I just posted the following on Facebook.
Twenty years ago today, impersonators of human beings committed mass murder on national television, hoisting their own flag in the charred remains of the incinerated crime scene as if they'd scored a goal at a sporting event.Maybe it was looking at Bovard's post that did it, or maybe it was noticing that Claire didn't say anything today...maybe it was noticing that I'd seen nothing (nothing!) on Facebook about remembering Waco (contrasted with several posts about OKC)...but whatever it was, emotion got the better of me and this just started writing itself.
And they did it to absolutely thunderous applause.
Nobody paid a meaningful price for this crime; several were even rewarded with promotion, and some still exercise power over other people's lives, today, using your money. None of the myriad and shapeshifting justifications were substantiated, yet there has been no apology--not for harassing the survivors, not for all the legal malfeasance and "lost" evidence, and certainly not for "not an assault"ing eighty-odd human beings to death.
By the look of things, they'd get the same applause today, if they did it again. The message "we" have sent them in the twenty years since it happened, is pretty clear: no problem, fellas, you just go take care of those weird folks for us and we'll have your back no matter what you do. (I know what you're thinking: "It's a good thing I'm not weird.")
The most shameful, horrible thing I can admit to in my entire life, is that I was taken by the official story when this happened. Yeah, that's right: the demon that comes for me in the dark is the one that reminds me that I was part of that thunderous applause. My only defense is that I then opened my eyes and looked for myself, and...well, life changes with the realization that it not only can happen here, but DID happen here.
I can't unmake my own shame, nor deny the personal horror that goes with it. All I can do is be perfectly clear in what I would say to those who not only perpetrated mass murder in front of my eyes, but who repeatedly lied to me, from positions of power and trust, in order to get away with it.
You are not forgiven.
Tomorrow I can go back to remembering it differently--the part about people like Bovard, Evans-Pritchard, Browne, and most of all Claire, helping me to save my own life from the simply inhuman thinking I'd taken for granted.
9 comments:
I remember. I have not forgiven the perpetrators either.
Thanks for your words. They really do help so much.
They committed suicide. I was here in Texas back then. I saw this play out LIVE. They could have come out over the SIX WEEKS after they killed four members of law enforcement - AND Koresh was a child rapist and the CHILD victims needed protecting! I am SICK of people using TWISTED faith to justify behavior that is BEYOND "weird" - your word. Sir, he was a PSYCHOPATH - NOT just WEIRD. Everyone has laws they don't agree with. The consequences of disobeying laws are published and known. You speed, you get caught, you pay. He made a CALCULATED decision. He had CHOICES if he wanted to peacefully reside in our GREAT state. One, compromise and abide by the laws of the society in which you CHOOSE to reside. Two, go about legal ways of changing laws. (I imagine you will get laughed at for introducing laws to make child rape legal, but in this country, you have the right to be an idiot.) OR here is something Texans would have preferred he do - go find that perfect world where you can live by NO laws. Good luck finding that place. We compromise relatively little to live a free life here in the US. Koresh saw himself as a GOD above the society in which HE chose to take up residence. He set up camp in the WRONG state - wrong country.
Well, Anon, your bona fides in quoting talking points from the Official Story Playbook are certainly not in question here. The master you serve will be proud.
For the record, I watched the not-an-assault from my apartment in College Station, as it happened.
Perhaps you can show me, with your sparkling powers of analysis and observation, where I have ever made a defense of David Koresh, or anything he ever did. Frankly, I don't know what he did--and neither do you. You accept the official record, but the word of professional liars does not impress me the way it apparently does you.
I could counter your details here, but you'd probably just parrot back all the excuses in the official narrative (there's one or two for everything), so I'll not bother. You're not here for a conversation, after all; this is a fecal-dive-bomb sort of sortie. I get that.
It's probably for the best that you believe the things you say here; otherwise, the ironies might just cause you to spontaneously combust. "Good luck finding that place", you say, after delivering a (pretty unimaginative) "luv it or leave it" argument. You argue that the law is absolute for plebes like the Davidians (or me, or you), but say nothing about the law that the state is supposed to obey as part of the same "social contract". And then there's my personal favorite. I always get a giggle out of someone who parrots the state's every word, every stereotype, every tribal pompon, every designated villain, every meme--uncritically and above all sanctimoniously--and then attempts to ridicule someone else for making a false god. That's just cute.
Perhaps you tell yourself that you'll get along just fine, as long as you obey all the laws (that you can keep up with, I suppose) and make of yourself a model citizen.
You go right on telling yourself that.
Oh, and Anon:
"...in this country, you have the right to be an idiot."
Best not to conflate a right with a duty. Master does have expectations, you know.
I'm curious just how this "anonymous" found us here...
