What, In God's Name Is Going On With Merrick Garland? Part 1

Several people have asked me what is going on with Merrick Garland. What is he thinking, why does he seem to be protecting Trump? According to recent coverage, he has made policy announcements on nine separate outstanding cases to mitigate Trump's legal exposure. And it is now unbelievably an open question as to whether he will prosecute Steve Bannon for contempt of Congress. Well, how in the world did this happen?

Some would argue that he's a Centrist, therefore soft on Trump. Others point to his track record as a Judge, for example rulings in favor of the Gun industry to argue that he is conflicted. Others say he is simply sticking with DOJ traditions of keeping the Department apolitical and independent, supposedly in place since Watergate. And in making these arguments, those folks would likely conclude by saying, "it really IS that simple". 

I think it is something else. Why, you ask? Because 40 years of political organizing experience involving global issues tells me that the yearning for simple solutions for great crises is at best naive, and at worst delusional.

OK, now that we have that straight, I'll start by stating that I don't know Merrick Garland personally, and I have not followed his career as a Judge. I have read about his background, and his career as a prosecutor. And I've read his account about his family history, education and upbringing.

So, with the intention of shutting down entirely any debate on the matter, I'm therefore rejecting out of hand any suggestion whatsoever that he is somehow "soft" on Trumpism, the insurrection, the heavily armed fascist/terrorists that stormed the Capitol, or the organizers who aided Trump in setting that into motion. Nor is he personally corrupt or bought off. The mere implication of that is so much garbage as to be incredulous and frankly mystifying. I won't dignify it by engaging on it. 

Then, the other "simple" explanation is that his interpretation of the Constitution and the Law has led him down this path, that it is not "political" in that sense, but it is his understanding of the precedents of the Law, and his desire to remain within the proscribed guardrails established for limiting the prosecutorial powers of the Federal Government to avoid ethical or other questions regarding abuse of power, and violating the Seperation of Powers which in fact guides his decisions. That too, though valid in a limited way, is not what is operating here, in my view. It IS something else. 

Let's address it by looking closely at the most important thing Garland has ever been involved in during his lifetime, that is before his appointment as Attorney General. That would be the McVeigh case, and the Oklahoma City bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Building. 

People think they know something about this. "yeah, truck bomb with fertilizer, big casualties, one accomplice, disgruntled ex-military who got involved with the extreme right, got the death penalty, never showed remorse, JUST TWO NUTS going off the rails, doing something tragic, etc."  Well, if that is the extent of what you know, then you don't know. There is a background which gets lost in the weeds when looking at these events. 

First, is that Merrick Garland was the lead Federal Prosecutor in the McVeigh case. The reason he was picked was his experience at prosecuting members of violent anti-government militias who had taken up arms against officials of the US Government, there to enforce federal laws which these groups rejected or refused to adhere to due to their indoctrination by various political or religious cults.  I have firsthand knowledge of these groups from my experiences in the 1980's attempting to organize these people out of these cults, so I am more than familiar with their structure, beliefs, activities, and how they were drawn in. By the way, this background will be part of my book, and writing this article is part of the process of recollection for putting that together. 

In order to understand what Merrick Garland is doing, and why, you need to know that these specific events had a character stamping and formative impact on his personality and identity, in the same way that someone who witnesses a murder or a rape often will become a lifelong activist in causes focused on prevention or treatment of the victims. This is not to say that his decisions are without fault on all matters respecting these types of dangers, or even that his experiences necessarily translate entirely into present circumstances. But it is crucial to understand how and why people make their decisions for cases like this, that is if we are serious about trying to change their thinking.

In the mid 1980's, Martha and I were living temporarily in Columbus Ohio, to organize and activate the many Farmers that we had recruited from the National Farmers Organization, which was a pro-Parity Price and anti-Free Trade group of populists who had sort of sprung informally from an affiliated network of politicized Morman activists. These farmers were good hard working people, and we worked with their leadership personally. I lived with and worked with the founder of that organization in Ohio, which had achieved nationwide prominance when they organized a tractorcade of farmers to Washington DC for Reagan's inauguration to demand Parity pricing and end free market destruction of family farms. 

