New patriot games

Abstract

When I returned to the United States after four years in England, I felt as if the country had shifted under my feet. Remember 1991? George Bush was triumphantly concluding the Gulf War and seemed electorally invincible; Bill Clinton was stumbling in the early primaries; no-one had heard of Clarence Thomas or Anita Hill; Waco was just another town in Texas; OJ was still married. Don't worry about the far right, I would say with the confidence and accuracy of a BBC meteorologist, they've always been there, and periodically they reappear to scare us. I would cite The Order, Posse Comitatus, or Aryan Nation as the Michigan Militia of their time. Then Waco happened, and I was stunned. Then Oklahoma City happened, and I was aghast. Politicians have been ‘running against Washington’ and voters ‘throwing the bums out’ for as long as I can remember. The rise of cults, militias, and other extremists is something very different with little relation to left or right, Republican or Democrat. With militiamen spouting hate and calling it love, with ‘patriots’ taking up arms against the government, with religious zealots dying in infernos, one might justifiably ask what else is at hand. Where is America now? Ask another American and you'd get another answer, but here's mine: America is at (or near) a place where I cannot burn the nation's flag and call it legal protest, but the Ku Klux Klan can burn a cross in a public space and call it religion. If I feel a little unsteady on my feet, I guess I haven't regained my land legs yet.