So Thomas Jefferson is in the talking-heads news again, because he was an awesome MBA-type Leader, or a platitude-spouting narcissist whose only interest in other humans was what he could exploit them for, or best of all, both! Kris E. Benson at Wonkette brings happy tidings of the latest attempt by militia-friendly “Jefferson’s Rightful Liberty” proponents to detach themselves from our modern world of corruption and Liberals:
Any second now there will be zombies and tidal waves and brown people climbing up on your roof and eating your virgin daughter’s brains. What should you do? Where should you go? Why not live out these trying times in a castle in Idaho, surrounded by a loving community of like-minded Patriots? The only rules are that you must prove that you can shoot a gun once a year every year after you turn 13. Oh, and you can’t be “a Liberal.” That’s about it — there’s a preamble about respecting other people, and a mention about submitting to arbitration panels, and roughly 10 rules that have to do with when and under what circumstances you must fire a gun. These rules are written in the Patriot Agreement, which is CLEARLY a supplement to, not a substitute for, the Constitution they love so very very much. It is basically the greatest HOA ever!…
The Citadel will have between 3,500 and 5,000 households within the walls, with a single gate permitting access. The Citadel is not to be a closed society, instead a refuge for genuine Patriots who wish to live without neighbors who are Liberals and Establishment political ideologues, open for tourists who will be welcomed into our town to visit our planned Firearms Museum, shop in our Town Center, stay in a B&B or hotel while vacationing and exploring the wonderful skiing, hunting and fishing opportunities in the area, and many other attractions we will offer…
Of course Benson (per the official Wonkette style sheet) exaggerates for comedic effect — there are twelve clauses in the ‘Patriot Agreement‘, and only six of them involve guns. Six and a half, if you include the one about how “every able-bodied Patriot aged 13 shall pass a class sponsored by the Citadel on basic emergency medical care, the courses focused on battlefield and wilderness environments every three years”. And they’ll get every opportunity to use those skills, too, since another clause specifies that “All Patriots shall agree to remain armed with a loaded sidearm whenever visiting the Citadel Town Center”, and Patriots are famously testy about the proper way to parallel park at their Firearms Museums…
As a selfish East Coast Liberal, I’m almost sad that the III Citadel will almost certainly never progress past the grifting planning stage, because from here isolating five thousand self-employed/retired/home- schooling families behind a wall on the other side of the country sounds like a great idea. Sorry, Idaho!
P.S. The Wonkette commentariat is my second favorite behind you guys, and you’re really gonna have to step it up to match their fine work in this thread.
Bubblegum Tate
This wingnut has an idea for the GOP: Stop being obstructionist and just get the hell out of the way.
OK, so I’m actually phrasing it much more kindly (and with much less crazy) than he does. Because in his view, the GOP is too accommodating and too easily slandered by the BIASED LIBRUL MEDIA and…well, see for yourself:
Love the passive-aggressive bullshit, but hey, if it makes the GOP stop being obstructionist, I’m in favor of that.
jl
What if Thomas Jefferson had the Ultimate Machine? Heh? What? Our world would be completely different.
BGinCHI
Wonkette was my safe
schoolblog comment section.PeakVT
P.S. The Wonkette commentariat is my second favorite behind you guys, and you’re really gonna have to step it up to match their fine work in this thread.
No pressure, Juicers! No pressure!
Chris
@Bubblegum Tate:
YES! Go Galt! Please! Throw us into the briar patch PLEEEEEEEEEAAAASE?
Seanly
I smell a big investment scam. Who said a fool and his money are soon parted?
I’m still relatively new to Idaho, but I think this is somewhere up in the largely unpopulated northern part of the state.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
You say “potato,” I say “patattah”, let’s shoot the whole magazine off.
BGinCHI
@Seanly: I thought it was “a fool and his money are soon partying”?
In the Citadel they’ll party like it’s 1799.
Baud
@Seanly:
I think the community here needs to start thinking much bigger than freaking pet calendars…
Just think of all the server capacity a few well-placed land investments in Idaho could buy.
the Conster
@Bubblegum Tate:
It sounds like the beginning of the acceptance stage of grief.
dr. bloor
Yeah, an ideologically-pure community that will want nothing to do with the Big Bad Outside World until the older folks start having heart attacks and kidney failure, or the kid who flunked Shooting Class drops a load of shot into his teacher’s ass.
