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" The crime itself was every cop&amp;#039;s nightmare. An off-duty officer was working a security detail last Thursday in LaPlace, Louisiana, when he was shot and wounded. Other police then pursued a car they&amp;#039;d seen speeding away from the scene into a trailer park. When they knocked on the door of one of the trailers, one of the people inside opened up with an assault rifle, killing two deputies and wounding a third. There are places in this country in which cops are reluctant even to make mundane traffic stops because they have no idea what kind of arsenal there may be inside the car they&amp;#039;ve stopped. This, of course, can lead to a certain quick-trigger mentality on the part of the cops and, at that point, we&amp;#039;re really off to the races. But as the invaluable Dave Neiwert \u2014 who&amp;#039;s been tracking this kind of thing for over 20 years, at considerable personal peril \u2014 points out, this is more than quick triggers and cop killers; this is the latest in a seemingly never-ending run of domestic terrorism in this country. If it wasn&amp;#039;t already time to talk about gun control, it&amp;#039;s now certainly time to talk, once again, about the sovereign-citizen movement. Reports Neiwert: Two suspects in the deadly shooting of four sheriff&amp;#039;s deputies in LaPlace have ties to a domestic terror movement called the &amp;quot;sovereign citizens&amp;quot;, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Terry Smith and Kyle Joekel were among seven people arrested in connection with a pair of shootings in St. John the Baptist Parish that resulted in the death of two sheriff&amp;#039;s deputies and injuring of two others. The sovereign-citizen movement, as Neiwert points out in his excellent account of conservative extremism in America, The Eliminationists, is one of the most stubborn remnants of the old Patriot movement that peaked in its direct influence during the late 1990&amp;#039;s, splintering into a number of different pieces of which the sovereign-citizen movement was one. In brief, sovereign citizens assume themselves to be subject to no laws except those that they create themselves. This, of course, delegitimizes anyone charged with enforcing the laws passed by things like legislatures and such. This, in fact, is one of their abiding and distinctive characteristics: They kill cops. (You may remember, in 2010, when two Arkansas troopers pulled over a sovereign citizen and his son and did not make it out alive.) They have a perfectly formed universe, the sovereign citizens do, with its own legal forms and its own history and, in some cases, its own religion as well, and that&amp;#039;s what makes them an example of something a bit more profound than simply a group of criminals with a penchant for cop-killing. (And, not for nothing, didn&amp;#039;t the whole country once lose its shit because Ice-T just sang about cop-killers?) There is a lot of talk these days about how the country is &amp;quot;polarized,&amp;quot; as though we are simply in a period in which we all just really disagree with each other on most of the vital issues of the day. This is an oddly comforting formulation, because we all know that periods of polarization pass, and that, somewhere out there is a consensus within which we all eventually will abide. I think it&amp;#039;s much more serious than that. I think it&amp;#039;s much more serious even than calling our divisions &amp;quot;tribalist,&amp;quot; which seems to be the adjective du jour these days. I think we are looking at an 1850&amp;#039;s of the political mind. I think we are two countries, each with its own history, and laws, and language, and religion, and their own mass media to amplify all those things. But only one of these two countries of the mind is tightly organized and capable of moving as a single unit. I think things like the sovereign-citizens movement are merely a particularly vivid example of this. Not long ago, his publishers pulled from the shelves a book by conservative pseudo-historian David Barton on the grounds that Barton&amp;#039;s history finally got pseudo enough to embarrass the publisher in question. The book in question purported to be an examination of Thomas Jefferson, Secret Christian, Barton&amp;#039;s stock-in-trade being his contention that the United States was founded on essentially fundamentalist Christian principles. But Barton&amp;#039;s work remains fundamental to the world-view animating a huge swath of conservative America. (Michele Bachmann is a big fan.) It is their history, and because it is their history, it is valid on its face. Barton promotes his history in tightly controlled media settings; Glenn Beck is doing his damndest to keep Barton&amp;#039;s career breathing. Barton doesn&amp;#039;t have to appeal to the whole country because he&amp;#039;s only writing to one of the two countries of the mind that are extant today. When people wonder how the pseudo-science of creationism stays so alive in the 21st century, it is because it is being pitched only to that country in which there is an audience for it, a place where an ordinary bureaucratic program like Agenda 21 is transmuted into an open assault on our national sovereignty and all our golf, and a place where that belief is so strong that it can affect public policy on the local level, and even elect a candidate or three. Temporary political advantage cannot be so important as to make us heedless of the dangers of establishing this kind of thing in our politics. In the 1850&amp;#039;s, two countries of the mind existed long before the United States actually was divided into two separate nations. They had no common history, not even a common language with which to discuss the differences between them. Resolution was impossible in a country in which even the word &amp;quot;freedom&amp;quot; didn&amp;#039;t mean the same thing. Each had their own history, and laws, and language, and religion, and even a rudimentary mass media through which to amplify all of these. Those circumstances exist again today, far deeper divisions than simple &amp;quot;polarization&amp;quot; or even &amp;quot;tribalism.&amp;quot; There are two countries of the mind. One of them, the conservative one, is the far better organized whole. It is round. It is complete. It has a wild frontier, which is also more round and whole and organized. The cops in Louisiana wandered into that frontier and didn&amp;#039;t come back. Much was made last week of the trigger-happy goon who wounded a security guard at the headquarters of the Family Research Council. Rather than taking stock of the wildness that has sprouted and burgeoned in the space between these two countries of the mind, conservatives leapt into a hackneyed argument over why, say, Eric Rudolph, or these two guys in Louisiana, &amp;quot;got so much attention,&amp;quot; while the crime at the FRC was &amp;quot;ignored&amp;quot; by the liberal media. (Tony Perkins of the FRC even tried to hang the shooting on the SPLC.) Maintaining the ideological sterile-field around their world was far more important than a serious discussion of the murderous impulses present in the land, and far more important than engaging in a serious discussion within the movement itself about the country&amp;#039;s suicidal fascination with firearms. There is already a civil war raging between us in the way we think about our country and ourselves. It is time to find a peaceful spot by the river and sue for decent terms. LONG READS: The Bomb That Didn&amp;#039;t Go Off and the Waffle House Terrorists &amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;gt; EARLIER: Texas A&amp;amp;amp;M and a New Consensus, and Wisconsin and Aurora "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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