It's All Fun And Games Until One Of Your Deputies Gets His Eye Put Out

By Tom Prezelski

Re-Blogged from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

Folks who claim that our modern border militiamen are part of a proud Arizona tradition would do well to read what Captain John G. Bourke, an officer who accompanied General George R. Crook during the pursuit of Geronimo, had to say about their 19th century antecedents. Bourke characterized them as "rum-poisoned bummers" and "senseless cowards who sought to kill a few peaceable Indians and gain a little cheap notoriety." The captain went on to describe how their gun-happy amateurishness did nothing but make a bad situation on the frontier even worse.

The latest manifestation of the worst of the wild west spirit comes, of course, from Maricopa County, where a member of one such band of self-styled "militia minutemen" is in serious trouble for having pointed a rifle at a uniformed Sheriff's deputy in the desert near Gila Bend.

Predictably, Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio reacted with characteristically macho swagger in a statement to the fawning press, warning that such civilian patrolmen risk getting "30 rounds fired into" them if they cross paths with his deputies this way in the future. What America’s Toughest Sheriff^TM failed to do was recognize his own complicity in what occurred.

Though Arpaio is best known these days for his tough-guy bloviation about immigration issues and his television friendly "sweeps" in which heavily armed deputies make a show of arresting dangerous housekeepers and kitchen workers, one does not have to be a geezer to remember when his attitude was different. Back in 2005, Arpaio publicly feuded with Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas over his refusal to prosecute a vigilante who "arrested" several immigrants, also near Gila Bend. Arpaio seemed to lack enthusiasm for the cause around which rivals like Thomas and Senator Russell Pearce built their careers. It was only later, after the attention-hungry sheriff discovered that appealing to bigots was a winning political formula, that he joined Pearce and Thomas at the podium with overheated rhetoric denouncing the Brown Peril.

Some stories about this latest incident claim that Arpaio has always been less-than-supportive of the Minuteman Movement, but this is not entirely the case. Arpaio himself has proposed raising an armed posse of "citizen volunteers" to enforce immigration laws, and he has welcomed the support of leading militia-types and nativists in the past. If Arpaio had any problem with their activities or rhetoric, he has certainly been unwilling to expend even a scintilla of his considerable political capital to express his misgivings.

Beyond this, Arpaio's rhetoric, tactics, and consistent targeting of the Mexican-American community have contributed to a political environment where something like this could happen.

Of course, the sheriff's indignation is not really about public safety or curbing the excesses of the anti-immigration movement. This is, as always, about Arpaio himself. Other incidents, including the murder of a family in Arivaca at the hands of militia activists, passed without comment from the usually talkative sheriff. Arpaio's affected righteous anger is largely about the fact that one of his deputies was threatened. If only he showed the same concern for the other victims of the poisoned atmosphere that he himself helped to create.