This has all the daring and rigor of a bunch of ten-year-olds camping out in their backyard.
brettvk
Actually, the commentariat at Alicublog already had a whack at this, with their usual stellar results.
Baud
Galt acres is the place for me.
Farm livin’ is the life for me.
Land spreadin’ out so far and wide
Keep Manhattan, just give me that countryside.
Turgidson
nevermind. massive blockquote fail.
Bubblegum Tate
@Seanly:
Most likely; my lovely fiance went to college in Washington, right on the Washington/Idaho border. She says that as soon as you crossed the border into Idaho, you were in creepy neo-Nazi militia compound-land, which is not the best place to be for a half-Asian woman.
Baud
Five to one odds that everyone who shows up there will be a dropout from a gay therapy program.
grape_crush
> …you’re really gonna have to step it up to match their fine work in this thread.
Should I start out with the Jonestown reference or something like “it sounds like Galt’s Gulch for the functionally illiterate?”
I’d make a Rapture reference, but real-life splicers and Big Daddies would actually be cool in a frightening way.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
so when the Obama apocalypse happens and hordes of moocher liberals are ravaging the land, what do this collection of middle class and above, over the hill, white collar workers plan to do about food once their emergency supplies run out? Those Somolie warlords starve their enemies out, just saying.
Bubblegum Tate
@the Conster:
With a demi-glace of bargaining. Which is good, because he’s been entirely within the anger stage ever since the election, even going so far as to repeatedly insist that “Obama is not my president, and I will gladly commit treason to oppose him” (the owners of the blog where he posts keep deleting his “I’ll commit treason!” comments, most likely so as to relieve themselves of any potential legal liability).
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
On the first day of Patriotmas my TeaLove gave to me
An RPG in a Liberty Tree
On the second day of Patriotmas my TeaLove gave to me…
PsiFighter37
That RTW shit going down in Michigan is not going to sit well with that electorate. Wisconsin is one story, but unions are not going to take that shit lying down. Rick Snyder’s about to join Scott Walker and John Kasich in an unholy trifecta of hurtfulness in 2 years when they’re up for re-election.
People better be prepared to kick their asses out.
BGinCHI
I’m guessing the Citadel will recruit Michael Musto to be their Culture Critic.
Quicksand
@dr. bloor:
Wait, are you referring to the Citadel or the BJ Commentariat?
Turgidson
@Bubblegum Tate:
This could be something I wrote, with some light editing. Let me try.
“In my opinion, the GOP is nothing more than
an enablera bunch of knuckle-dragging idiots at this point. We areenablingmindlessly preventing Obamato have someone to blame for his failuresfrom doing anything constructive, and the liberal media islapping it upcovering for our destructive idiocy. Everyday we try andsave liberals from themselvesprevent liberals from governing, is another day that Obama can blame us for “obstructing” his wise and benevolent policies, and that perception will not change anytime soon, so why do we continue to do the same thing expecting different results?That isWe are the definition of insanity.What I think we should do, is clearly state for the record that we vigorously disagree with the policies prescribed by the Democrats and Obama, but that we do realize that elections have consequences so we will stand aside and allow Obama to implement his policies unchallenged. We all know these policies
will failwill make some progress, in fact they already have, so why are we standing in the way? The people who will behurt the worsthelped the most are the people who voted for Obama, so let thepaincourse correction toward sanity begin. This is also the only way that we can then clearly lay theblamecredit at the feet of the Democrats and the media won’t even be able tocover for thempretend we morans have anything to offer, and that just might help usher in adecadegeneration ofconservativeliberal rule.”I like mine better.
Narcissus
neo-feudal nutbars
Baud
Even in Idaho, you’re still subject to the health insurance mandate.
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
General Stuck
At the very least, I think we can expect things like this to increase the next four years.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/Rampage-Evokes-Bloody-Past-of-Four-Corners-2889083.php#ixzz2EJlDb5dB
Wingnut heads cracked wide open from the strain, and that was with a white southern president that was a dem.
