Stand Your Ground

In this NY Times article we learn a little about a tragedy that hits very close to home. The young foreign exchange student who was shot and killed was a soccer player on the team my best friend ( and co-blogger) teaches. As in every situation, we have a continuim within Montana "gun culture" from the legislator "with a gun in her closet" to the ever-growing number of whack-jobs with full on arsenals in their bunkers. I have my own hunting rifles and shotguns so I can harvest game. My neighbors have stacks of assault rifles so they can withstand " the coming firestorm" and "coming collapse" (language from survivalist website suvivalblog.com) In a post-rational America, none of the crazed logics around the term "collapse" would surprise anyone; Christian millenialism, The New World Order, the rise of Cliven Bundy's negroes or the NRA Tea Party loathing of Big government. And we don't yet know what kind of "ideological rubble" the shooter was buried under, but we are going to learn more about his own arsenal and paranoid delusions. The point is, as the Patriots and weapons manufacturers arm everyone to the teeth to make themselves safer and the world safe for democracy, we can expect chaos to reign. Chris Hedges refers to these glassy eyed believers as "neoliberalisms shock troops" because private property, the foundation of capitalism, is the God they worship above life or any nebulous "pursuit of happiness". Perhaps the model Wayne La Pierre and Sarah Palin would most like to emulate is the Congo where every citizen is armed and everyone Stands Their Ground. Those people know how to keep and bear arms, by God, and the Castle Doctrine is the highest ( perhaps only) law of the land ( or jungle).