LUBBOCK, Tex. — A hearing on a proposed tax increase had just started at the county courthouse here Monday when Grace Rogers, a retired teacher, addressed local leaders. Ms. Rogers said she supported the idea of increasing the property tax by 1.7 cents to 34.6 cents per $100 valuation from 32.9 cents to finance the hiring of additional sheriff’s deputies — with one reservation.

It was that, she said, “it does not fund a paramilitary to create an insurrection and rebellion against the United States.”

Her comments might have sounded absurd at some other time, in some other place. But these days in Lubbock, a West Texas city known as the birthplace of the 1950s rock ’n’ roll pioneer Buddy Holly, Ms. Rogers’s request was timely and appropriate, under the circumstances.

A few days before, the county’s top elected official, County Judge Tom Head, made an appearance on a local television station to generate support for the tax increase. He said he was expecting civil unrest if President Obama is re-elected, and that the president would send United Nations forces into Lubbock, population 233,740, to stop any uprising.