The Assimilated

Resistance is futile:


“And lots of people shoot guns — that’s normal around here so you don’t pay any attention to it.”

Further evidence that normal is a mean median mode and not a meaningful measure of sanity, one supposes. Just because all the other lemmings are running off the cliff isn't a reason to take a leap. Although you have plenty of company that way.

...People like Mr. Savino and his father, Jim Gulliksen, who is the local chapter’s chief executive officer — and like his son, a Navy veteran — said they have worked since then to distinguish the group from its past. Estimates of statewide Michigan militia membership range from several hundred people to 500 or more.

“My goal is to get the militia name clean,” said Mr. Gulliksen, 60, who works as a manager in the paint and hardware department at the local Wal-Mart.

The strict Christian dogma espoused by the Hutaree does not fly as well these days either, at least in Adrian militia circles. Mr. Savino said that he converted to Islam in the late 1990s after a soul-searching separation from the Lutheran faith he had grown up with, and that he believed that he was the only Muslim in the militia...