They shot those n****s in the head. They dropped those n****s and left them in the ditch.

An actual conversation I had with someone that I now realize was most likely a white power militiaman

April 21, 2025

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I’ve gotta stop scrolling the news when I wake up. It’s not a productive way to start my day. But the silver lining is that today's headlines fired me up to write. I find that life has a way of balancing itself. For example, war is objectively horrible. It brings out the worst in humanity. But war also brings out the best in us. It builds bonds of friendship between soldiers so strong that even family ties pale in comparison. It gives people purpose and meaning and a sense of community that they yearn for in the post-war years. It gives us stories of hope and courage and sacrifice. Of soldiers jumping on-top of grenades to save the lives of their friends. This reality is dual in nature and there seems to be a mechanism which wants to keep things in balance.

Throughout history post-war periods have heralded in the most prosperous and peaceful times. That’s why I am not only hopeful but absolutely certain that we will turn things around. This, too, shall pass. I just hope that it will pass within my lifetime. The longest lasting fascist regime was in Portugal under António Oliveira Salazar and his heir Marcelo Caetano, who ruled through a single party called the National Union (União Nacional in Portuguese). Their reign lasted 41 years, from March 1933 to April 1974 when the regime was overthrown during the Carnation Revolution. The second longest lasting fascist regime was Franco Bahamonde’s regime in Spain (1939–1975) lasting 36 years.

With the incompetence displayed by the trump regime I don’t think they have a shot at the longest fascist regime record. More realistically they’ll set the FKT for the fastest known time for a populace to depose you and prosecute you for treason.

The mouthpieces of the machine.

Ignore the Supreme Court. Arrest anyone who tries to enforce this. Dissolve the Supreme Court entirely if they push.

You can deport foreigners or you don’t have a country anymore. There are no good choices now. - Jesse Kelly on Twitter

Kelly is a right-wing personality with almost a million followers. Him and and those like them are the mouthpieces of the machine. What they say their followers will parrot. No doubt this week we’ll see the rank and file of MAGA calling for the dissolution of the supreme court.

This disregard for the rule of law and a desire for authoritarianism is not new right-wing politics. They’ve always thought like this. Only now is it fully out in the open for all to see. There seems to be something built into about 1/3rd of human beings that makes them support and actively seek out authoritarians and “strong-men” type leaders. I suspect this goes back to our days living in tribes where the strongest people ruled because they could exert their will through physical dominance.

While most people see representative democracy as a good way to govern their country, large shares of the public in many countries are open to nondemocratic alternatives.

Indeed, a median of 31% across 24 nations are supportive of authoritarian systems, according to a recent Pew Research Center survey.

Across Europe, people who have favorable views of right-wing populist parties are also especially likely to support authoritarianism. In Germany, for example, 37% of those who have a favorable view of the Alternative for Germany party (AfD) support these nondemocratic ways of governing, compared with 13% who have an unfavorable view of the AfD. - Pew Research

Small town Missouri

I was adopted from China to a small town in Missouri. Bolivar. The population according to Google was 8,248 in 1995 when I arrived as an eight year old child. The demographics are as you would expect for a small rural town in Missouri. In 2020 the demographics were 89.98% white, 3.9% Hispanic or Latino, 1.78% African American, .75% Asian and .71% native American.

We attended the Methodist church and I became good friends with the other kids there who happened to be mostly people of color. I wonder now if it wasn’t a coincidence that all these minority families attended the same church. Maybe they didn’t feel welcome in the other congregations? I do know that Southern Baptists for example think that dancing is a sin and speak out loudly against gay marriage. So it’s not much of a stretch to think that POC families wouldn’t feel welcome in such a congregation.

Andrew was in my same grade and a black American, also an adoptee. His father, a Hispanic American man, was the pastor of the church at the time. Andrew has two younger sisters and a younger brother, all of them are black Americans adopted at birth like him. Asa was Native American and built like a refrigerator. He would go on to have a successful football career in high school and college. Strange. As I write this I’m searching for the names of the other minority friends at that church but this was all of us. I thought there were more. My memory of it is that we had a great diverse group bunch. That tells you just how homogenous the town really was. That a group of three POC made me feel like it was a very large and diverse group.

We would sit together in the kid’s pew during church. People called us “the Model UN”. I’m not even making this up.

In high school Andrew and I got jobs working at the city pool in the summer as lifeguards. I wanted to work as a lifeguard because I’d taken up weight-lifting in 8th grade and wanted to show off my muscles and even hoped that maybe I’d find a girlfriend at the pool(I did not). I think Andrew took up the job because he loved to socialize and all his best friends worked at the pool. One of the friends we met there was named “Sarge.”

Having hiked the trail I’m familiar with trail-names but even now I think it’s really strange that we called a kid sarge. He was a year behind Andrew and I in school. Sarge was 16 and I was 17 when we met. We called him Sarge because all he wanted in life was to join the Army.

