Yes, they still have those flags flying at the Post Office in my neighborhood. Of course anyone who wants to take them down will be accused of not "supporting the troops".
Ta, Erik. Between Bo Gritz and Arizona Wilder, it seems all our modern problems have roots back then. Btw, none of us spat at returning soldiers. We tried to help them reintegrate into society, but with all the PTSD and addiction, it was not easy. Rest in poop, Bo.
My Dad was a part of the Ramtha Cult ("Ramtha's School of Enlightenment" -- "Stop trapping yourself in 'poverty consciousness!'") for over a decade. If you haven't heard of JZ Knight (she was in full character in the New Age movie "What The Bleep Do We Know") consider yourself ignorantly fortunate.
Anyway, among other grifter visitors to visit the compound in the '90s to spew their horseshit was BoNoBo Gritz.
I still have one of his books bequeathed by my Dad around here somewhere. I think the title is "A Nation Betrayed" with a Nephew Art cover drawing of the Statue of Liberty with tears in her eyes. Nice.
I can remember Dad telling me one of BooBo's (Buboe's) first remarks when he began his Gritz n Gravy Grift lecture was how impressed he was with how everybody in the audience was a warrior, ready for the next _______ crisis. Sure, BoJanGles.
Well along other things besides giving a shit ton of his $$$ to keep JZ in fashion and horsies, my Dad also:
~bought an empty lot;
~illegally had some contractors build a survival bunker on it;
~supposedly lined the entire thing with copper (y'know, to keep the "brianwave control frequencies out" or wtvr) think copper lined hats and pyramid shaped cones you could wear: high head fashion in the 90's among them in The Know;
~and I guess sold it to some rube when his erratic behavior emerged (he has serious bi-polar/borderline personality/??? issues) and he had to leave the cult for his next Stage of enlightenment (as in "my wallet got so enlightened when that last fakir took alla muh monies!!!")
Informational and, for me, educational stories like this are why I feel I'm completing the college education I never had (for reasons). I need to increase my tuition/subscription to Wonkette University to thank you ALL (read that in a Lola Heatherton voice. RIP Catherine O'Hara) for contributing to this lofty institution of knowledge. And dick jokes. And a reminder of how all of this fuckery had me worried even back in the 90s with its Nazi-like vibe; it was especially creepy to me because I was working in a law enforcement office among brown shirt uniforms, and even wore a snappy WW2-esque Andrews Sisters-like uniform myself, with a snappy little brown uniform bow. But I digress. Thank you Mr. (Prof.?) Loomis for today's class.
Hallelujah!! The only Americans that were living in SE Asia after 1975 were the ones who deserted by choice, and every Vietnam vet knew it, and none would say it. That would have gone against the “stabbed in the back by hippie dippy liberals” and told the truth: by 1969, the US Army had quietly mutinied and was no longer fighting. Vietnamization was about continuing the war, not “making the South Vietnamese fight their own war.”
i can see the appeal of hoping that your kid is a POW that was left behind, instead of being dead, and his/her body not located - it gives you hope in your grief. of course some asshole went out and monetised and grifted on it though
Honestly--and beliefs aside--Randy Weaver is more sympathetic than the one sentence synopsis. An agent shot his dog, setting the debacle into motion. The feds firing first put it in the self defense arena.
I disagree. Randy Weaver was wanted on gun charges and was convicted in absentia. He was probably beating his wife and kids, or at the least, abusing and neglecting them. He believed in an imminent apocalypse of inner city blacks and Jews killing whites, which was why he was in Bumfucked Nowhere Idaho in the first place. He wasn’t paying his taxes (because these guys never do) and belonged to Posse Comitatus, one of the urNeoNazi groups that led to Sovereign Citizens and had connections to the Aryan Brotherhood, the white prison drug gang, and the Order, who killed liberal Denver Talk Radio host Alan Berg with a car bomb.
Why a man this twisted and sick, another Ted Kaczinski, became a martyr to extreme NRA people who started militias in the 1990s that culminated in the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, is a matter for speculation into the self-pitying mindset of all Nazis, who see themselves as victims, especially the violent Mormons, and dream about fighting back in a Red Dawn/Turner Diaries fantasy of weapons and guerilla living off the land. (Somehow, these fantasies never explain what will happen when the bullets run out.).
But all Randy Weaver had to do was surrender peacefully to the US Marshals and ATF agents, and no one would have been hurt. Instead, his friend and his son, who were as paranoid as he, were scouting in the woods with his dog, and got into a firefight with SWAT teams, and his wife was standing in the doorway with a firearm when a sniper shot her. Weaver was going to be starved out, just like David Koresh and Billy Jack, and so Colonel Gritz was able to talk him out, like AIM at Wounded Knee, and he surrendered. The photos show there was no line of young people with fists in the air singing “One Tin Soldier” or shouting “Wolverines!!”
