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waco and beyond
TRUMP WORSHIP AND MILITIA CULTURE
by
ANTHONY MERINO
______________________________________
Anthony
Merino, renowned independent art critic, has published over
70 reviews. He is a ceramic
artist and has lectured internationally on contemporary
ceramics.
Certainement
qui est en droit de vous rendre
absurde est en droit de vous rendre injuste.
Certainly
anyone who has the power to make you believe
absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices.
Voltaire
July
20th, 1995, the day that changed American Politics forever.
Kiri
Jewell, 14 at the time, provided testimony to the congressional
hearings on the Branch Dravidians standoff in Waco. From
February 28, 1993 -- April 19, 1993, agents of the federal
government engaged in a standoff to arrest charismatic
cult leader David Koresh on weapon charges. The standoff
ended in 82 Branch Dravidians and four Federal agents
being killed. Up until Ms. Jewell’s testimony --
Koresh was fashioned into a flawed martyr for the American
right. He fit the roll in two ways. First, Koresh was
considered a religious leader. The Clinton Administration’s
assault was another example of how the American left was
openly hostile to any but the most milquetoast expressions
of Christianity. Second, the N.R.A. was just beginning
to become radicalized. The images of black clad federal
agents crawling over roofs and attacking a group over
something as trivial as weapon charges --emboldened this
vision.
Jewell
killed that narrative. She detailed Koresh’s systematically
raped young girls as young as 10 years old. She explained
that Koresh would systematically indoctrinate young girls
into sexuality by forcing them to watch violent and explicate
movies including 1987 movie Hamburger Hill that includes
a rape scene. He casually talked about each of his ‘wives’
performance as sexual creatures. Leading up to her description
of being raped by Koresh, she stated:
David
took me told me to come and sit down by him in the bed.
I was wearing a long T. Shirt and he kissed me and sat
there but then he laid me down he took me and rubbed it
on the outside of my vagina while he was still killing
me, I had known this would happen sometime, so I just
laid there and stared at the ceiling.
In
10 minutes, Koresh went from being a martyr to monster.
The
Republican party had done an exceptional job of reframing
public opinion over the Waco siege. In an April 18, 2018
article The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research showed
just how effective the Republicans were at changing the
narrative around Waco. ABC did a series of polls looking
at how the Federal Bureau of Investigations handled the
standoff in Waco. On April 21st, 1993 70% of respondents
stated that they approved of the FBI’s actions;
27% disapproved and 3% did not know. In only two years
public approval of the FBI had cratered. A CBS poll showed
that only 42% of people approved and 40% disapproved,
with 18% did not know.
This
was rather remarkable because while not widely reported
-- several stories of Koresh’s molestation were
reported. Additionally, on Jul 14, 1993 Waco Tribune-Herald
writer Mark England reported autopsy results of three
Dravidians showing that they were shot a point-blank range
–
But
autopsies performed by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s
Office show that Perry Jones, 64, died by a bullet from
a gun inserted into his mouth; Peter Hipsman, 27, in addition
to other bullet wounds, suffered wounds from a gun placed
at the back and side of his head; and Winston Blake, 28,
died from a shot fired at close range behind his right
ear.
The
most logical explanation was that the men were wounded
during the standoff but instead of allowing the men to
leave and get medical attention, Koresh either had them
executed or had them take their own lives. Both details
lead inescapably to the conclusion that there was no peaceful
solution. Koresh knew what he had done. Knew if taken
into custody -- e would be condemning himself to a lifetime
of incarceration, scorn and abuse.
Whatever
bad acts the Federal government engaged in during the
siege on Waco, ultimately, the only peaceful resolution
would have been to move away and effectively concede victory
to David Koresh. In an interview with Frontline, retired
FBI agent Byron Sage observed: “This guy is not
delusional. He is not a Messianic complex. He does not
buy off on his own con.” This was a bit of an epiphany.
Koresh was an extremely evil narcissist, who was using
the siege to delay what would be his day of earthly judgment.
Ironically,
American Politics had changed -- because nothing had changed.
James Ridgeway, in an August 8, 1995 article in The
Village Voice predicted a change that did not happen:
The
argument that what Koresh was doing was his business and
nobody else’s will get any politician, Christian
right or other, firmly clobbered in the polls.
The
lionization of Koresh was one of the seeds of the American
far right separatist movement. Ridgeway failed to calculate
that Wayne LaPierre, the president of the N.R.A. and Newt
Gingrich, Republican Speaker of the House, simply ignored
the fact that Koresh raped girls. Koresh may have been
the seed of the movement, but they treated him as an infected
branch, once pruned to be ignored forever.
The
most maddening aspect of this ability to cleave the martyr
from the message -- was that the message inspired the
deadliest act of domestic terrorism in the United States
on April 19, 1995 when Timothy McVeigh and accomplice
Terry Nichols killed 168 people in the Alfred P. Murrah
Federal Building, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. McVeigh wanted
to exact revenge on the Federal government for the outrages
of Waco. Effectively, McVeigh killed 168 people because
the F.B.I. dared to arrest a serial pedophile for owning
too many guns. The lie inspired McVeigh to the point that
the lie no longer needed a martyr to infest the public
imagination.
This
dynamic plays out today. A second big lie undermines American
security. On January 20, 2021 Reuters/Ipsos published
a poll showing 61% of Republicans believe the election
was stolen from Donald Trump. Like in the mid-nineties,
several members of the Republican establishment buttressed
Trump’s fiction, most notably Senators Rand Paul
(TN), Ted Cruz (TX) and Josh Hawley (MO). In explaining
his opposition to certifying Biden’s victory, Senator
Cruz reinforced Trump’s big lie by framing it as
certification is the true threat to democracy. Cruz cited
polling data that stated 39% of American’s believed
the election was rigged. Cruz suggests investigating the
rigging of the election as the only way to regain trust.
This is a rather disingenuous claim. The only thing establishing
an investigation would do is validate the claim that there
was something to investigate. Senator Paul offered the
same argument. He backed up Trump’s big lie, with
a smaller lie. In a January 24th interview on This Week,
Paul stated “Most of the cases were thrown out for
lack of standing.” By most, he should have said
one. The case dismissed for this reason was a lawsuit
filed by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, State
of Texas v. Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, State of Georgia,
State of Michigan, and State of Wisconsin. Effectively
AG Paxton was arguing that the rulings made by the other
states had to be approved by his office. Hawley has moved
forward using Trump’s big lie to motivate people
to give him money. He asserted that his vote against certification
only served to “to give their own voters a hearing.”
This allows him to not directly support Trump’s
lie but validate the victimhood of Trump supporters. All
three senators understand what Gingrich knew: white victimhood
is great politics. If a lazy, vulgar and entitled buffoon
like Donald Trump could parlay white victimhood to the
White House -- then disciplined, sober and industrious
politicians like themselves should easily be able to surf
the wave to a 2024 nomination.
One difference distinguishes Trump’s lie from Gingrich’s.
Republican leaders like Senate Majority Leader Robert J.
Dole and Gingrich could not have imagined the Oklahoma City
bombing. The next Timothy McVeigh is out there, and he,
like McVeigh, will be utterly convinced of the righteousness
of his actions. The Oklahoma City bombing was unimaginable.
Now, in large part thanks to politicians like Paul, Cruz
and Hawley, the next terrorist act seems not just imaginable
but inevitable.
COMMENTS
user-submission@feedback.com
Thank you very much for the insight. Even Benjamin can be wrong
sometimes.
Arts
& Opinion, a bi-monthly, is archived in the
Library and Archives Canada.
ISSN 1718-2034
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