In the course of our travels and organizing (during which we sucessfully won the Democratic primary for Congress of the farmer who was the son of NFO's founder)  we uncovered that we were being counterorganized and harrassed by something called "The Christian Identity Movement."  This was in fact a Nazi Church interfaced with the Aryan Nations, Skinheads, Hell's Angels, National Vanguard, and most of the Neo-Nazi groups which turn up on the laundry list of White Supremacists you see covered and tracked by the Southern Poverty Law Center. (Wikipedia link below)

Christian Identity Movement had infiltrated NFO in large numbers, and was threatening our activists to stay away from us. Members of this so-called Church who were just ignorant were told they would be thrown out if they talked to us. In several cases, where we were in a tug of war for the minds of these people, we won them over, and got them out. I personally broke up at least two marriages, (not by design) and nearly a third by intervening against this Nazi cult, and the harassment that they generated. 

Tim McVeigh was recruited by the Christian Identity Movement. That is where he came from.  And it was this network that Merrick Garland had to investigate, and prosecute. And because Garland is like me of Jewish background, I'm relatively certain that he saw this network in the same way as I. This was a terrorist organization, which was not merely a paramilitary, or "dissidents" or politically motivated. It was a full blown Nazi Religious cult, indoctrinated into Heinrich Himmler's Aryan mystery religions which were used to recruit Hitler's SS. And they were not underground, they were recruiting and arming themselves for their prophesied race war in the open, not underground. 

This was not however the "same old same old" which has been around forever, like the KKK. There was with the ascendency of the Reagan Presidency a shift to radicalization of pro-gun and anti-tax groups, which drew in larger and larger numbers with these anti-big government issues as the hook. Gun laws were repealed, taxes cut for the wealthy, and these groups were given far more leeway to operate as their issues became "mainstreamed". This is similar to the Trump phenomenon today in mainstreaming and weaponizing racism. One aspect of this increased leeway was the green light to begin stockpiling weapons, and training paramilitaries.

Under first Carter then Reagan you had wholesale destruction of basic industries, homebuilding and family farms due to the 20% Interest rate policy of the Federal Reserve under Paul Volker, which delivered an economic shock. This served to increase the radicalization factor and the victimized grievance culture which drives the mass recruitment of movements based in hatred, scapegoating, and rage driven violence.

Think of the impact of hyperinflation and the punitive effect of the Versailles Treaty after WW I in Germany, and the radicalization of the defeated German Army. From this standpoint, also not inconsequential was the 1990's return home of thousands of Veterans from the first Iraq War, Desert Storm under Bush 41, who like McVeigh came back psychologically broken, harboring deep anti-government views, and trained in demolitions and weapons tactics. 

So, what I saw first hand was a far more dangerous development with these Cult led paramilitaries than your typical KKK types of the 20th Century. In the case of the Klan, their enemy was defined as minorities and Federal laws meant to protect minority rights.  In the case of the Neo-Nazi Militias, the enemy was minorities and the Law Enforcement apparatus of the US Government, therefore the scale of their destructive and murderous intent far greater. 

That is why McVeigh bombed the Alfred B. Murrah Federal Building, where the FBI Office was located. His attack was launched immediately after his stay at the nearby compound of the Christian Identity Movement, on the Anniversary of the US Government siege of the David Koresh led Branch Davidians in Waco Texas, April 19, 1995. This, the Day before Adolf Hitler's Birthday.  If I saw this growing threat as something uniquely dangerous to National security, I'm certain that Garland was as frightened or more by it than I, because he went into the prosecution with his hands tied by the policies in place of the Department of Justice. Much like he is today. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_Identity

--to be continued with Part 2