It may be April Fools Day, but I am not feeling particularly foolish this morning. I finally got to the Culpeper Clarion-Bugle in my brown chair late yesterday afternoon. It was a good day, all things considered, and I shared Easter dinner with Old Jim, Chanteuse Mary and Jon-Without at Willow, open on Sunday for the occasion. Accordingly, I was pleasantly lit up a little early in the afternoon and infused with good cheer over the Michigan victory to advance to the final four in the NCAA men’s tourney.
I scanned the top right story above the fold: “Culpeper receives Virginia Main Street Milestone Award.” The Clarion-Bugle is a good-news paper, mostly, except for the strange stalking case involving a Federal employee at the Library of Congress facility in the bunker down the road. That was creepie.
The good news story went on to describe a variety of Federal and state level programs through which nearly a quarter of a billion dollars was been funneled through re-vitalization efforts to save the historic downtown. Even over a five-year period, that is an impressive amount of money.
Opposite that story was a dramatic photo of the illumination of the marquee of the old State Theater, reborn and restored as a multi-purpose facility with country rocker Bruce Hornesby as the first headliner.
the dislocation between being a Fed and being a local, and how the level of jurisdiction changes ones perspective. Down on the farm we shoot guns when we want, say what we want, and do pretty much what we want on our own property. I have always considered myself free to come and go as I please- but the internal passport check caught me up short.
The assassination of public officials did too. Not here, but in a place just as self-contained as Culpeper.
I spent the bulk of my working life examining the myriad of evils in the wide world, focused naturally outward on the overt threats posed by a superpower and several regional actors. There is enough going on in those realms today that I feel a certain continuity to the bizarre blusterings of the North Koreans, or the muscle memory of robust Russia.
I am intrigued, now that I look around, to see the threat morphing into something very toxic right here at home. It has been a while since we talked about the war in the border country- the one that is so muted in coverage and so devastating to the people of the northern tier of Mexican states.
Since the start of the Mexican Drug Civil War in 2006, nearly 50,000 have been murdered. Think about it for a moment. This is happening right here, a stone’s throw across the border, and we appear blissfully unconcerned.
The War between the cartels and central government are spectacular in their brutality and epic in the scope of violence. Along the way, the trafficking organizations have slaughtered their rivals, killed policemen, and now increasingly targeted local politicians. Part of the strategy used by the criminal groups is the weakening of the local law enforcement and governance. After all, who in their right mind would serve if the consequences are inevitably fatal? People are not fools.
So long as the violence is confined to the other side of the border, though, no one seems to be particularly concerned, with some minor political posturing on strange and foolish things like Operation Fast and Furious.
Another pal with law enforcement experience said this: “at present we have only the media’s conjecture that these killings are related and that they were conducted by white supremacy groups. Their usual style is local action. These killings have occurred in Colorado and Texas. I think the link may be that the perpetrator in the case of Colorado flirted with white supremacy organizations, though it was never clear whether that was before or after he was incarcerated.”
The organization in question is the Aryan Brotherhood, a particularly odious gang aligned along racial lines. I have read that the AB composes only 1% of the federal prison population, but is responsible for as much as 20% of the murders in the system. Over time, the organization has gone multinational, with links to the Mexican Cartels and to distant Thailand for high-quality heroin.
Another pal with long experience in DHS cautioned me not to get too far out in front of the headlights on this one, but I am intrigued and more than a little concerned. Is this a matter of gang violence, or is it a new and radical departure from the traditional reluctance of the traditional mob to murder the law enforcement people who exist in uneasy synergy?
The dots that may- or may not- connect run from the killing of a prosecutor in rural Kaufman County, Texas, through the Chief of the Colorado Corrections system and back to Kaufman, where district Attorney Mike McLelland and his wife, Cynthia, were found shot to death in their home Saturday.
If- and this is a big if- the murders are linked, it may be that the AB has declared war on the system. I am not saying that if it is, this is the beginning of the Big Unraveling. There are only about 20,000 AB members, and they may be vicious, but they are relatively few.
All things are relative, though, and the cartels in Mexico have shown that over time, violence against the state can weaken the fabric of civic life.
I guess we will just have to see, won’t we? This may be a foolish miscalculation of some deluded criminals. But it does make me wonder about that whole war-on-drugs thing? How is that working out, if the war has moved north of the border?
Copyright 2013 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com