It’s always dangerous to generalize, but the crowd of volunteers was so small that it reduces the risks of stereotyping. If anything, this was a lawn-chair militia — a disproportionately elderly, disproportionately male, all-white crew whose most ambitious plan was to spend a day or two under an umbrella, sitting in the desert, drinking some cool ones and bitching about illegal aliens. These Minutemen are to real vigilantes — who risk getting shot at while they’re out shooting others — what the Disney Jungle Boat Ride is to Amazon exploration.

On leader and "radical right populist" Chris Simcox, who is receiving "rock star" treatment from the media:

A former Los Angeles–area kindergarten teacher, Simcox moved to Arizona three years ago, took over the Tumbleweed and set up his own anti-immigrant militia, the Civil Homeland Defense. His events have never drawn more than a handful of supporters, his professed ideology is a jumble of black-helicopter conspiracy and paranoiac demagogy, and he was convicted last year of a federal weapons charge.

It's a show. But it's a show that sets a dangerous precedent by insidiously suggesting to the public that vigilante justice is okay.