State Line Cult

Here’s a hilarious video depicting the “he crossed state lines” cult.

I happen to live right next to the “state line,” and many of us in this area cross state lines to go to the toilet, so the pompous invocations of “state lines” are particularly funny. We now joke about this with friends.

“Hey, want to go to that brunch place we did last week?”

“What? And cross the state lines? Living on the edge, baby. OK, I’ll do it but don’t tell my Dad. He already had one heart attack. I don’t want to scare him too much.”

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18 thoughts on “State Line Cult

    1. It’s funny but also quite scary that the propaganda managed to make so many people forget that state lines are an empty formality in this country. A colleague who lives in Missouri and “crosses state lines” twice daily completely seriously intoned the party line about Kyle having crossed state lines. When I reminded that she does it on a daily basis, she looked confused.

      Poor people. They have lost their minds.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. ” state lines are an empty formality in this country”

        There used to be a very few cases where they weren’t (I remember that some states had truck weighing stations at the state line) but most of the time, yeah, completely empty.
        I think it’s another case of too much tv which used to occasionally refer to the Mann act (which including a provision about crossing state lines for ‘immoral purposes’… that part of the law is long dead but still stuck in some people’s brains…

        Liked by 1 person

        1. These bastards can drag millions across the border yet we should be persecuted for traveling a mile away into a neighboring state. And people just repeat it like dumb parrots. It’s very sad.

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      2. Oh, c’mon, you haven’t been tempted to jump back and forth across an international border?

        Like many who visited CERN did at least once. πŸ™‚

        “I’m in France! I’m in Switzerland! I’m In France! I’m in Switzerland!”

        The gendarmes used to put up with it as long as you didn’t leave the CERN facility on the other side without passing through their little border hut.

        Now with the current state of affairs?

        The last I’d checked, Google Street View showed barricades of the type you’d find at American concerts.

        I wonder what’s happened internally as well.

        But what about the tourists who play this game at Four Corners?

        “I’m in Colorado! I’m in New Mexico! I’m in Arizona! I’m in Utah!”

        Do they have to wear masks for part of the game?

        And what about playing this game at the Peace Arch?

        Oh, wait, is that the RCMP over on the other side? πŸ™‚

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        1. The thing to do at Four Corners is to stand at the four corner point with one of your feet and be in all four states at once. However, many people do not know that the Four Corners marker is actually not in the correct location, the real point is some 1,800 feet west of it. So, I am not entirely sure being too excited about it is warranted. It is actually not clear to me whether the Four Corners monument is in New Mexico or Colorado (I do think it is New Mexico), although technically the Supreme Court ruled that it is still the border (apparently state borders can be contentious enough to make it into the Supreme Court!). And yes, I went to Four Corners and stood at the marker anyway… It was before the Corona so, no masks required. πŸ™‚

          Liked by 1 person

  1. Sort of a riddle on the subject of State lines: Bill was born in a bed in a bedroom in a house in Tennessee. A couple years later his sister JoElla was born in the same bed in the same bedroom in the same house –but in Kentucky. How is that possible?? State lines changed?? ………Nope, they moved the bed from one side of the bedroom to the other. At the time their house was built, nobody knew there was a state line nearby….running through the house and the bedroom!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. We have ancestors who lived somewhere near the state line, in the same house, on the same property, for generations. Which state/county they are listed in on any given census seems to depend entirely on what county the census-taker thought he was in at the time… it varies.

      Liked by 1 person

  2. It’s more important for taxes. Also if you commit a crime in multiple states, which tends to bump everything to federal court. Maybe they think it should be a federal case? But this was a state-level case because the events in question happened in one state. There was nothing done in the other state.

    Liked by 1 person

  3. Oh hey, I remember Matt Orfaela from the Bernie days! Pleased to see that he’s in the Glenn Greenwald/Matt Taibbi camp with this stuff.

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  4. When you go somewhere armed and looking for trouble, and get that trouble, and overreact to it, you aren’t covered under self-defense laws. That is the important thing people are disregarding.

    On state lines, everyone knows that when you cross a state line, even if it is in your back yard, to commit a crime, that complicates consequences. It’s something you think about. Again, everyone knows this. It’s disingenous to pretend otherwise.

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    1. I’m guessing you didn’t watch the trial. Kyle didn’t go somewhere armed. He was in his hometown, trying to make sure that his grandparents’ gas station wasn’t burned to the ground. It is an absolute lie that he brought the rifle across state lines and that he randomly went to a strange town.

      This all came out at trial.

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      1. And as for overreacting, Gaige Grosskreutz testified in court that Kyle neither shot nor aimed at him until Grosskreutz pointed a loaded gun at his (Kyle’s) head. Is it overreacting to shoot when somebody points a gun at you?

        This was all covered at the trial but it’s interesting that the completely mythical explanation of what happened still prevails.

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    2. Define overreacting. Like, what would be the appropriate response to someone chasing you down, drawing a pistol, and aiming it at your head? Let’s accept for a moment that showing up at a riot with heavy artillery is a dumbass move. Once you’ve done that, what’s the appropriate response to a rioter trying to grab your gun?

      I’m serious, because in the post-mortem it turns out all three of the guys he shot were lowlifes of one sort or another: domestic abusers, pedos, burglars. I’ve seen a lot of people insist that Kyle should have given up his firearm, rolled over and played dead, and other asinine “solutions” that basically amount to: Kyle should have just let the rioters stomp his head in and lived with the resulting brain damage as just punishment for resisting righteous rioters. Kyle should have trusted that these mentally-ill felons would treat him with gracious good humor and mercy after he turned the other cheek?

      No. Just no.

      I think “went looking for trouble” argument is almost identical to saying a woman has no right to defend herself from rapists, because she shouldn’t have been in that part of town, in that seedy bar, at that time of night, wearing that miniskirt. I think we can all agree that as a woman, being in that part of town, at that hour, in those clothes, etc. is a dumbass thing to do, and we’d all try very hard to keep friends and family members from making such a mistake. Does that also imply that when the inevitable thing happens to the dumbass in question, that dumbass has no right to defend him/herself?

      Because that’s the argument I’m seeing here, and I find it disturbing.

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    1. And it’s not just some random shops and car lots. It’s the shops and lots where Kyle’s family and friends worked. People got together to defend their low income neighborhood from being destroyed. What were they supposed to do instead?

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