not one cent, nor an once of value of the poisonous curse spit from the boorish lips of what could only be him in a few years, could be denied. He would never go far from where he was now. A curse such as this is common among the defeated. Their bitterness turned into a cynical wisdom. Not a truth, as such, but a curse - it won't get any better then this but it won't stay this good either. He was a bastard amongst them now and he spit the same venomous curse at every face he saw that still bore the fresh shock of defeat.

"Ha!" He would laugh at them "You thought you'd get better? Now you're here, get used it. It's the only thing short of death that's certain. Your failure!" It hurt to say, to think and worse to believe, but that pain dulled the deeper you sank into it. It would return, and stab at you from the deeper you have yet to go and be all the more painful. But it was sharp and quick and not as prolonged as those first years when you still see daylight.

He fought for a long time to rebel against it. It seemed like a sin to allow himself to close his eyes to any hope. As if he was condemning himself. Slowly it would sneak up and smother him, the realization that hope was the true cause of his pain. Even that hope remained. It dogged him, nipping at his heels, tearing at his pant leg to come back out and to feel the warmth of the sun again. He kicked at this apparition.

Hope, like a weed, never seemed to be in short supply of cracks to pop at him through. Soon he began to believe that he was stronger for escaping the need for joy. Lost of his dependence. And how can that be bad? But even that bore fruit to sweet, when he had learned to fear temptation.

So he sat. He found a shadow, even in this darkest of places, where he could feel secure. And he lashed out at anyone less traveled then he down this lonely path. Calling them deeper. Hazing them into further maturity. Closing his eyes against the darkness, knowing at least where he was.

He thought of himself, once, as the light and not the shadow it cast, but here it's easier to see yourself as that long shape bent along the ground. But really he knew he was what he couldn't see. He was what blocked the light. The shadow was a puppet, not him. He could see inward, dreaming. Any illusion that he was what he thought was as mistaken as thinking himself his shadow.

He was what he couldn't see. None of it was true. So he sat.

Driving around, with none of the usual trappings. No wallet, no jacket, your money at home on the second from top shelf of your book case buried in change and a half gone tube of certs.

The air is sweet, actually sweet, between the smell of cigarette smoke, car exhaust and fast food restaurants. The streets are quiet between the din of bass, yelling and house music leaking out of open bar doorways. Your mind smooth and quick in this environment you get a month or two of thinking done in just the half hour - hour, or so that you drive just beneath the speed limit with both driver and passenger window down. Such a sweet breeze.

Nothing dark or bloody lurks in your imagination on nights like these. The mind is clear and healthy in a way no drug, no vacation and no meditation can stimulate.

There is nowhere else but this road, no other time but this moment, nothing as sweet as this breeze. In the places between the noises and smells that normally splatter the sprawling landscape of wires, roads and small darkened houses there is peace.

But there is something, sinister if not for the bliss of it, that pull at the edges of your peace. All your thoughts can't help but drift toward your life. Toward a sadness that seduces you with it's subtle melodrama. A slow steady sadness of what you don't have or of how meaningless what you do have is. How temporary and small you are.

A joy comes from this brief time. Everything is better. That is the power of life. That it won't last. That this universe is vast and cold and you are lost in it - except that you have such a short time it becomes wonderful, passionate and colorful.

You'll never see it all, but it's mostly empty. So you only have to see the best parts.

The best parts, like a short drive on a cool night with nothing but your thoughts.

The day felt lazy. Like the whole city was a cat curled up on a window sill that you find yourself watching in a half daze, matching it's breathing and getting lost in it's dreams. Everywhere were slack faces and the smell of shampoo, cotton and coffee. Everything moved slow and cozy.

Short drives are perfect when the day is like this. Drive just far enough that you feel a nap pushing on and not so far that you start to sweat and catch the cars dust on your skin. You feel the good dry and the soft smooth as the sun warms you just the right way.

Days like this can go either way. They can cool off letting you know it's going to be alright or they can go very wrong and start to heat up. It depends on the tenacity of the clouds I guess. Will they stay or burn away and let in the suns terrible heat? Sometimes, like now, the day taunts you. It heats up a little but a cool breeze comes in so it's only hot where the breeze is blocked and just right where you can feel it against your skin and in your hair.

Nothing should happen on days like this. Nothing with more commitment then a stroll or short drive.

Scars ran around his body and threatened to over take his face. The faint glow of an LCD monitor, whose power switch had long since become a useless nub, illuminated from inside his jacket a line of dull blue light. The sky, pale blue and getting darker, hung low to the horizon. There was no skyline here. No jagged broken buildings or new two story malls. Nothing forever.

Lines ran out across the brown mesa where brave or lost explores had attempted shortcuts. Shortcuts to where was a lesson in desperation, a question of motives and circumstances so varied even here where nothing was. This land was untouched by the madness of the past. There was never anything here, nor would there ever be.

He loved to be here. To see this place that is naturally like everywhere else now, but still untouched. There is to much pain, even in the beautiful places where the ground was heated to hundreds of miles of glass, for him, and those glass flats were beautiful and stunning. At night you might forget that the stars below you are no more then reflections. You can easily lose your perspective.

On a world so devoid of features the few that were here were magnificent. The glass flats, the dry ocean valleys, the beltways of giant tire treads that felt like canyons when you were in them.

