I actually met a relatively highly placed member of the Aryan Nation. He was... well, I wouldn't say a friend, but an acquaintance who I saw pretty much every day for a while. I always knew he was a bit of a psycho, but I didn't find out that he was white supremacist psycho until he got picked up on some minor charge, an outstanding warrant came up, and he got shipped back to Indiana to do some long hard time.

It's pretty ironic, because, while I don't look it or have a Jewish sounding name, I'm actually of Jewish descent myself. He always liked me, which in this case I don't take as great praise, but something violent would have happenned if he'd found out. He was a violent motherfucker.

Not in any obvious, shaved head and razorwire prison tattoo way, but he still carried this aura of thinly restrained violence. He had the stare. You know it if you've seen it. That ten-mile stare that war veterans have.

The story I eventually heard is that he was on the lam from some kind of coke deal gone massively wrong. Apparently when the dust had settled, he ended up with a naked guy duct-taped into his bathtub, and he threatened to come back with a surgical kit and some pliers and "go Tarantino on his ass". It seems a bit farfetched, but if you knew this guy, you'd believe it.

Somehow I don't think he's the kind of person my parents meant for me to meet when they sent me off to college.

What the upshot is, I don't know. He was a crazed, violent, racist, drug-dealing, whackjob. He would have kicked my ass as soon as looked at me if he'd known I was Jewish. But still I feel a sort of weird affection for him. Despite all his many shortcomings as a functional human being or member of society, he could be endearing at times. He would choose random classes at school, walk into the lectures, sit and listen for the entire session, and then borrow the textbook from somebody, and spend hours reading it and taking notes. He wasn't stupid.

Maybe that's just more of an indictment of him. Somebody that smart should have realized how morally bankrupt his ideology was. Should have at least realized the logical inconsistency of a white supremacist carrying around a copy of Sun Tzu's Art of War with him all the time. It's too bad. Somewhere along the line, all the potential he had got twisted up and perverted and turned into a weapon. In one way, I feel sorry for him, and even hope he's alright in whatever shitty Indiana prison he's doing his time in. But I still hope to God I never see him again.