Preppers

Preppers are about as American as apple pie is commonly asserted to be (albeit falsely). Like Tea-Baggers, Mormons, the Amish and the National Rifle Association (NRA), I doubt preppers could have developed - let alone thrived - anywhere but in the self-styled Land of the Free and Home of the Brave.

Fiercely independent, deeply patriotic yet doggedly suspicious of authority in general and government in particular, preppers tend to be politically conservative white Christians from low-income backgrounds. As such, they are like the distillation of the American psyche.

So what are they? Preppers believe that a catastrophic natural disaster or foreign invasion is just around the corner. Or, as they like to put it, "the shit is about to hit the fan" (SHTF). Convinced that the US economy, society and possibly civilisation itself are in imminent danger of destruction and/or collapse, they prepare - hence the name - for their chosen nightmare scenario by

• Hoarding food
• Stockpiling weapons and ammunition
• Training in armed combat
• Learning survival skills
• Building emergency shelters
• Disconnecting from the power grid and
• Buying gold and silver, typically in the form of coins.

Although there may not be the 4 million or more preppers claimed by some of the myriad "survivalist" Web sites, they certainly are far more than a handful of paranoid gun-nuts. In fact there are so many serious preppers in America that Costco (a nationwide chain of wholesale stores open to the public) stocks a large selection of what it terms "emergency kits", ranging from water storage and filtration systems to a year's supply of food for four people, comprising 30,144 servings of freeze-dried and dehydrated meals (yours for only $3,999.99).

Preppers even have their own reality-TV show (sponsored, tellingly enough, by the Wise Food Storage Company and the United States Gold Bureau). Entitled 'Doomsday Preppers', the documentary series charts how various people are getting ready for what they see is inevitable: an all-out assault on the American way of life, be it man-made or environmental. 

Unfortunately, preppers are not simply wacky loners content to play out their apocalyptic or Chinese-invasion fantasies in their own basements or woods in the same way that people used to gather for weekend 'Dungeons and Dragons' sessions. Often enough, their paranoia spills over into violent confrontations with the law.

Only last week, police arrested a 45-year-old survivalist who had spent 5-6 years breaking into cabins in the Utah mountains to steal food and guns. And almost exactly a year ago, police in Washington state hunted a 41-year-old man who had allegedly shot dead his wife and daughter. They eventually tracked him down in a sophisticated fortified underground bunker in the forest, where a SWAT team had to blast its way through the roof. When they got inside, they found the man dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, as well as 13 guns and shelves neatly piled with ammunition, food and other supplies.

Freedoms

People in the UK may complain about the "nanny state", yet this mumbled dissension is typically British in its muted amateurism. Not so in the US, where the fight for much-vaunted "freedoms" and "liberty" can be and often is taken into every corner of life.

Americans - or rather, a proportion of said people - are obsessed with their freedoms and the supposed, alleged or feared restriction thereof by "Big Government".

Americans have resisted taxation ever since the Boston Tea Party, when disgruntled New Worlders were so incensed by the fact that they were "taxed without representation" (i.e. supported the British crown financially, but couldn't vote - a situation in which, by a quirk of fate, I too find myself, albeit in my case I pay the IRS) that they threw some leaves off a ship. Scary, eh? The current "Tea Party" is simply an extension of this, a movement who claim they have been Taxed Enough Already - hence TEA - and assert the "freedom" to pay less, thus scuppering any attempts to balance the US budget and rein in the national debt.

Another "freedom" vehemently and vociferously defended is the so-called "right to bear arms" based on the rather ambiguous Second Amendment of the Constitution, which reads:

"A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed"

Gun-lobbyists like the National Rifle Association believe this permits people to own even assault rifles. As a result, 40-50% of Americans have one or more guns, although only 11% use them for hunting. In all, there are about 190 million guns in circulation spread between a total population of about 310 million.

One of the dafter "liberties" currently under dispute is the argument against the recently implemented healthcare reforms, which demand that everyone must have healthcare coverage. At last count, as many as 15% of Americans - 46 million people - were without health insurance. But now (wealthy) people are demanding the "right" to opt out, claiming mandatory coverage constitutes an infringement of their liberties. Although the case is still going through the courts, it's possible the nay-sayers could yet scupper what was a bold attempt to give more people access to medical treatment.

Finally, I want to mention a "freedom" that is being argued over here in Michigan: the right not to wear a helmet when riding a motorcycle. At present, all bikers have to wear a helmet. But "freedom-loving people" now want to repeal the 40-year-old legislation on the spurious grounds that, because there is no such law in neighbouring states, Michigan could lose valuable tourism revenues if bikers chose to vacation elsewhere.

"Helmets don't prevent accidents," says the president of the American Bikers Aiming Toward Education Michigan, echoing the NRA's "Guns don't kill, people do" mantra. Seatbelts don't prevent accidents either, but nobody's suggesting we scrap them too - or are they?