My mentor and hero Charlie Pierce over at Esquire has a blurb that is just too good to miss, or too bad, really doesn’t matter, when someone throws you a softball, for godsake hit it!
Down Arkansas way, a 47 year old man found himself arrested when police got a tip as to the presence of 14 pipe bombs buried in his yard, and two more at his ex-girlfriend’s place. Sad part of the story is that he looked to be setting up some sort of violent retribution over a failed relationship, but those often go hand in hand with, well, creating as much destruction as one can on their way out of this world.
Thankfully he was caught before anyone was hurt.
The real story lies in what the hell he was doing with 16 pipe bombs. Turns out, the guy himself didn’t actually make them. According to the man’s mother, his now-deceased father built the bombs, roughly nine-ten years ago. The “father” built the bombs because he anticipated that President Obama would near immediately institute martial law. That doesn’t exactly explain the benefit of possessing 16 pipe-bombs in such a scenario, but we’re not dealing with a clear-thinking person, so practicality was perhaps not the primary concern.
The real gold is in the mother’s explanation as to why the father of course believed in impending martial law. To her, that part is wholly understandable, indeed, sympathetic.
“I blame the government,” she said during a 9-minute conversation in the driveway of the home she shared with her son. “That’s who I blame. They come on TV with, ‘Obama’s going to do martial law and Obama’s helping ISIS’ and all this bulls**t. What’s people to think? That was nationwide, forever.”
“What’s people to think?” is a question I have not once asked myself. Let me take a shot at answering it, though.
First, people are supposed to think. Had the late husband done that, I suspect that would have taken care of a large part of the problem.
Second, even if you believe Obama was helping ISIS – which is really tough to believe given that the far right was highly critical of Obama dropping bombs from drones right on ISIS’ heads, which never helped them – what does a collection of 16 pipe bombs do to combat this ISIS assistance?
Third, please, lady, just believe me on this, it was not “nationwide forever.” It was certain TV channel programming-wide for 8 years, and still available, when needed, going on near 10. Dear lady, all he really needed to do was change the channel once in a while or pick up a newspaper. That particular channel runs stories about Obama helping ISIS not to get you to build bombs, but to vote against the Democrats. (That’s a secret by the way, don’t tell anyone).
Oh! and last, the “government” did not force this particular channel to broadcast this stuff “forever.” I can actually prove that. Did you or your late husband ever notice that Obama never did institute martial law? And, take just a moment, think back, was it really “the government” that forced its way on TV to tell you all this? Or might it have been just screaming heads on that channel, the one that got the whole martial law thing wrong?
Just askin.’
Just one of the voters that put Donald Trump in the oval office.
