I Bought A Bible, Slingshot, And Sports Gear. So I’m Probably On A ‘Domestic Terrorist’ Watchlist
All-American consumerism by a completely peaceful and law-abiding citizen somehow threatens the people running my own country into the ground.
by Joy Pullman, The Federalist, Jan 18, 2024
Americans who shopped at sporting goods stores and bought religious books “like a Bible” were flagged through their banks as potential domestic terrorists, Rep. Jim Jordan revealed Jan. 17.
The federal government also flagged as potential criminals any transactions that involved the terms “MAGA” or “Trump,” the House Judiciary Committee chairman said. These Americans were tagged as possible “violent extremists” with zero due process or even notification of this criminalization of their constitutional rights to property, free speech, consent to their government’s activities, and religious exercise. The federal government even asked for surveillance of Americans’ messages on private payment apps like Zelle, a competitor to Venmo.
So if you’ve shopped at a sporting goods store, including Cabela’s, Bass Pro Shops, Dick’s Sporting Goods, or myriad gun retailers, you could be flagged to law enforcement as “Lone Actor/Homegrown Violent Extremism.” All these retailers and dozens more appeared on a list Jordan found that a federal financial crime agency distributed to instruct bank employees in how to criminalize their fellow Americans’ religious and political ideas.
“In other words,” Jordan writes in a letter released yesterday, the federal government “urged large financial institutions to comb through the private transactions of their customers for suspicious charges on the basis of protected political and religious expression.”
In the last year, I’ve shopped at multiple sporting goods stores. We have an active family, and I especially buy my kids outdoorsy Christmas gifts. This year, that included a tetherball set from Dick’s Sporting Goods and some camping gear for my oldest son.
A younger son received a $15 slingshot purchased at a local gun store this Christmas, so he can hunt squirrels. I also bought a son a pair of hiking shoes from Cabela’s a few weeks ago. Ooooh, look at the terror! He could kick people soundly with those!
Oh, and I can’t forget the other item of treacherous samizdat I bought in the last year: last Lent, I bought myself a Bible from ChristianBook.com, a terrorist-sounding site if I ever heard one. They sell other “extremist” gear like Bible commentaries, devotionals decorated with hearts, artsy Bible journals complete with marker sets, plush dolls, craft kits, and Jesus stickers.
When I — wearing snow boots, a winter hat, and mom jeans — went shopping at these retailers, I had no idea it could flag me as a “domestic terrorist” to my bank or federal law enforcement. I was just shopping, for completely legal goods. The only terror I meant was to squirrels. We don’t live in communist China, do we?
Turns out, benign, all-American consumerism by a completely peaceful and law-abiding citizen with zero criminal record or activity somehow threatens the people running my own country into the ground. What are they afraid of, and why do they hate Jesus so much?
Amazing how a totally nonthreatening mom of little kids scares these people, but they have zero qualms about the actual terrorists and foreign military plants certainly embedding themselves into the United States thanks to our wide-open border. But, you know, flagging moms buying hiking boots for their middle schoolers only takes a few keystrokes and PowerPoint presentations. Easy to pad the “terrorist” numbers with people like us and make a nincompoop-filled Congress believe they need to give lots more money to these power-mongering freaks who send the FBI after compliant daddies with seven kids and surveil devout Christians and angry moms and dads at school board meetings.
It’s way harder to go after the international drug cartels coordinating with communist China to infiltrate and destabilize our country via our southern border. That would take a lot more than a few keystrokes and secret fascist orders to highly cooperative “private” financial institutions. It might require going after high-level corruption rings within our own government. Nah. Go after the moms instead.
Take note, too, of the connection between the federal government searching for “MAGA” goods purchasers and President Joe Biden’s insistence that “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic.” He is not exaggerating the Democrat Party’s views. They believe that peaceful political opposition to them equals terrorism. “Silence is violence,” right?
The deepest opposition to Democrats comes from serious Christians, because Democrats’ cornerstone policies blatantly violate the Ten Commandments (and lots more, including much of the Bible’s book of Romans). This is why it makes sense for them to connect Bible-buying with dissent from their politics.
And Democrats want to criminalize dissent. You disagree with them, so you are a thought criminal needing punishment. This bank flagging system puts the massive weight of federal resources behind leftist cancel culture — that is to say, behind bloodthirsty mobs.
How different is this from Canada’s debanking of its own citizens attempting to have their voices heard by the government allegedly representing them? How is this different in kind from China’s social credit system? It’s certainly laying the groundwork for such totalitarian acts in this country. You have to identify the citizens infected with wrongthink before you can start punishing them.
All this is blatantly unconstitutional, but almost all federal agencies are intrinsically unconstitutional, and they control the federal government. Harshly worded letters and congressional hearings are better than nothing, but they are not even close to the horsewhipping Congress needs to give these agencies they allegedly oversee.
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