In today’s Texas, which is falling into the hands of Gun-Nuts, Border-Sealers and talk-radio charlatans, George W Bush would practically be considered a communist.

By Mark Binelli

July 1, 2014 9:00 AM ET

Jimmy Smith’s ranch sits on the Texas side of the Texas-Oklahoma border, in a little town called Burkburnett, named after a wolf-hunting buddy of Teddy Roosevelt’s. In 1918, a local farmer discovered oil on his land, and the population soared from 1,500 to 15,000 in a single year, inspiring a Clark Gable movie, Boom Town.

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Those days have long passed. As I drive along the lonely dirt road wending through Smith’s property, the only Texas movie that comes to mind is the one about chain-saw massacres. I pass junked cars, barns in various states of collapse, cattle skulls dangling from iron gates, rusted metal drums of indeterminate purpose, no sign of human activity. The scene could have almost evoked nostalgia for some lost cowboy era, had it not been for the men with assault rifles guarding the main entrance. I was driving a rental car, a red Prius, in hindsight not the greatest choice for first impressions. But I waved, they nodded, and I kept driving.

The road eventually opened onto a clearing, where about 300 people milled about, eating barbecue, parked in folding campfire chairs, watching a band set up on a large professional stage. If nearly everyone present hadn’t also been heavily armed, it would have felt like a low-key rock festival. A guy in a polo shirt and stonewashed jeans, sipping from a Big Gulp, walks by with a scoped rifle on his back. A woman wearing a mesh Lane Bryant top, a semiautomatic hanging from a shoulder strap, stands beside a bored-looking six-year-old poking around in the dirt with a stick.

The Gathering of the American Patriot, as the event was called, took place on Memorial Day weekend – though you quickly got the sense that the patriotism being displayed was tethered primarily, perhaps exclusively, to the Republic of Texas. Lone Star flags greatly outnumbered the American kind, and a group of bikers hung out near a long white banner decorated with a pointing Uncle Sam and the words OBAMA YOU ARE A DISGRACE TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENT.

A burly, bearded man with an M-15 over one shoulder and an SKS rifle over the other introduces himself to me only as “Wolf,” before adding cheerfully, “but everyone calls me the Redneck Jew.” Wolf has a Star of David tattooed on his shoulder and a verse from the Torah written in Hebrew on his back. He’s retired military, originally from southeast Texas – so close to Louisiana that his accent sounds almost Cajun – and he’s wearing a JEWISH HEROES OF THE CONFEDERACY muscle shirt celebrating Judah Benjamin. When I ask who Judah Benjamin was, Wolf gazes at me with thinly veiled disgust.

“Secretary of war under the Confederacy. You don’t know that?” Wolf shakes his head morosely. “Most Jews don’t know that. Most Jews don’t know what the Yankees did to us during the Civil War. And now everyone hates us for this gun-control thing. But we’re not all like Bloomberg. Don’t put us all in the same cattle car!” [Rolling Stone Magazine]

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Rolling Stone Magazine – Open Link for full story:

http://rol.st/1ojF5DU via @rollingstone

This entry was posted on July 1, 2014 at 7:32 pm and is filed under Uncategorized with tags Clark Gable, Extremists Take Over Texas, George W. Bush, Gun Nuts, Jimmy Smith, Lone Star, President Obama, Republicans Wrecking America, Rick Perry - Whore House, Rolling Stone Magazine, Talk-Radio Charlatans, Ted Cruz, Teddy Roosevelt, Texas, Texas Gun Nuts, Texas-Oklahoma, Vote Blue Save America. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.