And Jefferson was a complete asshole, as were most of the founders on a personal level. Party freek libtards they were for that puritan era , and got around the jeebus freaks simply by claiming everything was god, and nothing wasn’t.
By the time the wingnut preachers of the day gave up trying to wrap their head around that notion, the Church of England was resting in peace on the American ass heap of history. We did get a pretty decent liberal constitution out of the deal, And our wingnuts have never forgave for that, let alone embrace the thang.
SatanicPanic
@Bubblegum Tate: Sounds like a “heighten the contradictions” plan. I am sooooo happy the right is now adopting all of our dumbest strategies.
MattR
So what the hell are they planning to do with the 14 year old who can’t shoot straight? Tie him to a tree just outside the gates?
Julie
@Bubblegum Tate: It sounds like I went to the same school as your lovely fiancée and can attest that what she says is true — though I’d argue that it’s creepy for *any* woman. A park ranger once sent me and a girlfriend home rather than let us spend the night in his park during the shoulder season because there had been assaults/abductions of female campers by the militia types. We were both a little shocked, since we’d camped alone west of the Cascades plenty of times. (To be fair, Moscow, Boise and Coeur d’Alene have gotten much less ‘Idaho’ with the influx of Californians of late.)
Yutsano
@Seanly: I heard tell the compound was supposed to be north of Donnelley but south of Moscow, but don’t quote me on that.
PsiFighter37
Oh, and that stunt Mitch the Bitch pulled off in the Senate today? Filibustering himself on the debt ceiling?
Honestly, I feel like the 2012 election made the GOP even more insane and delusional. It wasn’t a wake-up call to reality; it was a sign to them that they needed to crawl deeper into their own turtle shell.
These fuckers deserve to get their asses handed to them for how irresponsibly they’ve acted the past 4 years. I sure hope Obama & Co. are ready to have their man spend a shitload of political capital campaigning in places like Michigan and Ohio a couple years from now, putting Democrats (aka responsible, reality-based human beings) back in charge.
Jesus Christ. What an epic clusterfuck.
dmsilev
Since presumably dispute resolution will consist of AR-15s at 10 paces, I’m going to guess that arbitration won’t be all that necessary very often.
Baud
The South would hereby like to thank Idaho for taking the heat off of them for a day or two. Really appreciate it, guys.
The Dangerman
Do you think they planned for the space for the Synagogue and the Mosque?
Sm*t Cl*de
The Patriot Agreement is
dmsilev
Also, too, the next clause will involve requiring proper use of capitalization within sentences. This will of course cause the previous clauses to become null and void.
PeakVT
I wonder if they realize that about 40% of the county is a reservation.
BGinCHI
@dmsilev: Now that’s binding arbitration.
TheMightyTrowel
@PeakVT: wouldn’t land stealing, contract breaking and genocide be just a typical sunday afternoon to these white rights patriot sorts?
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@MattR:
Do you remember the villagers from the werewolf movie Red Riding Hood, and the way they behaved when things didn’t go quite as planned?
Oh, and I’m sure Gary Oldman will be happy to show up with an iron elephant-shaped kettle on wheels (plastered with old GOP campaign bumper stickers) to conduct the interrogations when they have trouble figuring out just who is telling lies and who is telling the truth.
Southern Beale
WOW JUST WOW.
Link to a Politico article but … please. I can’t condense it in a blockquote.
KG
There’s only one gate? I’ve watched/read enough of Game of Thrones to know you always need an escape route. On the bright side, if shit goes side ways and someone decides to attack these guys, we can honestly say “have fun storming the castle”
Maude
@TheMightyTrowel:
Usually they are too busy sleeping off the booze.
There are dangerous ones, to be sure, but there those that are all talk.
jeffreyw
Thread needs moar kitteh!
scav
AllI can think of is Celebration and imagine all their water faucets and door handles etc. in the shape of little guns.
eric nny
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: On the second day of Patriotmas my TeaLove gave to me, Two Turdy Rove’s, and an RPG in a Liberty Tree.
J.
For those who haven’t seen Jimmy Fallon and the Roots brilliant version of “All I want for Christmas is you,” here you go.
If Jimmy Fallon can make me like Mariah Carey again, anything is possible.
DonkeyKong
Needz moar witch trialz! Amiright!