Sarge and I bonded over military topics. I’ve been obsessed with guns and the military for my whole life. In China street vendors set up these games where kids can shoot at balloons with air-rifles. If you pop all 10 balloons with the 10 shots you buy then you get a free round. I remember as a small, small kid, 5 or 6 years old, I would gather large crowds because I’d hit every balloon and keep getting free rounds until the vendor eventually just made me leave- My accuracy cost them too much in wasted balloons.

I remember being in a toy store with my father. I wanted him to buy me another toy gun. I only wanted to play with guns and I had over a dozen toy guns. My father was trying to convince me to buy a toy car instead. There was another young child standing near me holding a toy car and my father kept pointing to that kid and his car and asking if I wouldn’t rather play with a toy car. Funnily enough the other child’s father was also there and pointing to me and my toy guy, trying to convince his kid to pick the toy gun over the toy car. Again I’m not making this up. Life is truly more absurd than fiction.

I stood my ground and got another toy gun that day. I’ve long suspected that my obsession with guns stems from past lives. There’s no other good explanation for why I have been obsessed with the military and firearms for my whole life. I must’ve watched Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers over 100 times in my life. I can quote verbatim every Arnold Schwarzenegger movie except for the ones that don’t involve shoot-em ups. I still don’t think I’ve seen Junior with Arnold and Danny DeVito.

In 2018 I rode a bicycle from Mexico to Canada and passed through Sedona, Arizona. I went to a psychic reading. I don’t think you’re legally allowed to leave Sedona until you’ve bought a crystal and had a psychic reading. She told me that I had the energy of someone who had love and compassion for humanity as a whole but didn’t have close personal connections or attachments, and that I’d probably spent many lifetimes as both a monk and a soldier. Two professions that resonate with that type of detached energy. Makes total sense to me when I look at the paths that my life has taken.

When I first arrived at 30th AG at Sand Hill in Ft. Benning, we were kept awake for three straight days. 30th AG is called the reception battalion because this is where all incoming soldiers are received into. From there you wait until you’re sent on to your basic training class. Soldiers rightly consider 30th AG to be hell. The worst part of your entire 12+ weeks of infantry training.

30th AG has a bit of a lawless, lord of the flies feel to it. There’s only one drill sergeant in charge of 200+ kids and you’re often left unsupervised for long stretches of time. The first night I arrived there was a commotion near the latrines. I went to check it out. Some kids were there having their own little fight club and wrestling on the concrete floor. So naturally I joined, because fighting random strangers on hard concrete seems like exactly the thing to do when you’re training to be a stone cold killer.

I’d taken a few months of MMA and BJJ in the months leading up to basic. I squared up to my opponent, a somewhat chubby Hispanic kid(I keep using the word kid because truly we were all kids. Most of these soldiers couldn’t even legally buy alcohol). I shot in with a double leg and took him to the floor, gently. He tried to scramble back up and I allowed him to push into me and put him in full guard and then quickly transitioned into a triangle choke. Triangle chokes are my favorite submission in jiu-jitsu. The strength of my legs helps to finish opponents quickly. After a few seconds he tapped and I walked away, victorious. An hour later a drill sergeant came in screaming for us to get out of bed and follow him. We spent the night filling out paperwork and getting our heads shaved.

When they finally allowed us to sleep I had an intensely vivid dream. I was walking along the side of a steep mountain pass in a line of soldiers. It was sunrise or sunset, that twilight hour where there’s not quite enough light to make out detail or color anymore. I just saw the forms of soldiers walking in front of me. I could clearly see the outline of their rucks, gear, and weapons against the glow of the sun. And I remember waking up feeling so at home and so comfortable. Truly being at basic training, surrounded by soldiers was the first time that I felt I was at home and that I belonged since leaving China.

I really do believe that this was a past-life memory. I think it was from WW2. For some reason I am deeply fascinated by WW2 and specifically the European theatre of operations. I have watched every movie and documentary and read every book about D-Day, the air-drops at Normandy, and the battle of the bulge. But I don’t have any interest in the Pacific, Vietnam, or Korean wars.

I don’t have any interest in the WW2 battles that happened between China and Japan even though my great grandfather was shot dead in the fields by a passing patrol of Japanese soldiers. He was shot dead for sport. He was simply working the fields. My grandfather was a medic in the Chinese Army during WW2. He liked to sit in his room and smoke his pipe. I remember him as being extremely stoic and cannot remember him ever uttering a single word. But I have never had any interest in learning about his experiences during the war. It’s too late now, anyway. He died from lung cancer a decade ago. My Chinese grandmother died from Covid in 2022. The opportunity to hear their stories was lost to me when I was sent away from China.

I also have a strange urge to cry when I watch post-apocalypse movies. And it’s not when the human characters struggle that makes me cry. It is when the camera pans out to show the destroyed skyline of a once thriving city. That will bring tears to my eyes every single time. Even in my teens and 20s when I otherwise had zero access to my emotions. The only times that I would ever cry would be when I saw the destroyed skyline of a city. I used to think that this too must have been a past-life memory. Perhaps I’d lived through an apocalypse or this was an echo from all of the destruction that soldiers see in war.

