We heard about this story over the weekend. On the one hand it’s part of the on-going and rising drumbeat of The Crazy ™. But there’s also just something very Americana about this one, something I’d half expect to read about in a non-fiction novel by a Truman Capote or Norman Mailer.
Jerry Kane was another far-far-right extremist with a mix of anti-tax activism, fear of human-implanted microchips, all rooted in his mind in a biblical literalism and possible white supremacy. Kane’s own home in Ohio was under foreclosure and he was traveling the country with his 16 year old son giving free-form seminars on eliminating mortgage and credit card debt laced with imputations to “conquer” the IRS, kill IRS agents all packed together with various other far-right shibboleths. Not long again he spent three days in jail in New Mexico after getting stopped at what he called a “nazi checkpoint”; police called it driving without a license and concealing his identity.
It all came to an end on Thursday when police in West Memphis, Arkansas stopped Kane and his son and Kane opened fire with an AK-47 killing both officers and setting off a manhunt which ended a little more than an hour later in a shootout in a Walmart parking lot where Kane and his son were both killed.