Felonius Monk
I’m all for this Citadel thing. Let’s see: 5000 households, 3000 acres, that’s 3/5 acre per household, but with all the firearms museums and roads and stores and churches, etc. Let’s figure on a quarter-acre per household.
Now how long does anyone think, once this is up and running at top speed, will it take before everyone at this wonderful wing-nut utopia is going to be knee deep in shit and garbage. After all, these folks are not well known for any kind of environmental ethic and sure as hell it is not likely that they will be able to export said shit and garbage.
I guess we could look on the positive side — with armed 13 year olds, they will probably all shoot each other before ecological disaster strikes.
trollhattan
Having been informed by some in the BJ commentariat it’s unpossible for Apple to pull back any of their production to the States (on accounta the assembly plant has to be ten feet from the chip maker and twenty feet from the battery maker and also, too, ‘merkans are teh slow)–suck on this.
Now maybe they can have an easier time justifying the price to folks who aren’t already Applenauts.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/12/apple-announces-us-computers-disaster-ensues.html
the Conster
@Southern Beale:
What’s the matter with Kentucky? Oh, never mind.
Bubblegum Tate
@SatanicPanic:
I know, it’s kind of glorious. I’ve been egging him on, but he figured out that I’m not exactly on his side and deleted my comments.
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@KG:
Why look to fiction? We have these things in the West called brush fires. Sounds like the perfect death trap for 3,000 household.
Alex
This a close second best all time idea, right behind the Glibertarian off-shore living platform with zero regulations, building or otherwise!
KG
@Sm*t Cl*de: well, you’re voluntarily joining the Citadel, and then you must abide by the rules. I wonder what the consequences and repercussions are if you don’t abide by the rules? I mean, these God-fearing-constitution-loving-real-American Patriots wouldn’t take someone’s property without due process of law, would they?
trollhattan
@KG:
Duels. Lots and lots of duels.
Make it so.
KG
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques: my guess is the response goes:
because we all know that walls protect us against fires… jeez libtard, your fancy book learnin’ ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, now is it?
trollhattan
@KG:
They kan haz a perimeter firebreak by makin’ a Hummer racetrack around the place. win-win.
Liberty60
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques:
Darwin in action.
Poetic, ain’t it?
Enhanced Mooching Techniques
@KG: Any Westerner would know how wild fires can jump. However one just needs to embrace the madness,…
“As someone who lives in the west I am constantly harassed by these petty brush abatement laws drawn up by some pencil pusher off in the state capital. The excuse they always use is ‘fire danger’, which is ridiculous because the Forestry service starts most of the fires. As a Citadel resident will I be guaranteed my freedom from being harassed by these brush abatement laws?”
dmsilev
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques:
No worries. They’ll just call for help from federal firefighters.
What?
mai naem
Watching Chris Matthews right now – WTF is wrong with JC Watt’s head? He’s got veins sticking out like some weightlifters arms do. Weird.
trollhattan
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques:
Wow, just…wow. Makes as much sense as, “I’ll show you Al Gore, I’m buying the lowest gas mileage vee-hickle I can find. Hah!”
Two months later.
“Impeach Obama, gas went up two bucks!!”
sylvan
I thought wingnuts had disowned Thomas Jefferson as a science-loving RINO.
General Stuck
@Southern Beale:
The depth of dissonance in the right wing folk lore messaging is profound. And today, I read an article pontificating on how the end of Bush tax cuts will effect the wealthy blue states. The author throws this up with a sincere face, as clueless democrats screwing themselves. The article is so deeply down into right wing mythology and the sounds of nutters slinging shit in the echo chamber, it takes awhile to soak in, just how clueless they are about liberals and democrats in general.
The writer of this article genuinely believes the rank and file dems as well as wealthier ones that vote dem in the very blue states, see same world as the idiotic teabaggers. Their blinkered thinking is so fixated on Meismat every level of American life , it just does not compute that liberals care more about a sense of community and country that is all connected together socially and economically, to where you can’t look past one group or another, and expect it not to have an effect on the whole. And them personally. And that is the pragmatic consequences, never mind the moral ones.
