It’s funny seeing comments on a liberal blog like Digby’s that buy into the idea that a bunch of beer-bellied yahoos with hunting rifles are going to fight off the government when they come to round us all up for re-education camp for whatever reason. Not as funny as hearing Wayne LaPierre (wonder what the NRA rank-and-file think of that Frenchie name) remix Mao’s famous slogan about power and the barrel of a gun, but still funny nonetheless.

At a time when technology wasn’t much more advanced than cannons and muskets, it made sense for a young, weak nation with hostile natives on one side and an angry empire on the other to see value in the idea of citizen militias where every able-bodied adult knew how to use a gun (though the idea that ordinary people could perform just as well in actual battle as trained soldiers didn’t last very long). Two and a half centuries later, though, if the state wants to annihilate you, well, you’re as good as dead. Sorry, that’s just how it is. Maybe you Wolverines-wannabes should stop stroking this apocalyptic death wish fantasy of yours where you have to live in caves taking potshots at army troops while stockpiling first-aid kits, 55-gallon drums of rice and beans, and bartering with rolls of toilet paper, and just keep on working with the imperfect system we have to keep things from ever getting to that point.

Besides, get the fuck real. Why would it ever come to that? Why would the government ever feel the need to crack down in such a heavy-handed way? We are talking about the same sedentary, bovine American populace here, aren’t we? Is someone planning to outlaw beer, porn, potato chips and cigarettes? Because there isn’t a whole lot else that would ever get this nation off the sofa and marching down the street with pitchforks. We just learned what kind of tyrannical administration we had been living under for the past eight years, and this news was greeted with a collective…yawn. Like Matt Taibbi said about the 9/11 Truthers, this kind of thing would only be necessary in a nation where the people were actually a threat to govern themselves.