On some days, when the glare was not to intense, you can see for so far. The horizon twisted in some places, so that it felt like the earth might rise above you. In other places it suddenly dropped off so that you felt you were always at the edge of the world. And now there were entire areas, as big as countries, that never saw light. One spectacular mountain, the only thing that is really left that you could describe as a mountain, never knew night. It's peak exploding rock into the atmosphere.

It is a simpler world. It's features have become extreme in both their magnificence and horror. There are places no one will ever walk again, places that no one will ever see again. Places lost forever, except in the legends and the mystery they inspire.

I couldn't hear the rain falling. It was the orchestra that it inspires which came at me from outside the car. The splash of wet tires, the lazy beat of windshield wipers. The droning bass of the sectional asphalt beneath me. The way it suddenly stops as I pass beneath a bridge - it made it feel like a dream where a sudden inconsistency shocks you into a lucid state. When you're awake it does the opposite. Suddenly i'm dreaming myself driving. My eyes pushing against the weight of the strong sleep gripping me.

My head feels five feet behind me, my reactions slow and I see it all from behind, as if backstage, where the world suddenly becomes 2 dimensional. It seems oddly real. The way seeing something on television sometimes feels more real. Not in the moment but just behind it.

I've been thinking about what movies and books I like. What television shows and what kind of entertainment I like. What I find entertaining about things. Recently I've found a sort of underlying thread between them. Something that ties the enjoyment I get from watching the inane banter between people in online games, reading internet forums, watching documentaries or reading case studies. The sorts of things that really draw me into books, movies and television shows.

It sort of dawned on me recently because I've been reading a lot of American Splender, David Sedaris and currently "Education of a felon" by Edward Bunker. There is genuineness to them. An honesty of spirit and intent. They celebrate being just a person. Not a 2 dimensional caricature of a person whose life, albeit exciting, is thin and predictable.

Sometimes mass media really makes me sick, but not in the cynical counterculture sense that is so popular. It's more like junk food. It's not what's there that makes me feel ill, it's what's not there. When I think about my life and past experiences I see that a lot of it was shaped by a nutritionally deprived diet of bad media. There was no celebration of the absurdity and the real dignity of being a person, not in the mass media that trickled down to me from the pens and typewriters of the story tellers that define what is worth noting for the records and not by me, myself.

I couldn't justify getting all worked up over little things, that while they effected me greatly, paled in comparison to the dramas of my favorite movie characters. I didn't see the humor in the, what were commonly brazenly petty and immature antics of my peers and myself. These things were not great enough to be immortalized in the stories we pass down - so I developed a detachment that a lot of us share.

It wasn't a real detachment though and eventually I just fell out of the habit as it was a shallow and forced cool anyway. Not until recently did I come to realize this in a overtly conscious manor. I guess the antidote wasn't a learned understanding of myself so much as just reading enough by people who did celebrate the things that do matter to me, the things that do effect me. So I'm still a disciple of the stories that define us, but a better one for reading stories that reflect a caring and genuine love for people as they are. Inane, petty, stupid, crazy, clumsy and mundane.

Every time he brushed his teeth a nagging fear grew in recesses of his mind. At first it was just a funny thought, a foolish and silly whimsy, but it grew. Eventually blossoming into a full blown, nearly disabling phobia. He could feel the gasses swelling his stomach, he could hear the hum of the electric tooth brush. Every shutter of his oral-b, every vibratory growl. He would belch, the tooth brush would spark. He would be the headline on page c13 of the newspaper, the odd but true section. Pictures of his face, blown off by a his own natural gases and the innocent spark of his efficient electric toothbrush would be traded on dark and sadistically sarcastic web sites. Just like that guy with the firecracker face.

He could never get the order straight. Go to the bathroom, then get your water or soda. Would his co-workers think, if he took a bottle of water or pepsi into the bathroom that he was secretly peeing in it? Secretly basking in the glory of his perversity? He knew that if any of them mistakenly took a bottle into the bathroom with them they could pull it off. No one would ever suspect that they were revealing in depravity and drinking their own piss. He wasn't either, but he knew his face would betray him. It would say things about him. It would say that, yes, he had thought of that, perhaps even considered it. And that's a short distance for his evil shitty co-workers imaginations to go till they began picturing him hosting pee parties in his apartment. Orgies of plastic covered floors and strange half naked perverts grinning and pissing their friday nights away.

The future is not just a measure of time, but also of distance. You must move toward it. It's just beyond the horizon. In the same sense that the world rotates and you can be said to also be moving, both physically and into the future, while remaining perfectly still relative to your surroundings, the future also waits, moving relative to you. Out of your reach, until one day you decide to simply walk there.

When you find yourself fighting nature all things become permissible. All horrors begin to diminish, contrasted with the great forces you are at odds with.

You become a force of nature, a will-less being dedicated to stopping what can't be stopped. You'll find your life, not your enemies, lays in ruins. At the end all your efforts grown over and forgotten - the only proof that you were here are the memories of those you murdered and tortured. And even those will be forgotten.

I see them everywhere. Holding on to a dead society trying to stop what can not be stopped. They call the liberal agenda selfish individualism, and it is. We are becoming individuals in every sense. One day we will devour out masters like a cocoon, selfishly.

When you cage a wild animal you are smart to be careful, because it will attack you the first chance it gets. When we see this played out in the streets, by humans, there are those that will say "See, they're wild. They're barbarians. Violent and selfish and dangerous." We are and you're smart to be afraid. Because some day we will kill you and eat you.