{"id":177019,"date":"2020-01-20T21:26:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-21T02:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/20\/gee-you-think-5\/"},"modified":"2020-01-20T21:26:00","modified_gmt":"2020-01-21T02:26:00","slug":"gee-you-think-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/01\/20\/gee-you-think-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Gee, You Think?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>I will note that stating the blatantly obvious is probably as good as a <i>Washington Post<\/i> will get so long as Fred Hiatt is running the show on that department, but when an Op\/Ed is titled, &#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/opinions\/2019\/04\/25\/tacit-alliance-militia-members-border-patrol-agents-is-getting-out-control\/\">The Tacit Alliance of Militia Members and Border Patrol Agents Is Getting out of Control<\/a>,&#8221; you are pretty firmly into, &#8220;Well, Duh!&#8221; territory, particularly when you scrupulously ignore that the behavior of Customs and Border Patrol is the product of s deeply racist and abusive culture:<\/div>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: blue;\">The leader of the militia group United Constitutional Patriots was <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/immigration\/2019\/04\/21\/an-armed-militia-was-detaining-migrants-border-fbi-arrested-its-leader\/?utm_term=.46eda00c53e2&amp;tid=lk_inline_manual_3\">arrested<\/a> April 20 by the FBI on a federal weapons charge. As The Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/immigration\/2019\/04\/21\/an-armed-militia-was-detaining-migrants-border-fbi-arrested-its-leader\/?utm_term=.46eda00c53e2&amp;tid=lk_inline_manual_3\">reported<\/a>, \u201cThe United Constitutional Patriots came to public attention this month after the emergence of videos that showed men stopping and detaining people crossing the border.\u201d The videos <a href=\"https:\/\/edition.cnn.com\/2019\/04\/22\/us\/united-constitutional-patriots-what-we-know\/index.html\">included two<\/a> that, CNN reported, appeared to feature a UCP member impersonating a Border Patrol agent. Another <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/debbie.collins.31149\/videos\/vb.100000705168759\/2485612451472236\/?type=2&amp;video_source=user_video_tab\">video<\/a> showed armed men in military-style uniforms detaining dozens of migrants. \u201cCustoms and Border Protection agents arrive and collect migrants but do not ask the group with guns to disperse or take their weapons elsewhere,\u201d The Post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/nation\/2019\/04\/24\/border-militias-legal-gray-areas-civilians-detaining-migrants-gunpoint\/?utm_term=.a0d47034df44&amp;tid=lk_inline_manual_3\">reported<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Vigilantism is always a threat to democracy, but the militia videos are especially troubling because of the appearance that civilians were masquerading as law enforcement officials \u2014 in at least one, according to The Post, members could be heard shouting \u201cPolicia, alto!\u201d or \u201cPolice, stop!\u201d \u2014 and because federal agents encountered the vigilantes without confronting them.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The null hypothesis is that CBP is actively partnering with civilian racist thugs because&nbsp; \u2026\u2026\u2026 wait for it \u2026\u2026\u2026 CBP is run by and for racist thugs.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe mentioning that the CBP is a corrupt and bigoted organization would help create a greater understanding the whole situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I will note that stating the blatantly obvious is probably as good as a Washington Post will get so long as Fred Hiatt is running the show on that department, but when an Op\/Ed is titled, &#8220;The Tacit Alliance of Militia Members and Border Patrol Agents Is Getting out of Control,&#8221; you are pretty firmly &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[506,368,364,438,526,398],"class_list":["post-177019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-bigotry","tag-corruption","tag-evil","tag-immigration","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-racism"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177019"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177019\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}