Excellent piece BJ.

I’ve been called a “prepper” by family members who think I have a screw loose for buying beans in bulk and owning firearms, or even for living out in the woods of Vermont. I’m really not. I might have enough food to stretch for a few months. That doesn’t really measure up to a real prepper, I think.

I feel like I’m keenly aware that just because the horrors of the 20th century are in the rear view, they’re likely to jump in front of the car at any moment.

The people in Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge or the Tutsis in Rwanda were all probably telling themselves everything was going to get back to normal until it became clear and unavoidable that they and their families were going to be on the meat wagon. Those two examples of mass murder of neighbor on neighbor happened just a minute ago in terms of human history. How could we forget it so easily?

I’m constantly baffled that most people are so unwilling to come to grips with events so recent we have video footage and color photographs as proof.

Did we flip a switch in the year 2000 and all just agree that domestic mass murder wasn’t a thing anymore?

That’s not to speak of most people’s reticence on the topic of America’s own murderous foreign policy. Don’t think your neighbor will take up arms? Most people who voted for someone in Congress are already at least willing to look the other way if the people being killed are nameless, faceless foreigners. That’s a short walk to not caring about someone in the next state or town or street getting their just deserts for being the wrong kind of person.

Maybe they were hoarding beans and sitting on too many firearms?