Just got back from the State Fairgrounds with CJ, the author of Odd Oklahoma, where we gathered enough blog fodder to last him for weeks, maybe months. I played the role of wing-man, chatting up proprietors while he snapped photos of their most unusual wares. We saw all sorts of things this morning, ranging from mundane items to full-on batshittery. In addition to the mainstay tables featuring all sorts of ways to kill and maim people, we also found anarchist guides, Confederate relics, Nazi replicas, all manner of manuals for surviving civilization or the collapse thereof, healing woo in the form of both homeopathic lotions and magically resonant bracelets, and even a table selling prearranged funerals, which is presumably necessary because of the unfortunate juxtaposition of so many dangerous weapons with such terrible ideas about how to go about healing the human body.
We all too frequently bumped into the sort of fear-driven thinking common in the survivalist and prepper communities, the sort we get from Alex Jones fans, and the sort we hear when sojourning Among the Truthers. It’s almost impossible to go to a gun show around here without coming across this sort of baseline paranoia. For example, when we were checking out currency from the Weimar Republic, the seller warned us about the coming era of hyperinflation in the United States. A different vendor showed off his powder blue helmet that he’d put a rifle round through, presumably in the hopes reasserting U.S. sovereignty over the evil globalists at the U.N. More than a few tables were hawking MRE’s and other prepper gear, for those who are unwilling to cook and eat their neighbors in the event of total civilizational collapse.
Don’t get me wrong, there were plenty of people attending who were just harmless hobbyists out to find a bargain on something they do for fun in the spare time. Hunters and knife-throwers, for example. That said, the gun culture as a whole could really use a heavy dose of skepticism and clear-thinking about the problems the world faces today. I’ve no idea how to bring that about, but if you have any thoughts on the matter, I’d be happy to entertain them.
