They’re good enough at proselytizing to perpetually aggrieved, especially the people who fit into two categories: People in a lot of debt, frequently to the IRS, and people who had their kids taken away from them by CPS or in a divorce. (There’s almost a subculture of people who are really, really angry at the whole idea of Child Protective Services, for reasons which are as depressing as they are obvious.) Get the right mix of desperation and unwarranted self-importance and you have a mindset quite fertile for the whole Sovereign Citizen religion. And there are, of course, people, known as “gurus”, who are more than willing to sell seminars and books to spread the nonsense to them.
But the biggest single source of perpetual grievance is race: The original Sovereign Citizens came from the Posse Comitatus organization from the 1960s, which was founded by a member of the Nazi-inspired Silver Shirts. The idea of being “free” from the Federal Government was, therefore, mixed up with the idea of being “free” from the Jew-controlled race-mixing Federal government which was then cracking down on Jim Crow. More recent is the “Black Auxiliary” Sovereign Citizen movement, the Washitaw Nation spun off the Moorish Science Temple (already the parent organization to the Nation of Islam and the Almighty Black P. Stone Nation (El Rukn) street gang) which believes that Black people are the real Native Americans and that all land is therefore theirs and therefore get out of your house now because I’m squatting in it.
[quote=issendai]
[ol]
[li]People with serious money troubles or legal problems. When you’re so deep in the hole that you can’t see daylight any more, you’ll grasp at just about anything that offers a wisp of hope.[/li][li]People who have had way too many run-ins with the police. Some are sick of being detained for Being in Public While Black. Some are assholes who are going to have the cops riding their asses for the rest of their lives because of their charming personalities and/or fondness for intoxicants. The conventional ways of fighting back don’t work for these people, and they’re desperate for something, anything, that can give them at least the feeling of taking their power back.[/li][li]People who resent authority. These come in two flavors:[/li][ul]
[li]Whiners. Best typified by the string of exquisitely passive-aggressive young white men who take cameras into courthouses and police precincts to conduct “First Amendment audits.” They wander the halls, filming, until someone asks them to stop recording, then they spend the next half-hour needling officials, making demands, and being condescending dicks. Their official purpose is to educate the police in the public’s right to record in public. The payoff they’re looking for, by their own account, is much different.[/li][li]Ranters. A more dangerous wing of the movement, focused on gaining absolute freedom, independence, and the right to resist anyone in authority. At the mild end, Ernie terTelgte, “The Natural Man,” who turned a missing $25 fishing license into a year-plus legal saga with multiple jail stints for contempt. At the serious end, the Posse Comitatus.[/li][/ul]
[li]Conspiratorial nuts. Some people are drawn toward anything that looks like secret knowledge. They want to know what’s behind the curtain, how the world really works. More importantly, they need to feel unique and in control. Sovereign citizens are still uncommon, so being a sovereign is a surefire way to feel set apart from the herd, and the movement’s techniques are all about taking control. It’s conspiracy-theorist catnip.[/ol][/li][/quote]
Some of these people would believe weird shit regardless, others fell into it because they felt hopeless.
The is a peculiar madness to some men who argue for their rights. My mind is always drawn to a young Jefferson Davis.
As a cadet at West Point he was court martialed for being “drunk on spirits.” He got out of the charges by saying he had been drinking beer. What a clever lad.
He went on to argue that since the Constitution did not say succession was illegal, it must be legal.
I am now reading his Short History of the Confederate States of America. He was still an argumentative ass. He seems to be pointing out that because of his clever words things that happened did not happen because they should not have happened.
Some people just think they are so smart that the rules do not apply to them.
Yes I agree that the sovcits have very high time preference and are short term thinkers, especially the characters we see in the funny videos.
I don’t agree that they are less intelligent than the average joe. The average joe doesn’t even comprehend or wish to comprehend the world of ideas.
As someone who lives in an urban environment, sovcits seem a bit nuts. On the other hand, I could see someone living in extreme rural environments being a sovcit and actually doing well for themselves to a certain extent.
Yes I am inspired by persecuted minorities throughout history who didn’t make waves and ended up being well off. Take the Japanese Americans and the Jews for example. Bucking the system has never worked well for a geographical minority and the individual is the world’s smallest minority.
SovCits are the equivalent of people who see a “you get $1 trillion if you vacate your lease by the end of the year” in the tiny writing on a contract and think they’ll get it. Just because it says it doesn’t mean you could get it; it’s impractical.
Or like 2nd-Amendment people who think that “the right to bear arms shall not be infringed” means you get to have a private nuclear arsenal. The world is not 100% faithful to technicalities; it’s impractical.
Sovereign Citizens are far less intelligent than the average person. Average people can recognize reality and deal with it. Sovereign Citizens are unable to handle something that basic. When you start thinking the world of ideas is somehow more real than the world you live in, you’re not living intelligently.
If you’re running as fast as you can with your eyes closed and you’re in a forest, you’re going to run into a tree very soon. If you’re running as fast as you can with your eyes closed and you’re in a field, you might be able to run along for some time without hitting something. But either way, you’re still running with your eyes closed and that’s a dumb way to travel. Smart people open their eyes and steer around the obstacles rather than imagine they can run through them. Only idiots think they can run in any direction as long as they refuse to admit obstacles exist.
My brother went SovCit over ten years ago, and this describes him perfectly.
The problem is that they do not believe the constitution is valid. That at the time of the civil war the Constitution of “These United States” was replaced with a forgery for “The United States”.
(and that somehow, govt officials are aware of this, and will use the old original valid constitution to treat you if you know the magic words. Or something, don’t ask me, it hurts my brain just knowing what I do know.)
I used the same metaphor with my brother. “Is the Mafia a legitimate govt?” “No.” “Will they still break your kneecaps if you don’t pay them?”
“You will be screaming and yelling that they don’t have the right to do this, as they put you in handcuffs, take you to jail, put you in front of a judge, and send you to prison.”
Which is exactly how that played out.
Of the SovCits that I’ve met (sample size 3, with only one I knew well), they were pretty smart, probably smarter than average. The problem is is that they thought that they were much smarter than that.
Smart people are as, or even more, susceptible to delusional thinking.
Or, those deluded enough to think that the trees will get out of their way as the recognize the superior qualities of the blind runner.
That may be the case, but I’m guessing a good chunk of what they say isn’t in the original draft either. In fact, if you dig up a 200+ year old document, I think we can all be sure that it doesn’t give anyone the right to drive a car.
Please don’t think that I am in any way defending them, nor even trying to make sense of their argument, but to show that the very basis of their argument is based in conspiracy against them.
Gods, it’s like those hilarious throwaway lines from the OSI in The Venture Brothers: “You’ll be vanquishing enemies for the organization that’s been defending the us since the 2nd American Revolution! The Invisible one!”
You are not understanding why the sovcits do what they do. They mostly believe they are engaging in civil disobedience. Some may believe they have uncovered something magical, but I’m sure that is the minority. They get a rush from bucking the system. Intelligence is neither here nor there.
I have found most of them to be mean-spirited shitheads looking for a way to cheat the system, and most of them are stupid enough to believe anybody that tells them what they want to hear.
There wasanincident involving Sovereign Citizens the next county over from me in 2003–the younger officer killed was a high-school friend of one of my college friends.