Sympathize with Randy Weaver and his family if you like, but to me he is a Horst Wessel figure to the militia. Bo Gritz deluded good people with the “Let’s bring these guys home”, like DJ Chuck Britain on WLS Radio, who spent years repeating this fantasy about POWs still being held captive in SE Asia, until finally the execs cancelled his 0200 late night talk show.
I didn’t know Gritz was still alive, but he did much that was bad in the 1980s, because people didn’t want to admit that the US lost the Vietnam War militarily. Hollywood bought the whole grift, because it made money, and movies extolled violence as a solution to solving problems. Generations have grown up dreaming about being “Good guys with guns” because of Bo Gritz.
I am not saying he didn’t deserve to be arrested or that his beliefs were admirable in any way. My understanding of how the event went down was that somebody panicked when Weaver's dog barked and he shot it, precipitating the firefight. You know he’s paranoid, so that’s why you proceed with caution. The FBI botched the arrest in a way that cost him his family, that’s going to factor in sentencing is my point.
Possibly. It’s been a few years since I read about it, and I should refresh my memory with Wikipedia before posting about it. But I will stand on the assertion that if Weaver had just surrendered to whoever came for him on weapons charges that he hadn’t gone to court to defend, causing a warrant to be issued for him, causing law enforcement to come to take him into custody, Weaver’s son, wife, and dog would still be alive.
As for sympathy, I’m sorry again, but after Brianna Taylor, and Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, (Have you seen the hypocrisy on America’s Gun Club Quora about Alex Pretti? (Don’t go armed and protesting and don’t interfere with law enforcement, like filming them, cause thats dumb.) From the same Groypers who defend January 6, Constitutional Carry, and think Gordon Kahl and Randy Weaver are martyrs.), I’m all out of fucks to give. Until 2nd Amendment advocates start to defend the right of Blacks to self-defense, they are all just self-pitying hypocrites. “Self-defense” is coded language for killing blacks like Trayvon Martin and libtards like Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
If Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero, then the people who protest ICE should also be heroes. But MAGA has a nuance which turns out to just be racism. Randy Weaver, Gordon Kahl, and Kyle Rittenhouse are racists, so they are “sympathetic.” Briana Taylor, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, and Black Panther Fred Hampton are libtards, so they get killed like they deserve.
I'm 41, so this is someone that I didn't know a thing about and this is a fascinating essay. I especially find the theory that Rambo rewrote actual history. Totally believe that to be true! People want something more noble than what actually happened so they'll believe the bloody, heroic fairytale movie over what actually went down.
The Eagles also suffered a similar fate when The Big Lebowski came out. 🤣
The POW/MIA flag on top of the Maine State House used to annoy the hell out of me, until I started seeing it as representing our prisoners in Guantánamo. Let's not forget them, I think.
My dad fought in Vietnam. One day he and I were discussing it and I said something about how "we lost that war." My mom would have none of that. She rarely gave voice to strong opinions, but to my remark, which she had overheard, she said, "We did NOT lose the Vietnam War!"
As for POW/MIAs, one of my dad's brothers went missing in action in the early weeks of the Korean War, when the battalion he was serving in was overrun by a North Korean division. The army declared him KIA two years later, but until their own dying days, most of his brothers and sisters (there number was legion) expressed their belief that he was a POW, still held by the godless Commies in some Chinese prison as slave labor.
In my uncle's case, they couldn't find any of it. And everyone he served with in that battle was MIA, so no one could say what specifically had happened to him. He went to war and did not come back.
Who in the world is promoting pedophilia and adultery?
Your hero the child rapist, who you voted for three times, fuckface, and his entire administration, and the half of congress he controls, and pretty much his entire party, which is YOUR party. And I guarantee you didn't care until the day you died.
I used to have book floating around here about the creation of the POW/MIA myth, but I'm damned if I can find it right now. Apparently the first flag was raised in the village next door to me, and pretty much every government flagpole has one flying. Unfortunately, no politicians have enough guts to ask "Why are they still there?"
I had totally forgotten about this lunatic maniac grifter. Oy veh is mir!
Thank you for the wonderful horror story!
Yes, they still have those flags flying at the Post Office in my neighborhood. Of course anyone who wants to take them down will be accused of not "supporting the troops".
