snousle

Started following the "senior citizen militia" issue for the shallowest of reasons - I think you can guess what that reason might be - his name is Ray Adams:

Yeah, I know. Why am I cursed with such terrible taste in men?

There's a great article about the case in Esquire - the case of the Waffle House Terrorists - that is worth a read.

Like his co-conspirators, Adams had a passionate hatred of the government. The same government, incidentally, that employed him - he worked for the USDA. Presumably, throughout his whole career, he felt a burning need to cut his own budget? Yeah, that would drive me nuts, too. Funny thing about these home-grown right wing terrorist types; they tend to be the very same socialist drones they complain about. Others might get special veterans benefits, or disability, or massive amounts of medical care for free. It's just that their government paycheck is special, not like those other parasites whose departments are full of corruption and waste.

The leader of his group was an engineer, just like Mohammed Atta. And, like Adams, he made his living off the federal government. Having started out in the navy, he later worked for that ultimate corporate welfare scheme, the US defense contracting industry. Did he ever earn a single honest dollar, i.e. one that didn't get sucked from some taxpayer's pocket? Probably not.

For some reason, the engineering profession appears to generate an unusual number of violent extremists. Having gone through engineering school myself, I can sort of understand why. I was in the "nerd division", engineering physics, which was more like pure science than, say, civil engineering, but the rest of the department was generally rowdy and domineering. Right down to the big-shouldered jackets, with their red felt and white leather. And why not? Engineering is about control, about being right, and in that sense it's ultimately more than a little bit narcissistic. It goes together rather nicely with hyper-partisanship. Politics is like poison to an engineer, because it is unpredictable, irrational, and cannot be tamed by mere force of will. The compromises inherent in democracy generate in the engineer's mind an irresistible urge to destroy those unpleasant, uncontrollable democratic institutions by force. Just like John Galt.

Amazingly enough, the whole group was brought down by yet another smokin' hot asshole, a macho slime ball who infiltrated their militia, flattered their delusions, manipulated them, and set them up as "terrorists" in order to wiggle out of charges of pedophilia.

I mean, wow, who wouldn't want to be his tequila girl? Don't all raise your hands at once, just leave me with my fantasy, OK?

It's all very unfortunate, actually, since the members of the senior militia were obviously living in fantasyland, and were incapable of doing anything on their own. Did they not realize that the same mechanisms the Bush administration had set up, with the full approval of "patriotic" Americans, for the purpose of railroading innocent, unlucky people into Guantanamo Bay, would eventually turn on them and eat them up? No, they did not, and that's what so sad about the whole thing. It's easy to take dumb, weak, self-absorbed people and coerce them into doing and saying ridiculous things. It happens every day on the Glenn Beck show, and in the pages of the Free Republic. It also happens every time you see some unlikely sod convicted for drug running or entrapped as a "child molester". They are the trophies of a justice system that is more interested in creating crimes than preventing them.

I guess that's why I like Ray Adams so much. He is like unmolded clay: all that passion, all that energy, and nothing useful to do with it. Isn't this why we invented bear contests? Just for people like him. Pity he's most likely unable to live as a functioning homosexual, if he were cured of that he could have a lot of fun. :-P