This is their meaning of freedom, a clutch of morons running around snatching everything that isn’t nailed down for themselves, to hold up as a life well lived. Never dawning that collective infrastructure made it possible for them to get rich in the first place. And without that, or maintaining that, they are dooming their children to a return to hunter gathering status on the tree of evolution.
the Conster
@mai naem:
Head’s about to assplode with the cognitive dissonance of being a Republican.
emeraldcitybadger
They’ll be living in their own private Idaho.
fleeting expletive
So I’m making a quiche tonight. All I have is some boring cheddar, but I spied a jar of artichoke hearts in the cabinet. Is this a wise addition to a basic quiche?
the Conster
@General Stuck:
This is why any talk of Republicans changing is to laugh. It can’t happen. It’s like telling birds not to fly.
Just Some Fuckhead
I gots a high ranked avatar over there too.
trollhattan
@General Stuck:
They’ll never understand how Warren Buffett could have abandoned them in their time of
needgreed. Crap, when you scratch out the details, it’s just not That Big of a Deal. The wealthy will do what the wealthy always do: figure out what’s changed, develop a strategy to accommodate the changes to their advantage, profit!It’s the underpants gnomes, just without all the “?s”. They will still be rich.
Mnemosyne
@fleeting expletive:
Everything’s better with artichokes, but if it makes you feel better, the Pioneer Woman makes a quiche with artichoke hearts.
I think the big thing is to drain them really, really well so they don’t make things soggy.
I’m planning to make soup tonight with ingredients on hand — cream of chicken soup (condensed), milk, frozen brown rice, and Italian sausage. Maybe throw in some peas, too.
ETA: Food.com says yeah, go ahead, it’ll work.
Litlebritdifrnt
@fleeting expletive:
Sounds good to me. I would point out that I made a quiche with Florentine Eggmates once and it was outstanding. For all of you who are on a health kick.
Litlebritdifrnt
@fleeting expletive:
Sorry to add this is a reason to pretend that you are a Doomsday Prepper and ALWAYS have stockpiles of canned food in the house (and frozen too for that matter). I could whip up a six course meal with every ingredient known to man without going to the store right now, just with the contents of my freezer, my fridge and my stockpiles of canned goods.
I was poor as a kid, whenever I have money I don’t buy shoes or jewelry, I buy food. I admit I am a bit OCD about it, but should the apocalypse arrive tomorrow me and the DH and the pets are good for about 6 months.
The Other Chuck
@Mnemosyne: Tart to Tart here in San Francisco makes a pretty decent artichoke quiche, though it’s a tad bland. Got some of the roasted red pepper sauce from AG Ferrari and put just a wee dab on it, and it’s absolutely amazeballs.
Most quiche I make is just never all that firm. Maybe I add too much cheese.
fleeting expletive
Thanks, all! I drained the chokes and tried to break them apart. It’s starting to smell good.
GregB
This very same idea worked out quite well for Jim Jones and David Koresh.
Mnemosyne
@Litlebritdifrnt:
I’ve been having really good luck using Egg Beaters (or similar egg substitute products) in my baked goods instead of regular eggs. It really seems to make a difference, especially if I’m lazy and use a boxed mix.
I kind of suspect it’s because the “large” eggs I get at the store tend to be a little old and dried-out, while measuring out a 1/4 cup or 1/2 cup of egg substitute provides enough liquid.
different-church-lady
I’ma put the over/under on the first murder at 4 months after it opens. Who’s placing bets?
Original Lee
I see a certain two-dimensionality to their gated community thinking. Are they not thinking about the black helicopters at all, or do they think their Pure Patriotism and single gate will combine for overhead forcefield goodness?
A Ghost To Most
Citadel? They should call it Fort Wolverines!
Eta : did anyone else get xmas card from the White House?
Ni!
J. Michael Neal
@jeffreyw: That’s a trouble maker.
Anne Laurie
@Baud:
Not everyone — there’s also the Christianist child abusers, unmedicated paranoid schizophrenics, and individuals looking for a big backyard to bury the dead hookers where the nosy cops won’t be all up in their personal space.
MikeJ
@fleeting expletive: Quiche exists as an excuse to throw whatever is laying around in. And artichokes make most foods better.
