Rambo in Reverse: The Dangerous Fantasies of the Hutaree Losers
Back in 1982, in the anti-government and anti-establishment afterglow of Watergate and Vietnam, Sly Stallone of Rocky fame directed and starred in a small, mid-budget movie called ‘First Blood.’ In it a highly trained Green Beret named Rambo, cast aside and abandoned by the government he fought for, becomes entangled with a small town sheriff (Brian Dennehey) in a pissing match that results in a whole town being devastated by Rambo, whose advanced training, conditioning and survival skills overwhelm the ‘weekend warriors’ of the local National Guard. If you ever stumble across it on cable, take the time to watch it. One of the most memorable lines is when the sheriff admonishes the head of the Guard charged with tracking Rambo, telling him he’ll have to stay out in the woods all night to find him, to which the Guard commander responds …“Aw come on Sheriff, I have to be back at the pharmacy tomorrow!”
Well, this weekend the Federal Government and the FBI took down what looks like the mirror image of that story, a so-called militia group in Michigan that was planning to spark a civil insurrection that would, in their warped imagination, serve as a catalyst for the downfall of the U.S. government. Apparently, this group has been in ‘rigorous’ training for many months in the woods of Michigan, honing their mental, physical and military skills so they would be prepared to take on not only local law enforcement, whom they were planning to kill and use as props for sparking their grand insurrection, but to also take on the Michigan National Guard, the Army, the Marines, and other arms of the U.S. military like the Green Beret and the Navy Seals.
Now as a screenplay, the plan that these angry patriots laid out sounds compelling, and in their minds it appears that they really felt that they were going to successfully pull it off and forever change the course of our Republic. But for the rest of the rational world, one need only take a look at the motley crew who are leaders of this militia movement to know better….
Now they all seem like your normal, run of the mill middle-aged, out of shape, paunchy Americans that you would find working behind the counter at the local McDonalds or at the Exxon down the street. But take a good look at this crew and think about what they were planning, and what they thought they could pull off. Did they really believe in their fantasy?
Consider for a minute what they would be up against. Here you have a bunch of middle-aged men and women, none of whom probably ever went through the rigors of a health club workout regimen let alone a military boot camp, thinking that they are going to take on highly trained law enforcement and U.S. military, outwit them and ultimately defeat them. And, they were preparing for this epic battle like the folks in this Michigan Militia training video:
In the video, one of the militia members claims that should Canada invade us, they represent our nation’s first line of defense. Well, if that’s true, then we all better brush up on hockey in a hurry, because my friends we’re screwed. And as for their training exercise, seems to me that a few of them ought to work on pushing their chairs away from the dinner table a bit more, or at least try swinging by the salad bar once in a while.
Now, for a little dose of reality, let’s compare the Michigan Militia training video to this one about the Navy Seals, who as you may recall, drew attention to their unique skill set by popping some caps in the skulls of Somalian pirates who had taken an American Merchant Marine hostage.
So, these people from the Hutaree Movement actually believed that their weekend romps in the woods of Southern Michigan, and their precise military training led by Larry who works at the Ace Hardware in New Buffalo, would be sufficient to take on a military force like the Navy Seals, let alone the dedicated men and women of law enforcement throughout Michigan?
You’ve gotta ask yourself, who the hell is egging on these poor, mentally challenged losers? How do they get so out of touch with reality that they actually think they have the capability to do anything but endanger the lives of themselves, their families, and the citizens of their community? But of course, we know who’s feeding these fantasies don’t we? Can you say…
Glenn Beck
Sarah Palin
Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Dick Armey
Michelle Bachmann
Fox News
Michael Steele
John Boehner
Michael Savage
Gordon Liddy
And on, and on and on…all of whom will disavow any responsibility for their hate and their dangerous rhetoric.
Being someone who was born and raised to believe in my country and my democracy, and who comes from a family with members who sacrificed to defend our liberties and protect our freedoms, I have to ask…when will this country stand up to these purveyors of hate who are party to the madness that the FBI interrupted this weekend? WHEN!?
Don't Tea on Me 
Brilliant. You were able to show the idiocy at the core of much of the militia movement very concisely. I would have been too long winded.
“they are going to take on highly trained law enforcement and U.S. military, outwit them and ultimately defeat them.”
The Michigan National Guard would have wiped them out in an hour.
As Dan said, the source of all this vitriol is where it starts. It’s too bad that lunatics like Limbaugh, Beck, Hannity, Billo the Clown, Bachman, Cheney (both of them), FOX News, and others with the means to spread this hate can’t be held accountable for their actions.
They really haven’t been that ruthless, compared to a typical government. And they’re the only ones there. After the Somalian government disappeared, foreign corporations came in to steal the fish and dump toxic wastes off the coast of what the government would have been protecting. I ain’t sayin’ those guys were saints, but they were certainly no worse than any government.
So the fishermen, whose fish have been stolen and waters toxified, go out to get some of their own back. Under the circumstances, I think they’ve been remarkably un-mean.
Yeah, these guys appear kinda clownish. But living in a rural area, learning how to feed yerself off the land in the ways that the Indigenous folks did doesn’t seem outlandish at all. The guy didn’t seem to take the threat of a Canadian invasion very seriously. So I clicked to the video to see what the Huratees were up to. These certainly weren’t Huratee nutjobs.