Now, I think this is an echo from the future. I fear that in this life I will see the outline of a city destroyed by nuclear war or a tsunami or civil war. I think this is the deeply sad resonance that is echoing from the future back to the past.

We have such a narrow view of time. We take it for granted that our actions today echo into the future. That’s just how things work, right? But what if time is not just a linear line from past to future. What if future events also echo back to the past, like a stone dropped in a pond will cause waves to echo out in all directions. Maybe a deeply emotional event in the future will cause ripples in every direction in time.

Sarge

Back to Sarge. He was the one that introduced me to AR-15s. His family had a shooting range set-up on their land. He took me out shooting and I had a blast(heh). We shot his Rock River Arms AR-15 chambered in 5.56 with a precision two stage trigger. We shot his Glock 19 pistol chambered in 9mm. I even proudly took photos of some of the pieces of shrapnel that cut my arms from shooting steel targets(always wear eye-pro, kids).

Shooting with Sarge. We even painted out faces and did a photoshoot?? I forgot about that.

A month later I bought my first AR-15. I bought a Rock River Arms lower receiver from the local gun store, installed a two-stage trigger just like Sarge suggested, and ordered a Bravo Company(BCM) complete upper receiver with a fixed A4 front sight post and quad-rail set-up because I wanted an AR that looked like the M4 carbines that the military used. This upper was delivered straight to my house, no background check required. God bless America and god bless the second amendment.

After our day of shooting I had dinner with Sarge and his father. Of course he was also deeply interested in the military and I’m sure the genesis of Sarge’s obsession with the military. I’m not sure if his father ever served, it’s not too important. His father regaled us with tales of his friends who’d just gotten back from New Orleans. This was the summer of 2005 and hurricane Katrina had just devastated Louisiana. There was a collapse of civil order in New Orleans and quite a few stories of crime and vigilantism came out during the time.

The 2nd amendment folks pointed to this incident as a text-book case of why everyone needed to be armed. “See, you can’t rely on the government to protect you. Cops were confiscating people’s guns in New Orleans. It’s all part of the New World Order agenda. ” Sarge’s dad said. He paused to spit into an empty beer can and then packed another wad of dip in his mouth.

The right-wing conspiracy circles were filled with stories of race-war style violence in the wake of Katrina. Black gang bangers going door to door and murdering innocent white elderly people so they could steal their TVs. White vigilantes killing black looters and having the sheriff applaud them for their work to keep their communities safe. “Just roll their bodies in the ditch as a warning to other looters.” Does this echo eerily with the rhetoric we hear today from right-wing circles?

Sarge’s dad continued, “My buddy was deployed over there and he was shooting n****s. Their squad was guarding a power station and they saw some n****s looting down the hill. They shot those n****s in the head. They dropped those n****s and left them in the ditch.”

I didn’t think too much of that interaction at the time. Sarge’s dad was friendly to me and he obviously felt comfortable enough to say those vile things in front of me. The language was a bit shocking but honestly not that far off the things you just hear growing up in rural Missouri. Now looking back I suspect his dad was likely affiliated with a white supremacy militia or at least militia adjacent. They sent their kid off to join the Army and become a sniper when he was 17 years old. They had an entire shooting range set-up on their property. They owned a ton of tactical guns, body armor, and ammo. Today they’d be considered doomsday preppers.

Now to be fair none of these things are all that strange in America. Lots of liberal folks own tactical weapons and body armor and have tons of ammo and prepare for the apocalypse. But when you add in the violent racist rhetoric it all becomes much more concerning.

MAGA is filled with people who naturally are drawn to authoritarians and strong-man type leaders. What baffles me is that they can’t see how insecure and weak people like trump, Musk, Vance, Hegseth, etc. really are. But I suppose weak, insecure men are that way exactly because they lack the self-awareness to be able to see their own inadequacies. They blame others for their failures rather than taking responsibility for their lives. So of course they would follow a man who confirms their deepest held beliefs - that it’s other people’s fault that they are weak, and poor, and can’t find a woman that wants to date them.

“It’s the immigrants and the illegals that are taking our jobs and if I were rich like the Jews then all these money-grubbing women would like me.” “The trans are just sex perverts who want to assault women in the bathroom,” probably the most blatant projection and confession the right wingers espouse. That’s how they think and that’s why they support trump. He reflects back to them their deepest held and most vile beliefs and gives them permission to act on those same hateful beliefs.

America I warn you again. Prepare yourself. Violence from right wing militias are coming. They’ve been quietly metastasizing in the ranks of our law enforcement and military for decades. Every year new articles are published on the alarming rise of white supremacists and neo Nazis in the ranks of law enforcement and military and yet nothing is ever done about it. THESE are the homegrown terrorists that we need to prosecute. These ultra conservative right wing Christian nationalists are America’s version of ISIS and mark my words they will happily murder American citizens in the streets if given the green-light by trump.

Prepare yourselves for what is coming. Check out my post I wrote last week about how to prepare for martial law and civil unrest on my SubStack.