Not no rules, mister, just no rulers.
The real law is the law of non-aggression, the golden rule. No other law is necessary.
Self ownership, self responsibility, and self control. And self defense if others become aggressors.
In the end, there is no compromise possible with that except to be slaves and cattle.
I do quite well following the law of the country in which I chose to live and love. So you watched on TV and you somehow know better than I. You are certain your resources have a truth beyond what the public saw played out live? Guess I won't know since you didn't bother to back up any of what you said.
"So you watched on TV and you somehow know better than I."
You don't listen real well, do you? I've said more than once here that I did buy the official story that the talking heads on TV pushed. Hook, line and sinker, and with just the same sort of sneering contempt that you display, for those that dared to contradict Authoritah. The heathens!
But something told me to check it out, and I did. The result was not pretty. I went through the official story and the critiques of it (some of which used absolutely nothing except the official story itself, as source material), and at some point it just became obvious that there was something horribly wrong going on, and the further I went from there the worse it got.
I wanted to reject the idea that "my" government would, could, commit mass murder and defend it as something other, something noble. I can even distinctly remember saying to myself, at one point, as a reality-check: okay, let's just for the sake of argument, putting aside how persuasive any given claim is, posit that ninety percent of what the critics (including but by no means limited to Bovard, Evans-Pritchard, Wolfe, Browne, McNulty, etc.) claimed, is false, and just ten percent of it is true. What if just one in ten of these claims had, er, fire to go with the smoke?
The answer was obvious. Even ten percent accuracy should have resulted in a gigantic shakeup, massive public outrage, stinging prosecutions of public officials, and a severe reduction in the quantity of abusable power on the part of both the FBI and the ATF. (You may recall that "Operation Showtime" was deliberately designed to sell to the public the absolute necessity of the Federal gun cops, at precisely a time when they were on the rocks for being abusive, heavy-handed, and flagrantly contemptuous of the rules they should have been bound by.)
And I do not for a minute believe that the accuracy of the complete set of criticisms is as low as ten percent. If you fancy that it is, then do please demonstrate your plenary wisdom and illustrate it to us rubes. I'll even make it easy: just focus on Bovard. And to make it easier still, just focus on the Bovard you can find here.
Show us how solid that official story is.
I feel I am wasting my time here, my man. For you cannot lightly tap a man who already has a blistering sunburn. I maintain this is a great country and I love it despite the minor inconveniences I pay for our society to live free. (By the way, Mama L, I found him here as he was exercising his 1st Amendment rights in a public forum. Try not to be so paranoid. If this is a private group, perhaps a public forum isn't such a great place for this exchange.) I would recommend that your little group go out and enjoy your freedoms in this wonderful land rather than lamenting the minor inconveniences you pay for such freedoms. Wasting your time by sitting around online and now going after how authorities handled Boston....well, that is certainly tapping a city with a bad sunburn. On that note, don't waste your time responding. I have already wasted too much time here. Done.
"I have already wasted too much time here. Done."
Shocking conclusion, that. Such is the typical response to difficult questions, isn't it?
But fret not. Your time was hardly wasted. This thread is now an object lesson in the very sort of shapeshifting tactics mentioned in the original post--and that is useful for people to see. The tiny handful of people that will ever see it (I've got no illusions there) can see how it played out for themselves.
For example:
Challenge: "...show me...where I have ever made a defense of David Koresh, or anything he ever did."
Response: subject change, ignoring both the direct challenge and various implicit challenges accompanying it. Offers puerile jab, "Guess I won't know since you didn't bother to back up any of what you said" while having offered neither any substance nor reference itself.
Challenge: "...do please demonstrate your plenary wisdom and illustrate it to us rubes...Show us how solid that official story is."
Response: subject change and anonymous exit, ignoring both the direct challenge and various implicit challenges accompanying it, including source references offered for rebuttal.
Students of irony have much to see here, as well. Additional to those mentioned previously in the thread, subsequent ironies include the nearly-scripted and reflexive cry of "paranoid!", from a point of view that seems happy to accept the needless destruction of 80-plus lives--an actual event, with body bags--in response to the hysterical, shifting, and ultimately unsubstantiated fears of what that group of people might have done, or might do in the future, if (gasp) left unmolested by tanks, incendiary devices, and helicopters. Anyone who would find this excessive, in comparison to, say, knocking on the door, must be paranoid.
Or, perhaps, the idea, coming from the point of view that argues only the official story, in which the state has simply declared itself to be right and all its critics wrong (a premise with which all good state apologists and acolytes agree)...from this point of view, the idea that the critics must somehow live in an echo chamber.
If nothing else, Anon, thanks for that. I'll giggle over that all day.
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