Chris
@General Stuck:
What’s genuinely beautiful: he doesn’t once stop and ask himself how, if blue states have been so socialist for so long, HOW it is that they’ve managed to build an environment where the vast majority of America’s rich people thrive. By their ideology, all the rich people and districts should be in their part of the world. And yet it’s exactly the opposite.
g
I love the fact that they’ve chosen to locate a 5000 home walled community in a rural state with a history of annual wildfires – and provide only one access gate out.
that should work out well come fire season.
Anne Laurie
@PeakVT:
Maybe they think F Troop was a documentary.
RSA
Elsewhere on the main page:
I’m thinking Heaven’s Gate minus UFOs, plus RPGs.
MikeJ
Quiz time. Fill in the blank:
Yes, you got it right.
Darkrose
@General Stuck: The lack of self-awareness is breathtaking. Instead of thinking, “I wonder why rich people choose to live in places that tend to be liberal,” they say, “Ha, ha! Stupid libtards don’t even know they’re screwing themselves over!” The step to “Perhaps liberal areas are rich because the people choose to put money into the local infrastructure” is completely beyond them.
Cassidy
If I were a liberal billionaire, I would wait until they were done, then buy up all the business parcels.
Mnemosyne
@RSA:
Sounds more like Masada to me.
arguingwithsignposts
I wish just once one of these things would get off the ground so we could actually see teh EPIC FAIL instead of just hearing about it through glossy 4-color brochures and florid real estate speak.
A guy can dream.
Yutsano
@RSA: Hmm…I wonder if zombies can read maps.
MikeJ
@Yutsano: Yes they do, Otto. They just don’t understand it.
RSA
@Mnemosyne:
I learn something new every day.
The prophet Nostradumbass
You’ve got to remember that these are just simple Patriots. These are people of the land. The common clay of the new West. You know… morons.
fuckwit
Didn’t some nutbar in Waco, TX try almost exactly this same stunt in the 90s?
How’d that work out?
Mnemosyne
@RSA:
I was traumatized by a TV miniseries about it (back in the days when the networks still made miniseries).
ETA: The miniseries aired only 3 years after Jonestown, which is probably why it was traumatizing.
Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937
I think this is one of the FEMA camps we were promised. Obama eleventh dimensional chessed them again.
Newly-minted MBA
The citadel is the homeless shelter of liberal fascism
arguingwithsignposts
@Mnemosyne: Hey, I remember that miniseries. I was sort of surprised at the ending myself, as I recall. I never connected it with Jonestown, though. That really was upsetting, especially after seeing the Time (?) magazine with all the photos.
MikeJ
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937: Obama got them to self deport.
Joe
I got to reading the “patriot agreement” Wonkette linked to, and I found this line in it-
Ten: Town Militia will hold a yearly award/recognition ceremony on April 19th each year to celebrate Patriot’s Day. This will be a public event with all families welcome and encouraged to attend
Anyone remember what happened on that date?
The OKC bombing. These folks are dangerous.
different-church-lady
@arguingwithsignposts:
So were the Romans.
John of Indiana
I like this idea. Less Glenn Beck-lovin’ Rambo wanna-bees crowding the range when I wanna go shoot…
If i wasn’t so sure they’d shoot I think it’d be a hoot to buzz their little enclave in black helicopters.
Rosie Outlook
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques: Well, when the apocalypse hits, we know where the starving Balloon Juice hordes can go for sustenance. We will just have to push them ruthlessly off their mobility scooters if they get between us and the 17,000 can Beanie Weanie stash. TUNCH MUST BE FED.
arguingwithsignposts
@Joe: You know who was born on April 20th, don’t you?
MattF
Oh, why not let the boys build their cave out of sofa cushions. And play ‘Bang, you’re dead’ all they want to. We effete libruls might think it’s all rather symbolic and projective and just a teensy bit homo-cantsaythat, but it’s really just boys having fun.
1badbaba3
Fortunately, those walls work both ways.
Rand Careaga
They want a coat of arms for their castle. In an effort to gauge the calibration of their snark filter, I submitted this suggestion:
To my delight, it cleared moderation in under ten minutes.
Suffern ACE
@MikeJ: independents are weird.
Joe
@arguingwithsignposts: Yup… I sure do. And then there’s the Branch Davidian thing, which seems to fit into the whole Waco aesthetic these guys seem to be aiming for.
