Time Doesn't Necessarily Heal

A bad government may justify its unjust laws with all the persuasive powers at its command; but it can only buy time.

In recent times what happened at Waco, Texas made its impact resulting in Oklahoma bombing. Five years to the day. So many innocent lives were lost because of a wrong decision. I refer to the Reconstruction Period just following the Civil War. Having humiliated the South in a war and economically left in ruins Washington passed a law: Posse Comitatus.

Posse Comitatus is a legal term: it means law enforcement in unusual circumstances. Since it allowed Federal troops to be sent to trouble spots across the land, the question always remained in minds of people if their presence was really necessary and not a cover for a more ‘darker’ purpose? The south suspected the bona fide of the hasty law passed as the screw to be turned to the last.
To counter this, many groups in the heartland of America have surfaced one way or other since then.
The Federal troops can only deal with ‘the clear and present danger’ of riots and the like. They cannot remove what is in the hearts and minds of people. Thus would a bad law spin out of control like the free radical which, I explained in my previous post.
In the 1970’s the U.S Government had urged the farmers to take loans for updating their farm and machinery; but bad policies and lack of co-ordination among agencies set up to implement them saw the farmers failing one after the other. A spate of suicides followed. In 1983 Gordon and Yuri Kahl in Midlands were the victims of that discontent. The ‘renegades’ had taken shelter in Arkansas and a posse of U.S Marshals went there to capture them. Kahl died in a shoot-out and his death gave a martyr to the cause. (The white supremacy was quick to foment more trouble. In June 1983 a spate of new groups mushroomed: Arm of the Lord Covenant, Sword of America and so on. ) FBI armed with sufficient evidence could arrest many of these cult leaders. Timothy McVeigh was a member who would some 12 years later begin his murderous rampage. (cf. Week5d5-Sufficient unto this Day)

benny