I'll make you a deal,
Ted Cruz.
Sen. Ted Cruz accused the Obama administration Tuesday of bungling, asserting that federal officials should have intercepted the two men shot dead Sunday before they reached an anti-Muslim conference in Garland.
“Once again, as with Nidal Hasan and the Tsarnaev brothers, we have radical Islamic terrorists who this Administration knew about and yet failed to connect the dots and prevent this act of terrorism,” Cruz said.
I'll agree that Barack Obama should have personally stopped known Arizona wacko Elton Simpson and, what the hell, all those other aspirational terrorists if you agree that George W. Bush and his entire Republican administration were bungling, incompetent twits for not stopping 9/11. Because when we are talking about federal officials not connecting the dots in time, it's a package deal. But if we're going to "intercept" every armed conspiracy-addled theocratic American nut job wandering around Texas with rifles and body armor, then the soldiers of
Jade Helm 15 are going to need reinforcements.
Forgive me for my exasperation, but this has been crystal clear for a long time. You're not allowed to "intercept" Americans who are waving guns around and threatening to shoot their fellow Americans. Not even when they're quite obviously unhinged. Isn't that exactly what Fox News has been going on about, these last years? You can't even "intercept" them when, as in the case of Cliven Cowpie Bundy 'n Friends, some of those folks are pointing their guns at government agents, those guns loaded, fingers on the triggers—they're just practicing their freedoms up until the moment they fire.
No sir, because 'Mericans need their entirely unfettered freedom to arm themselves and wander around Texas looking like Red Dawn rejects, so even when you do notice them (1) armed and (2) practicing faux-military maneuvers with their fellow faux-militarized zealots and (3) posting unhinged rants against the American government or their fellow Americans on the intertubes you're still not supposed to actually consider them dangerous or arrest them or even inconvenience them in any way by sending someone out to ask them questions. You can't even write an internal report profiling them as potentially dangerous nut jobs, not unless you want Michele Malkin to appear all over television telling people what a monster you and the rest of your government are for suggesting it. Elton Simpson and friend appear to have bought their freedom-enforcing arsenal legally, and so if Elton Simpson had gotten picked up by police at any point before actually pulling the trigger, you'd have the goddamn half-literate Oathkeepers surrounding the precinct station demanding Mr. Insane American Guntoter be released post-haste, because every 'Merican, even those previously known to be preparing for violence against their fellow 'Mericans, gets to arm themselves in preparation for executing people. It's a core freedom. It's what the Second Amendment was written to say, if you ask Ted Cruz. It's the only goddamn freedom Ted Cruz gives two damns about, most days of the week.
I know, I know. I'm completely off-base here. Elton here was a Muslim, and that negates all the other stuff. When they're Muslims, the only goddamn American terrorists anyone gives a shit about (Bundyite cop killers in Las Vegas? Lone wolves. Oklahoma City bombing? How odd, never heard of it. Olympic Park bombing? Yeah, it's a damn shame that guy tarnished the name of hard-right anti-abortion radicals, good wholesome folks who prefer to shoot their victims one at a time), then and only then does freedom-lover Ted Cruz get all twitchy that mebbe some folks muttering about their own private interpretation of God are driving through the American landscape looking for people to shoot. That guy should have been a Christian, then it would have been fine. He would have had Sean Hannity slobbering all over him.
Anyhoo, back to the actual point: Yes, the American government should definitely do a better job of keeping track of radical nut jobs planning violence against Americans. But we all agree that it can't include domestic espionage, and most of us agree it can't even include writing down which of them have wheelbarrows full of guns and ammunition in their garage, so I guess we're boned, now, aren't we. What do you know—the nut jobs in our midst have found our one weakness.