I’m just glad they don’t seem to be setting up in my immediate neighborhood. I bet the folks around Spokane (65 miles NW) are getting tired of these kind of idjits.
PurpleGirl
I’m thinking it’s going to be a walled Feudal village — think of a medieval English town. That one gate, though, is going to be pretty jammed with everyone coming and going through it. Tourists won’t like the extra time on line to enter the village. It doesn’t sound like they’ve thought through half of what they need to.
And Another Thing...
@MikeJ: That number is spooky…
Do you ever look at someone & wonder if they’re part of the __% ?
Capri
@Joe: Kinda makes you wonder if 50% of the residents won’t be undercover FBI agents.
Anne Laurie
@Joe: To be fair (cuz we’re Liberals!), Patriots Day was a real holiday long before any of these gorbs or their heeeros were so much as a gleam in their daddy’s syphillis-damaged eye.
PurpleGirl
@Anne Laurie: That’s right. Will they have a marathon like Boston does on that day?
Jay C
@Commenting at Balloon Juice Since 1937: @MikeJ:
Heh. But the Citadel idea is so much superior an idea! Instead of the Ebil Gubmint building concentration camps for extremist morons in remote counties, private enterprise can step in, milk the rubes out of their money, and get them to build the camp themselves! AND pay for.their own “incarceration”!
Who says the Obama Admin doesn’twant to foster businesses?
LeftCoastTom
My reaction to reading the comments on the Patriot Agreement page…they clearly intend that someone who is not the signer actually owns the…commune? “Article 11” addresses the issue of sanctions by threatening “the loss of Lease and expulsion from the community”.
So…if the dipshits who fall for this don’t actually own anything…who does? And how much are the dipshits expected to pay for the privilege of not owning anything?
Anne Laurie
@Capri:
Here’s a thought experiment: What if the blogspot is a Homeland Security “honey trap” designed to lure potential domestic terrorists into incriminating themselves?
(Answer: DHS doesn’t come up with good ideas. But I’ll bet you could tweak the target Patriots’ paranoia glands by suggesting it… )
Concerned Citizen
This reminds me of the 80’s when they were selling bomb shelters and hovercrafts. Back then, they were smart enough to sell it to the kooks who read Guns N’ Ammo.
There is no way they have 5,000 families. It’s fantasy. I guess my question is where’s the grift? Can they get money without ROI?
Mr Stagger Lee
Now there is a place where the President, can use his DRONNNEZZZ!!!! And I will support it!
John PM
Any other fans of The Walking Dead getting a Woodbury vibe from this story?
Bubblegum Tate
@Capri:
Like this classic from The Onion: Klan rally 70 percent undercover reporters.
The Other Chuck
Sigh … if only this thing could be real. But it’s not going to be a feudal fiefdom, a galt’s gulch, or a lord of the flies, because it’s a SCAM.
Even if the planner is serious and not on the grift, he’s scamming himself with pure mainlined delusion, and/or will fall prey to hucksters and scam artists.
Ground will never be broken.
Or if it is, here’s how it’ll play out: it will be a shabby compound of trailers with a barbed wire fence, starting with maybe a couple dozen folks, most of whom will leave within a year, and the remaining five or so will have epic squabbles over governance and principles in the drafting of a new constitution for their Glorious New Society, which will all spill out onto various blogs to provide us entertainment for years to come.
(inhale)…
See Sealand.
Anne Laurie
@LeftCoastTom:
I’m guessing the idea is based on what used to be called a “Hong Kong crown lease”, where you rent the land for 99 years & can do what you want with it, build as you please, pass it down to your heirs… until the authorities decide they want it back. But, as long as they’re investing in all the other trappings of Ye Olde Medievalism, holding everything you own at the mercy of the local baron is just that little extra touch of authenticity!
Anne Laurie
@The Other Chuck: Well, yeah. If any of us liberals thought this might go beyond a dozen trailers & some barbed wire, it’d be a tragedy. But as yet another Galtian Castle-in-the-Sky, it’s a comedic treasure!
