Disturbing news stories reveal that white nationalist and other supremacist groups are active in New England. Also, that such activity in liberal Massachusetts ranks second only to Texas. Below the radar, Patriot Front and Oath Keepers are slyly recruiting across college and university campuses.

Last month’s sentencing of the Oath Keeper leader, Stewart Rhodes, to 18 years in federal prison for the assault on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 rebuts Trump calling it a “beautiful day.” What it was, Donald, was seditious conspiracy to overturn the American system of democracy.

The Capitol siege was a first in America’s 240-year history. Monster insurrections don’t came out of the blue! More than 400 convictions are showing we know the who and are calling them to account — one by one.

Are we not to believe our own eyes? To have the American president encourage a violent coup in full view of the world was, until Trump, unfathomable!

Presidential historian John Meacham delivers Abraham Lincoln’s answer to critics who would destroy the Union over slavery. ‘That would be your act, not ours.”

Lincoln had an apt comparison to 2021’s Trump terrorists: “Old John Brown has just been executed for treason against a state. We cannot object, even though he agreed with us in thinking slavery wrong. That cannot excuse violence, bloodshed, and treason.” He then put the opposition on notice:

“So, if constitutionally we elect a president (Biden?) and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with.”

A few years ago, I met author Kevin Cook at brother Bob’s Rotary meeting. It was fortuitous in that I gained a writer friend who knows his way around a story. Cook’s 2023 nonfiction book, “Waco Rising,” takes the reader inside the Branch Davidian cult compound before, during and after that federal debacle.

A May 8 New Yorker story praised Kevin’s “Waco Rising” as excellent. Cook points out connections to militant outrages that have followed, many citing Waco.

The Waco tragedy dates to April 19, 1993. The FBI and Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms ended a 51-day standoff with cult leader David Koresh. Two months earlier Davidians sparked a gun battle ending in the death of four ATF agents, and six of their own. The hundred or so members of the cult hunkered down, including children.

Negotiations centered on food, releases from the compound, and possibilities of surrender. Koresh was known for taking “wives” as young as 10. Rumors of child abuse heightened tension until government forces moved in on a fateful April day.

Years later, Attorney General Janet Reno expressed regret for greenlighting tanks to introduce nauseous gases through the walls.

Everything that could go wrong did. Fires blossomed the length of the compound. Seventy-six cultists died, including 20 children. A lone ex-Army extremist witnessed the unfair conflict.

In two years to the day, Timothy McVeigh and a conspirator sought bloody revenge in the Oklahoma City bombing.

My May 3, 1995 Gazette column was titled “The latest of too many brutalities.” It opened with President Clinton’s words, “Evil cowards.” I never referenced Waco in my piece. Sadly, I noted the bloody 1960s: from political assassinations, to Kent State murders, to 58,000 Americans lost in Vietnam plus countless civilians.

I found a poll in which 69% of Americans approved of the FBI infiltrating militias. Shades of Jan. 6 and the Capitol attack by flag-bearing Trumpists.

With a few clicks, white supremacist Dylan Roof found himself down the road to sites soaked in hate. This “lone operator” murdered a Black pastor and eight African American members of a bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina.

However, he was never alone because the internet supports hives of hate in America and abroad.

My greatest concern is that America has become desensitized to mass murders. Our basic humanity cries out to deny what we’re seeing on the news. Oklahoma City was still fresh in America’s collective memory when two students killed 12 classmates and a teacher and wounded 24 at Columbine High School in 1999.

With that horror in its rear view mirror, Colorado, an “open carry” state, continues to suffer mass murders: Aurora theater 2012, (12 killed, 58 wounded), a birthday party (12 killed), 2021 King Soopers Market (10 killed, racist), November 2022, Club Q (5 killed, anti-LGBTQ). Embedded white supremacy abetted by access to weapons of war creates a country of walking wounded.

The latest indictment of former president Trump for refusing to return national secrets after leaving office doesn’t bode well. It’s treacherous to hear lickspittle lawyers like South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham misreading the law.

I don’t fear draft dodgers like DJT. But we must be on alert for armed true believers full of hate in place of hot wind.

May I again refer you to Lincoln’s take on John Brown? “So, if constitutionally we elect a president, and therefore you undertake to destroy the Union, it will be our duty to deal with you as old John Brown has been dealt with.”

Poet and columnist Jim Cahillane lives in Williamsburg. Columnist@gazettenet.com. jamesfcahillane.com.]]>