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Thaddeus McCotter’s Weird Goodbye and Ode to Sovereign Citizens
Goodbye, Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI).
We will miss you much, but not as much as we’ll miss your Odes To Pretension and bizarre form of Republican “hipster”isms that led to this resignation notice:
Today I have resigned from the office of United States Representative for Michigan’s 11th Congressional District.
After nearly 26 years in elected office, this past nightmarish month and a half have, for the first time, severed the necessary harmony between the needs of my constituency and of my family. As this harmony is required to serve, its absence requires I leave.
The recent event’s totality of calumnies, indignities and deceits have weighed most heavily upon my family. Thus, acutely aware one cannot rebuild their hearth of home amongst the ruins of their U.S. House office, for the sake of my loved ones I must “strike another match, go start anew” by embracing the promotion back from public servant to sovereign citizen.
I do not leave for an existing job and face diminishing prospects (and am both unwilling and ill-suited to lobby), my priorities are twofold: find gainful employment to help provide for my family; and continue to assist, in any way they see fit, the Michigan Attorney General’s earnest and thorough investigation, which I requested, into the 2012 petition filing.
While our family takes this step into the rest of our lives, we do so with the ultimate confidence in our country’s future. True, as at other times in the life of our nation, we live in an Age of Extremes that prizes intensity over sanity; rhetoric over reality; and destruction over creation. But this too shall pass, thanks to the infinite, inspired wisdom of the sovereign people who, with God’s continued blessings, will again affirm for the generations American Exceptionalism.
Truly, it is a challenging and fortunate time to live in our blessed sanctuary of liberty.
In closing, to The People of Michigan’s 11th Congressional District, I can but say this: Thank you for the privilege of having worked for you.
Yes, Glenn Beck’s The Blaze calls Congressman Thaddeus McCotter of Michigan “a hipster’s Republican.” So now you know.
Is ‘hipster Republican” code for going rogue?
Poor Thaddeus seems to suffer from the same Republican English language disease of logorrhea, afflicting also too his sister comrade and Sovereign Citizen adjacent Sarah Palin.
For those who missed it, Sovereign Citizen is not just a pretentious way of saying I’ll no longer be Somebody – it’s a group of rather dangerous white supremacist, militia types who threaten to run on the Constitution Party (Sarah Palin’s militia friendly group) ticket for revenge.
Perhaps Thaddeus is just very, very confused.
The ADL reported:
The “sovereign citizen” movement is a loosely organized collection of groups and individuals who have adopted a right-wing anarchist ideology originating in the theories of a group called the Posse Comitatus in the 1970s. Its adherents believe that virtually all existing government in the United States is illegitimate and they seek to “restore” an idealized, minimalist government that never actually existed. To this end, sovereign citizens wage war against the government and other forms of authority using “paper terrorism” harassment and intimidation tactics, and occasionally resorting to violence.
The Sovereign Citizen movement came to the forefront “On May 20, 2010, when two West Memphis, Arkansas, police officers were killed and two Crittenden County sheriff’s officers wounded in two linked shootouts involving an anti-government sovereign citizen with ties to Ohio and Florida.”
This is also when it came out that had the police been warned by that Right Wing Extremism Department of Homeland Security memo that had to be retracted after the Right wing whined too much, they might have had a fighting chance.
Well, maybe Thaddeus’ “hipsterism” doesn’t involve going militia rogue, maybe he’s just really, really odd. Maybe he just writes with the confused, addled mind most often found in the dregs of today’s Republican Party.
Or maybe, and I’m going out on a limb of hope here, the apple has soured past its due date, and even the Republican Party wants some distance.
I say that hopefully because it would suggest that the Republicans have standards, and if this is true, the American people would be much relieved to hear it and look forward to a time when by their hearth they might too also find comfort in the home of sanity, for all sovereign people who much targeted and unduly harassed though they might be, and facing challenges unfair and mighty, still cling to that last vestige of hope that indeed, their Grand Old Party has found its bottom and with God’s infinite wisdom have chosen to, at long last, put an end to their great descent.
Oh, I kid Thaddeus. It’s just so fun to hang out there on the limb of a run run run on. He’s not the only one who likes to live dangerously.
Image: cropped version of Thaddeus McCotter (Lon Horwedel/AP)
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Carrie
Jul. 6th, 2012 at 9:33 pm
What a freak! Is he mentally ill? I couldn’t get through his sentences! Cliff diagram danger!
majii
Jul. 6th, 2012 at 10:28 pm
I love your final paragraphs, Ms. Sarah, where you subtlety poke fun at McCotter! He is a pompous azzz who seems to think he’s more powerful than he actually is. I don’t know what the republicans said to him in private, but it seems that it compelled him to make a decision to resign sooner rather than later. I had heard about his troubles on the Eclectablog site, but it didn’t seem as if the MSM was giving him a hard time about it. I think there was a whole lot of cussing goin’ on in Boehner’s office behind closed doors. Something tells me that like Gingrich and Santorum in VA, McCotter got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. I can’t imagine the number of times he might have submitted fraudulent names on lists he used to qualify to run for re-election in past years and got away with it. Truth be told, most Americans who have been paying attention know which party engages in voter fraud, voter intimidation, voter suppression, and campaign finance fraud.
Sarah Jones
Jul. 6th, 2012 at 11:02 pm
Majji,
I can’t tell you how pleased I am that someone got that (I get so sad when no one laughs with me, plus I look nuts and that’s not good).
Your comments are always enlightening and so well articulated. We are lucky to have the best readers around.
Have a great weekend:-)
S
Shiva (Moderator)
Jul. 6th, 2012 at 10:46 pm
I still wish that someone would define American exceptionalism for me. We have nothing here that a great many countries in Europe and elsewhere do not have as far as freedoms. Is American exceptionalism the right to carry a gun?
As far as I’m concerned anyone who wants a minimalist government is being backed by someone who wants to own the government and probably doesn’t know that they are being owned.
Churchlady
Jul. 7th, 2012 at 1:05 am
Shiva – no one can define American Exceptionalism since it’s a shape-shifter. It means whatever its exponant wants it to mean at that day and time he/she is using the term. For some it’s democracy. For others – way too many others – it’s being a predominantly white, mostly Christian nation. It’s tied to Manifest Destiny and other pernicious delusions.
So when you have no idea what American Exceptionalism means in the mouth of the speaker – you have a pretty good clue the speaker doesn’t either.
Kevin Shinn
Jul. 7th, 2012 at 9:56 am
Perhaps worth knowing, it’s a coinage of Joe Stalin’s.
www.npr.org/2012/07/05/15...
Marc MkKoy
Jul. 7th, 2012 at 10:38 am
I agree. Sovereign Citizens are a confused bunch. Yet, what is even worse and more confused, as well as dangerous, are the Statists, government extremists, people under the delusion being elected gives you special powers, and other doting fawners of political power.
markmccoy.com/wp/2012/04/...
Perspecticus
Jul. 7th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
McCotter reaigns! Taking bets, step right up!
“Caught with hand in till.” 8-1
“Evidence of more serious involvement with sovereign citizen groups.” 7-2
“Extortion related to homosexual activity.” 3-1
Neon Vincent
Jul. 10th, 2012 at 9:18 pm
I’m glad you caught his calling himself a Sovereign Citizen. I read that and thought of the line from Princess Bride: You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.