RepubAnon
@Enhanced Mooching Techniques: You know, for a bunch of “no government is good government” types, they sure do have a bunch of rules imposed by their governing board.
don
This has already been tried. Bo Gritz, who was the go between during the Ruby Ridge shoot out created a place called “Almost Heaven” in Idaho about 20 years ago. No rules, no regulations, the place quickly degraded. Look it up on Google.
opie jeanne
@arguingwithsignposts:
I do.
My husband worked for a man who came to the US shortly after WWII, as a young man. He and his brother had been in the Hitler Youth, and he pointed out that date on the calendar to my husband.
Allen
I don’t know what these fuck heads have against Idaho, but with myself being born in Central Idaho and my dads family having lived there since the mid-1800’s, they really piss me (and my family) off. Send the bastards back to Texas. Just the thought of the paramedics not showing up without a fully armed escort cracks me up.
But, if it is, as it says, located in the mountains of Idaho, that rules out a lot of the state, close to half. So that leaves the Clearwater area or further north in the Priest Lake area. That’s the part that has roads.
Yutsano
@opie jeanne: When I went to Germany, I was hosted by an older German man and his spouse. They were both gracious, but they got very quiet when I discussed my background. Since their ages would have made them old enough to participate in the Hitler Youth movement, I chose not to press. Especially since earlier in the trip we visited Dachau.
Joey Maloney
I wonder if The Citadel has trademarked their name?
opie jeanne
@Yutsano:
Good times.
David finally went looking for another job because … well, sometimes you hear people say they’re miserable at work because their boss is a Nazi? People laugh when I tell them this, and I have to explain that the guy really was, and he didn’t come here because he found enlightenment after the war.
Xenos
@Original Lee:
And they had better hope that the New Black Panthers don’t get their hand on some mortars.
Xenos
@opie jeanne:
Every German child old enough to be enrolled in school was in the Hitler Youth, once the war started. That generation, which was too young to fight but old enough to be indoctrinated, and certainly old enough to suffer the deprivation and rape and ruin, can be a psychological mess. The combination of guilt, self-hatred, and ingrained revulsion for people they don’t even hate leads to, well, I don’t know what to call it. Just let it die off.
Yutsano
@opie jeanne: I really tried not to make it a point, but the discussion came up. His wife was just lovely though, and it was obvious it was a time in their lives they would as soon forget.
Hobbes
I look forward to seeing who gets to play Snake Plissken in Escape From Idaho.
Jay in Oregon
@Joe:
Don’t forget that the OKC bombing happened on that day because it was also the day the standoff at the Branch Davidian compound ended when fire broke out, destroying the compound.
Phoenician in a time of Romans
The Citadel will have between 3,500 and 5,000 households within the walls, with a single gate permitting access.
How convenient – a single machine gun should prevent any of these loons getting out.
Fort Geek
@fuckwit: He finally stopped smoking. (too soon?)
JustAnotherBob
This is going to help with the deficit problem. These folks are building a FEMA camp for us using their own money.
With a little luck we’ll be able to get several of these up and going at no public expense.
owlbear1
A Turner Diaries themed amusement park.
How, uhm,… pathetic.
raven
@Joey Maloney: Yea, they are all subunits of the one in Hue.
brantl
I think having all of these cantankerous gun monkeys required to carry a gun in the town square will be natural selection for common sense in action.
eyelessgame
So… once there, they’re all going to… what? Farm? Fish? Hunt? Gather? Live off canned goods? Are they thinking self-contained economy?
I probably take this entirely too seriously, but what do these morans think they’re going to do for a living, exactly?
Ajaye
Interesting how folks who fulminate most vigorously against their rights being taken away by Obama and the libruls have no problem handing their major rights to a HOA board of durectors and or fundamentalist religious leaders?
You mean to tell me that the 2nd Amendment doesn’t protect my right NOT to own or carry a gun? I realize that a HOA is not a state actor but if they charter as an independent city and have an ordinance to that effect, it may very well be unconstitutional. Also too, I imagine state,local and federal laws still apply as to anti discrimmination, zoning, food safety, environmental protection etc. I hope they do build it. It would be a fascinating sociology experiment.
Paul in KY
@Seanly: I thought ‘The Capital’ of Panem ended up being somewhere in Canada.
Paul in KY
@sylvan: I think they found out he was tougher on his slaves (don’t fail to make your nail quota) than they thought & now they are rehabilitating him.