As the tragedies in Tucson remain in our collective consciousness, there’s another narrative playing out – a year and a half in the making.
Largely ignored by the mass media, the story of Shawna Forde is a profoundly shameful note in this country’s recent history. Forde, a member of a vigilante border sweep group, is one of those upstanding Americans who see it as their duty to rid the U.S. of its immigrant disease. She funded an spin-off group of the Minutemen American Defense – a group of civilians that patrol the U.S.-Mexico border.
Forde has been accused of recruiting and leading members in the invasion of Raul Flores’ home. The result of that xenophobic raid? Raul Flores and his 9-year-old daughter were shot and killed. Mrs. Gina Gonzales, Flores’ wife, was shot, but she survived the massacre. No drugs or contraband were found in the Flores’ home.
The rest of the story’s details can obviously be found throughout local Tucson news outlets and the national media (which seem to be reluctantly tapping into the story now that the country’s eyes are pointed at Arizona). But the chilling situation involving a country obsessed with guns should be plain to anyone.
Xenophobia. Nativism. Nationalist Extremism. These are not the catchphrases of the American Left. They are examples of some of the root problems in a self-loving, self-loathing country like ours. We seem to be caught in some kind of limbo not unlike the glorified Wild West.
When Barack Obama pointed out that the paranoid among us “cling to guns or religion or antipathy,” he was correct. It’s about a immature, cheap sense of power and authority.
I have a gun and I can kill anyone who don’t like what I like.
I have a god and he’s gonna git me to heaven, where I’ll be fed pork rinds off an angel’s tits.
I have the ability to turn inward and disregard the plight of my fellow man.
It’d be humorous stuff if it didn’t so often result in the deaths children and congresswomen, for example. It’s a shame that a story like this was so easily buried in the pile of shit our national news media dish out everyday. Keep an open eye, people of the world. There are “Americans” among us.
Sandy 