Ta, Erik. Between Bo Gritz and Arizona Wilder, it seems all our modern problems have roots back then. Btw, none of us spat at returning soldiers. We tried to help them reintegrate into society, but with all the PTSD and addiction, it was not easy. Rest in poop, Bo.
My Dad was a part of the Ramtha Cult ("Ramtha's School of Enlightenment" -- "Stop trapping yourself in 'poverty consciousness!'") for over a decade. If you haven't heard of JZ Knight (she was in full character in the New Age movie "What The Bleep Do We Know") consider yourself ignorantly fortunate.
Anyway, among other grifter visitors to visit the compound in the '90s to spew their horseshit was BoNoBo Gritz.
I still have one of his books bequeathed by my Dad around here somewhere. I think the title is "A Nation Betrayed" with a Nephew Art cover drawing of the Statue of Liberty with tears in her eyes. Nice.
I can remember Dad telling me one of BooBo's (Buboe's) first remarks when he began his Gritz n Gravy Grift lecture was how impressed he was with how everybody in the audience was a warrior, ready for the next _______ crisis. Sure, BoJanGles.
Well along other things besides giving a shit ton of his $$$ to keep JZ in fashion and horsies, my Dad also:
~bought an empty lot;
~illegally had some contractors build a survival bunker on it;
~supposedly lined the entire thing with copper (y'know, to keep the "brianwave control frequencies out" or wtvr) think copper lined hats and pyramid shaped cones you could wear: high head fashion in the 90's among them in The Know;
~and I guess sold it to some rube when his erratic behavior emerged (he has serious bi-polar/borderline personality/??? issues) and he had to leave the cult for his next Stage of enlightenment (as in "my wallet got so enlightened when that last fakir took alla muh monies!!!")
Informational and, for me, educational stories like this are why I feel I'm completing the college education I never had (for reasons). I need to increase my tuition/subscription to Wonkette University to thank you ALL (read that in a Lola Heatherton voice. RIP Catherine O'Hara) for contributing to this lofty institution of knowledge. And dick jokes. And a reminder of how all of this fuckery had me worried even back in the 90s with its Nazi-like vibe; it was especially creepy to me because I was working in a law enforcement office among brown shirt uniforms, and even wore a snappy WW2-esque Andrews Sisters-like uniform myself, with a snappy little brown uniform bow. But I digress. Thank you Mr. (Prof.?) Loomis for today's class.
Hallelujah!! The only Americans that were living in SE Asia after 1975 were the ones who deserted by choice, and every Vietnam vet knew it, and none would say it. That would have gone against the “stabbed in the back by hippie dippy liberals” and told the truth: by 1969, the US Army had quietly mutinied and was no longer fighting. Vietnamization was about continuing the war, not “making the South Vietnamese fight their own war.”
i can see the appeal of hoping that your kid is a POW that was left behind, instead of being dead, and his/her body not located - it gives you hope in your grief. of course some asshole went out and monetised and grifted on it though
Honestly--and beliefs aside--Randy Weaver is more sympathetic than the one sentence synopsis. An agent shot his dog, setting the debacle into motion. The feds firing first put it in the self defense arena.
I disagree. Randy Weaver was wanted on gun charges and was convicted in absentia. He was probably beating his wife and kids, or at the least, abusing and neglecting them. He believed in an imminent apocalypse of inner city blacks and Jews killing whites, which was why he was in Bumfucked Nowhere Idaho in the first place. He wasn’t paying his taxes (because these guys never do) and belonged to Posse Comitatus, one of the urNeoNazi groups that led to Sovereign Citizens and had connections to the Aryan Brotherhood, the white prison drug gang, and the Order, who killed liberal Denver Talk Radio host Alan Berg with a car bomb.
Why a man this twisted and sick, another Ted Kaczinski, became a martyr to extreme NRA people who started militias in the 1990s that culminated in the Murrah Building bombing in Oklahoma City, is a matter for speculation into the self-pitying mindset of all Nazis, who see themselves as victims, especially the violent Mormons, and dream about fighting back in a Red Dawn/Turner Diaries fantasy of weapons and guerilla living off the land. (Somehow, these fantasies never explain what will happen when the bullets run out.).
But all Randy Weaver had to do was surrender peacefully to the US Marshals and ATF agents, and no one would have been hurt. Instead, his friend and his son, who were as paranoid as he, were scouting in the woods with his dog, and got into a firefight with SWAT teams, and his wife was standing in the doorway with a firearm when a sniper shot her. Weaver was going to be starved out, just like David Koresh and Billy Jack, and so Colonel Gritz was able to talk him out, like AIM at Wounded Knee, and he surrendered. The photos show there was no line of young people with fists in the air singing “One Tin Soldier” or shouting “Wolverines!!”
