More Dispatches from the Fringe

If you haven't yet read I Hope SD Voters Read This, you may want to start there before coming into the middle of this tale of JAIL4Judges fanatics.

David Neiwert at Orcinus does a good, ongoing job of covering this Posse Comitatus world. Me, I'm just a tourist who fell down the rabbit hole and wants to send back a few postcards.

Starting with some research into a South Dakota initiative to enable citizens to prosecute judges for unpopular verdicts, I began looking further into the anti-judiciary crowd and just started following the links. I found:

White men with anger management issues. They're not the guys arrested for for driving while black in the wrong neighborhood or put in prison for drug offenses that would put suburban dwellers into treatment programs. No, they seem to be fueled by petty grievances, unrealised fears and resentment that they aren't more important to neighbors, God and country. Judges are the focus of this paranoia, perhaps because, given the civil disputes and petty infractions that obsess them, these angry white men are more likely to run afoul of a judge in court than a cop in a shoot out.

Although these are free men, they think they're only a crooked judge away from prison, having their guns snatched, their property sold at auction and their daughters raped in front of the courthouse.

A close alignment with God. The anti-judge movement does not seek to recruit from the American Atheist Society. It professes one letter of the law and one Judge, who coincidentally seems back up the angry white men in all previous court decisions as recorded in the Bible. Nevertheless, the white-robed Judge seems to need a lot of help from a circuit court of small-time preachers and megalomaniacal televangelists.

A thing about uniforms. Distinctive dress is a way of identifying who's on the team and keeping the rest of the world out, whether you're Amish or Hare Krishna, priests or televangelists, Marines or survivalists, Goths or Crips. The less powerful you are, the more significance uniforms have as a projection of power. (A Wichita city inspector wears a uniform as he goes around tagging garbage cans and BTKing women.) No wonder "black-robed judges" come in for special suspicion.

The bedfellowship gets stranger. You start to think you have this figured out. These guys have been disappointed after submitting to authority, and nopw they're turning against it! You can see it in people like Timothy McVey, past champion strip searcher Ron Branson and in an "organization" like Police and Military Against the New World Order.

There's no facist like a frustrated facist.

But then you start reading one of the allied sites — Patriot Politicans Lead Wars (PPLW) — and see it sounds similar to Michael Moore with its mission: "to provide America’s purportedly patriotic president and lawmakers both the honor and the opportunity to actively serve in all wars, police actions and military drafts they choose to promote and administer. Our PPLW plan is a chance for these political leaders to add personal involvement to the impassioned words and acts by which they traditionally have propelled our children and other loved ones into war zones around the world."

Your Christian President reflects this disaffection with Bush, and with a sinking feeling, you realize you might agree with some of what these guys are saying:

The fact of the matter is that Bush's policies are virtually identical to that of his predecessor, and yet Bush is showered with praise while Clinton is continually demonized. Such an observation leads me to believe that it is not Bush's neo-conservative agenda nor exemplary leadership, but solely his public profession of faith which has gained him the admiration of the religious-right.

The irony in this situation is that Clinton likewise portrayed himself as Christian; nevertheless, he was despised by most fundamental Bible-thumpers. So why does Bush come across as more believable? Again, I ask, is it the mere fact that he is Republican?

Bush obviously wears his religion on his sleeve for public consumption, but I was never comfortable with that being the sole reason for Bush's overwhelming acceptance among fellow Christians. Now, after years of earnest prayer and research, I have come to the conclusion that George W. Bush is indeed a religious man - broadly Christian - yet twisted and macabre in ways most people are unaware. In other words, what the Christian community as a whole fails to understand is that Bush's version of Christianity is far from what is deemed "fundamental."

President Bush, like his father and grand-father before him, is an elitist. He is part of a cabal of individuals whom believe that they posess secret knowledge which has been passed down since the time of King Solomon. They believe that they are the "enlightened ones," and that Christ has entrusted them with ushering-in the prophesied millenium; the thousand years of world peace. They believe that it is they, through Christ, whom will ultimately save mankind and rule over the entire earth; a.k.a. "New World Order."...Please understand that opposing Bush and the neo-conservative agenda does not make you a liberal Democrat!

No, anything but that.