Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The Dumb Cracker Files: Lee Harvey Trailer Trash


We know there are some really dumb people out there. Unfortunately, a lot of them have guns. These two are exemplar. Daniel Cowart and Paul Schlesselman are two neo-nazi thugs from rural Tennessee...very rural:


In a rural Tennessee county where you can't buy alcohol or even find a Wal-Mart, residents of tiny Bells stopped each other to ask if anyone knew the pale-skinned young local accused of plotting to kill dozens of black people, including Barack Obama.




Bells, TN...where alcohol ain't on sale, there are more churches than schools, and where all the children are apparently below average. While it may not surprise many people that this kind of idiocy can come out of rural Tennessee, it apparently comes as a big surprise to the salt-of-the-earth folks who live there:





The town surrounded by fertile cotton fields is safe and certainly not known for breeding neo-Nazis, they agreed.





"If we had any skinheads in this county I wasn't aware of it. We hardly know what they are," said Sam Lewis, who lives across the street from the mother of suspect Daniel Cowart. Cowart, he said, grew up in the comfortable, well-maintained neighborhood and wasn't known as a troublemaker.




Cotton fields? In the South? Skinheads and racism? In rural Tennessee? This sounds eerily familiar in a historical context. Remember the good salt-of-the-earth German citizens who claimed they knew nothing about the concentration camps in their midst? OK, maybe it's not on that scale. But the belief that your community/President/party/religion/God(TM)/kin can do no wrong is often the first step in a long journey toward fascism. Sam Lewis might not think his town is capable of producing such idiocy, but I bet he steps into the voting booth next month and punches the chad for John McCain and Mitch McConnell. And Lord(TM) help us if a Muslim moved into the area. Wake up, folks. The rural south is exactly where this kind of crap takes seed, gets fertilized, and blooms into a gigantic turd blossom. These two morons got caught because they stepped over the line and made actual plans. How many more are out there with only general notions?

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