What really bothered me about this article was the apparent approval expressed towards the cops and the military. Yeah, Navy Seals can blow the brains out of some kids in a boat who think they’re going to a good-faith prisoner swap. (I wouldn’t be surprised if some of those militia guys could, too.) That doesn’t mean I’m on their side.
And before you swoon too mightily over the honor, integrity and ability of “our” armed forces, think about what’s going on overseas. Even after bombing Iraq and Afghanistan to bits, a rag=tag bunches of illiterate, untrained farmers and villagers are fighting them to a standstill. We aren’t showing the world how strong we are, we’re proclaiming our weakness from the mountain top.
Thanks for the comment. Some good points, but I would be careful about characterizing Somalian pirates as innocent kids being duped by the evil Americans. Those bastards are ruthless, and kill their own countrymen (kids and women included), let alone Americans and anyone else they deem as being in the way of making money. Yea, they’re poor and destitute, but that doesn’t forgive their brutality. However, the point still stands. A bunch of oafish, overweight, dimwits in Michigan thinking they will be a credible force endangers them, their families, their community, and many others. I have no problem with people enjoying the survivalist life style and learning to be self sufficient in the wilderness. But then go ahead and do that. If you make it a jihad against my country and my government, then I’ll get involved because guess what, it’s my country too, and I and my family have made sacrifices for it. So I will defend it against a**holes like these Huratee losers. I will choose to work for change and to better the country through legal means. And let me tell you, it was frustrating to live with that limitation under the idiot Bush. But I did it and so did a lot of people, and I never promoted violence, or overthrow or murder. They are terrorists, and if people can’t see that, then perhaps they should remember all the innocent children that perished at the hands of Timothy McVeigh when he set of a bomb in front of a building with a daycare center on the ground floor.
Be that as it may, I don’t think that trying to put them down is the most intelligent or effective response.
As Americans I think we all need to take a long hard look at ourselves and consider what has spurred rag tag bunches of illiterate, untrained farmers and villagers (middle eastern and american born alike) to fight against us so passionately that they’re willing to put their lives on the line and put our best builders and fighters to shame.
Sure we can just kill them and not ask the hard questions, but to do that is to choose a future of unending violence because until we address the root causes for their aggression they will not stop.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments. I guess where I have concerns is the extent to which these types of people, Americans and those from other countries that seek to answer with violence, are being manipulated by much more powerful and much smarter people. Think aout the religious leaders who preach jihad, regardless of the specific faith (and I include christian faiths in this too). They are more educated, usually wealthy, and hold power. They basically incite action among those least able to discriminate between what is valid and what is bullshit. Worse, their rhetoric and obfuscation mask the reality that often, what people are asked to do is diametrically opposed to their own best interests. So in the extreme, the uneducated kid in the middle east is convinced by his educated and wealth spiritual leaders to strap on a bomb and blow himself up for the promise of 40 virgins in heaven, which is counter to his very existence, and certainly not something that his leader would ever consider doing himself. In the U.S. spiritual leaders like Glenn Beck, who is wealthy on the backs of the working class and will never have to worry about paying for the very best healthcare available, uses his platform on TV (which is America’s spiritual reality) and the money of interests that stand to lose the most, and calls for the most vulnerable among us, people who would benefit most from true healthcare reform, to rise up and try to derail it.
So that then takes us down to the most basic element for what can change this dynamic, and that is education so people can separate the real from the crap. In the poorer parts of the world, that is an almost insurmountable challenge due to lack of resources. And part of the problem in the U.S. is that people seem to actively resist the appearance of intelligence, and we as a society have become lazy, so we find it easier to be told what to believe. But also at work is the reality that the last thing the corporate and religious interests that benefit from an easily manipulated population want is for people to get smart and realize that they are being screwed.
And BTW, yes the post is sarcastic, but the intent is to reveal the disconnect with reality.
Sorry I meant Al-Qaeda, not Taliban. Al-Qaeda is much more similar to this idiots.
In all fairness, if the sorry sack of sand monkeys known as the Taliban can do it then I don’t see why these pathetic losers can’t.
Not saying, I agree with them, but the unfortunate reality of things is that these guys might not be as delusional as you think.
Well Al-Qaeda is full of nutjobs who blend in with the civilian populace and prefer to use bombs instead of open combat like these militia.
Since their inception the Teaparty crowd (not a movement since they do have the numbers or clout) have been “haters not debaters”. In my opinion this is what the small portions of the republican party of “birthers, baggers and blowhards” have brought you. They are good at “Follow the Leader” of their dullard leaders, they listen to Beck, Hedgecock, Hannity, O’Reilly, Rush and Savage and the rest of the Blowhards. Are you surprise at what they do when you know what they think? The world is complicated and most republicans (Hamiliton, Lincoln, Roosevelt) believe that we should use government a little to increase social mobility, now its about dancing around the claim of government is the problem. The sainted Reagan passed the biggest tax increase in American history and as a result federal employment increased, but facts are lost when mired in mysticism and superstition. Although some republicans are trying to distant themselves from this fringe most of them are just going along and fanning the flames. Lets face it the Republicans had 8 years to deal with health care, immigration and financial oversight and governance and they failed. They could not even win one of the two wars they started, the body bags are still coming in. The Republicans wanted to give Obama his Waterloo defeat over healthcare but instead they gave themselves their own Waterloo defeat by not participating in the debate of ideas and by becoming the party of obstructionist. But they now claim they have changed, come on, what sucker is going to believe that?
You forgot to include Sarah Palin in that list.
Thanks. I added Ms. Crosshairs.