According to NBC Los Angeles correspondent Gadi Schwartz's
Twitter account,
this is the couple that had killed two Las Vegas police officers and an
armed Wal-Mart shopper and their names are Jerad Miller and his wife
Amanda.
Perhaps we shouldn't be looking too deeply into
their cosplaying since they were erstwhile street performers who often
went out dressed as the Joker and Harley Quinn.
What we
should be looking more deeply into is their association with neonazism
and white supremacy groups. According to the
Washington Post,
after ambushing two officers having lunch at a pizzeria, the Millers
draped Gadsden flags over their bodies before marching to the local
Wal-Mart and killing a customer with a gun before Amanda shot her
husband before turning the gun on herself. Just before they opened fire
on the officers, they shouted, "This is the beginning of the
revolution!"
What's most notable to me is that just before
their rampage, they'd bragged to neighbors that they'd spent time on the
Bundy Ranch. You know, the same place in which snipers sighted down on
federal officers with complete impunity. Apparently, according to their neighbors, when they came back from Bundy's ranch, they were more radicalized than ever.
There are several things to take away from this revelation.
One, we have to wonder when law enforcement will finally wake up and
realize these right wing zealots are the real problem and not liberal
Occupy protesters and college students.
Two, we have to
realize this racist, antigovernment behavior and mindset is rapidly
becoming the mainstream and that when these lunatics gather in large
groups (as at the Bundy ranch), they have a tendency to radicalize each
other. Insanity and hysteria, as history informs us time and again, is
contagious. We are no further away from being susceptible to the herd
mentality as our prehistoric ancestors.
Three, right wing
media (and, yes, Roger Ailes, I'm looking in your direction) certainly
need to start owning up to this baseless hysteria they keep whipping up
by stoking fears that Obama will take away your guns and turning into
folk heroes racists who are simply too selfish to pay their taxes and
refuse to recognize the existence of the government.
When
children grow up in a family, they instinctively seek cracks and
weaknesses in what should be the united front of parents. When they see
one parent's authority being undermined (especially when it's the
father's), children will exploit that chink in the armor and begin by
testing boundaries, questioning the values of one parent or another and,
finally, engage in open rebellion.
Teabaggers, racists, gun
nuts, tax cheats and other miscreants are, mentally, like children. As I
told a fellow liberal a couple of days ago at our town's annual
festival, you can fix ignorance. We do it every day through our public
school system (a favorite perennial target of right wingers for budget
cuts, privatization, charter schools and programs that merely teach to
the test). What you
can't fix is willful ignorance and when these
peoples' fears are stoked and validated through a gigantic megaphone
such as Fox "News" and CNN, then it gives these intellectually stunted
people the illusion of consensus.
And when abortion doctor
killers are glorified by Bill O'Reilly and homegrown terrorists sighting
down on federal cops are glorified by Sean Hannity, it gives these
maniacs the idea that if they don't like the rules put in place for the
common good, then it's OK. Add to the propaganda campaign the Republican
Party and the NRA that strenuously blocks any attempt at meaningful gun
control legislation.
And law enforcement has got to realize that
they
are the enemy, the ones that are killing their own. Not peaceful Occupy
protesters or students at a sit down protest or innocent black people
or hippies growing medical marijuana or people calling for medical
assistance and seeing their special needs loved ones shot to death or
law-abiding citizens who committed the unpardonable sin of occupying the
wrong house during a no-knock drug raid.
The Tea Party, the NRA, irresponsible right wing media and the clearly insane 5th Columnists they help elect to our infamously dysfunctional Congress are the enemies. And until law enforcement and the criminal justice system across this country come to that realization, they will be derelict in their responsibilities to the common good.
There will be more people like the Millers to contend with and more
officers and judges will be shot dead while they miscast their baleful
glare at harmless, law-abiding folk.
going after people like "occupy" is so much easier than the actual criminals such as this couple. Its easier to pick the low hanging fruit.
Even the cops (some are friends of mine) and 1 percenters - OK, some of them - are capable of getting it that the Kochs and the rest of the Main Chancer approach are selling the whole nation down the river. But it's hard to wrap your head around this, so... that's what writing is for. Nice! I know the blog is sorta hiatusing, but I will keep up with you guys for more of this approach. Cheers!