Sympathize with Randy Weaver and his family if you like, but to me he is a Horst Wessel figure to the militia. Bo Gritz deluded good people with the “Let’s bring these guys home”, like DJ Chuck Britain on WLS Radio, who spent years repeating this fantasy about POWs still being held captive in SE Asia, until finally the execs cancelled his 0200 late night talk show.
I didn’t know Gritz was still alive, but he did much that was bad in the 1980s, because people didn’t want to admit that the US lost the Vietnam War militarily. Hollywood bought the whole grift, because it made money, and movies extolled violence as a solution to solving problems. Generations have grown up dreaming about being “Good guys with guns” because of Bo Gritz.
I am not saying he didn’t deserve to be arrested or that his beliefs were admirable in any way. My understanding of how the event went down was that somebody panicked when Weaver's dog barked and he shot it, precipitating the firefight. You know he’s paranoid, so that’s why you proceed with caution. The FBI botched the arrest in a way that cost him his family, that’s going to factor in sentencing is my point.
Possibly. It’s been a few years since I read about it, and I should refresh my memory with Wikipedia before posting about it. But I will stand on the assertion that if Weaver had just surrendered to whoever came for him on weapons charges that he hadn’t gone to court to defend, causing a warrant to be issued for him, causing law enforcement to come to take him into custody, Weaver’s son, wife, and dog would still be alive.
As for sympathy, I’m sorry again, but after Brianna Taylor, and Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, (Have you seen the hypocrisy on America’s Gun Club Quora about Alex Pretti? (Don’t go armed and protesting and don’t interfere with law enforcement, like filming them, cause thats dumb.) From the same Groypers who defend January 6, Constitutional Carry, and think Gordon Kahl and Randy Weaver are martyrs.), I’m all out of fucks to give. Until 2nd Amendment advocates start to defend the right of Blacks to self-defense, they are all just self-pitying hypocrites. “Self-defense” is coded language for killing blacks like Trayvon Martin and libtards like Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
If Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero, then the people who protest ICE should also be heroes. But MAGA has a nuance which turns out to just be racism. Randy Weaver, Gordon Kahl, and Kyle Rittenhouse are racists, so they are “sympathetic.” Briana Taylor, Renee Good, and Alex Pretti, and Black Panther Fred Hampton are libtards, so they get killed like they deserve.
That’s B.S.
Well said
I'm 41, so this is someone that I didn't know a thing about and this is a fascinating essay. I especially find the theory that Rambo rewrote actual history. Totally believe that to be true! People want something more noble than what actually happened so they'll believe the bloody, heroic fairytale movie over what actually went down.
The Eagles also suffered a similar fate when The Big Lebowski came out. 🤣
There was an excellent article in Harpers Magazine about the whole phenomenon in the mid 1990s. My wife pitched it when she cleaned out my library
Behind the Bastards did an episode about this guy. He was grifter scum.
Thoughts and prayers
The POW/MIA flag on top of the Maine State House used to annoy the hell out of me, until I started seeing it as representing our prisoners in Guantánamo. Let's not forget them, I think.
My dad fought in Vietnam. One day he and I were discussing it and I said something about how "we lost that war." My mom would have none of that. She rarely gave voice to strong opinions, but to my remark, which she had overheard, she said, "We did NOT lose the Vietnam War!"
As for POW/MIAs, one of my dad's brothers went missing in action in the early weeks of the Korean War, when the battalion he was serving in was overrun by a North Korean division. The army declared him KIA two years later, but until their own dying days, most of his brothers and sisters (there number was legion) expressed their belief that he was a POW, still held by the godless Commies in some Chinese prison as slave labor.
MIA = dead, but we couldn't find enough of the body to prove it
In my uncle's case, they couldn't find any of it. And everyone he served with in that battle was MIA, so no one could say what specifically had happened to him. He went to war and did not come back.
Who in the world is promoting pedophilia and adultery?
Your hero the child rapist, who you voted for three times, fuckface, and his entire administration, and the half of congress he controls, and pretty much his entire party, which is YOUR party. And I guarantee you didn't care until the day you died.
Thanks for the history lesson. I had no idea!
I used to have book floating around here about the creation of the POW/MIA myth, but I'm damned if I can find it right now. Apparently the first flag was raised in the village next door to me, and pretty much every government flagpole has one flying. Unfortunately, no politicians have enough guts to ask "Why are they still there?"
"Bo Gritz is on the left and Randy Weaver is in the center" Not only a photo caption but an accurate description of the 21st-century Republican party!