It always turns out you don’t want to stand too close.

What is it with militias and whackos?

Full disclosure: For several-going-on-many years I was provisionally in favor of the militia movement. I suppose I still am, in a theoretical principle kind of way. I kept going in and out of touch with this group or that. It should be a good thing.

But in practice they just don’t work.

For years I’d have said they don’t work because of the snitch problem: The old joke goes something like for every group of three, at least two are confidential informants snitching to the feds on each other. But it finally began to dawn on me that there was another, even more reliable problem: The person in charge is invariably a few cigarettes short of a full pack. Under the best of circumstances, standing too close to that guy is just flat dangerous.

A few days ago Big Brother sent me a link with the annotation, “This is the result when militias fail to resist the impulse to stick their noses in someone else’s business.”

Leader of right-wing militia arrested by FBI ‘for detaining migrant families at gunpoint in New Mexico’

I don’t know anything about the “United Constitutional Patriots,” but it’s well known that militia groups have been active on the border for decades. Back when I was peripherally involved (in the movement, not the activity), the doctrine was “observe and report to the border patrol.” Apparently this bunch took it upon itself to round people up at gunpoint. A more sensible person might detect the immediate downsides of that.

I didn’t give the matter much thought, to be honest. But by the time the CIs in the UCP were through getting their stories straight, it had morphed somewhat…

Militia Leader Arrested For Kidnapping Migrants At Border Previously Said Group Was Training To Assassinate Hillary, Obama

And now we’re getting into Hutaree levels of crazy, no matter how much truth there is in the charge.

This is why the militia movement never went anywhere, and never will. Too much tolerance for crazy.