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Francisco 2.0

Francisco 2.0 32290

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History does repeat itself.

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-a-flat-earther-refused-to-concede-and-all-hell-broke-loose?ref=home?ref=home

 

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Nearly two months after the election, President Donald Trump still has not conceded his loss, even as members of his own party dismiss his voter fraud conspiracy theories. “You’re headed into the cliffs that guard the flat Earth at that time, brother,” Republican Rep. Denver Riggleman recently told Yahoo News, likening Trump’s claims to those of the flat-Earth movement.

That is exactly where Trump is headed. While no modern president has refused to concede an election, his tactics are not without precedent in American politics. Along with an 1873 Texas governor who barricaded himself in office after losing re-election, Trump enjoys some remarkably fringe company—specifically, people who believe Earth is not an oblate spheroid, but a flat disc.

 

 

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In 1909, a notorious flat Earth preacher led a ballot-box putsch to maintain his stranglehold over an Illinois town. With declarations of “war,” two competing governments that claimed to be legitimate, and an armed siege between the two factions’ police chiefs at the county jail, the forgotten saga of Zion, Illinois, is evidence that America’s political situation could still be a whole lot stupider.

Wilburn Glenn Voliva was a flat Earther who lived on a strict diet of Brazil nuts and buttermilk. He also, for a time, enjoyed dictatorial control over an entire city.

 

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Born in 1870, Voliva trained as a preacher and became a leading member of a faith-healing church headed by John Alexander Dowie. Dowie was a gifted grifter, amassing a large following and absurd wealth while performing sham “miracles” on the desperately ill (some of whom later sued him when their ailments remained). When authorities finally cracked down on Dowie for practicing medicine without a license, he founded the city of Zion, a new “utopia” governed by strict religious law.

Maybe the city was a utopia for Dowie, but not for many others. He spent lavishly on himself and drove the city into debt. Eventually, Voliva deposed him in a church coup, in part by accusing the elderly faith-healer (whose own health was failing) of trying to assemble himself a harem of young wives.

 

Spoiler

Now at the helm of Dowie’s “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,” Voliva effectively ruled the city. Zion had a mayor and a government, but all of them answered to Voliva, who held the title of “general overseer.” After wresting control from Dowie (who died soon thereafter, a broken and betrayed man), Voliva set about making Zion even less fun. Alcohol and dancing were banned, smokers were hauled into jail, and many newspapers were verboten.

When Voliva named his political party the “Theocratic Party,” it was a simple statement of fact.

By 1909, anti-Voliva mutiny was brewing. In this town where theaters, dancing, and eventually even whistling were banned, rivals wrote “a little song concerning Voliva which is hummed sotto voce by some of his opponents,” the Chicago Tribune reported that April. The lyrics of the song unfortunately are lost to history, but the verse was “most decidedly unscriptural in its composition,” the paper wrote.

While unholy verses about Voliva drifted around Zion that month, the city was preparing for one of its most consequential elections ever. For the first time, a slate of anti-Voliva candidates stood a decent chance of beating the preacher’s stooges, who controlled the entire city government.

The two groups’ warring slogans sounded eerily like those of 2020. The anti-Voliva “independents” accused him of trying to build a “wall” around the city—an echo from the future when Democrats would campaign against Trump’s border wall. Voliva’s side accused the independents of being degenerate Satan-worshippers. “Down with the devil’s ticket!” they chanted, according to Chicago’s Inter Ocean newspaper.

Voliva even deployed one of Trump’s favorite insults more than 100 years before the eventual president, calling his opponents “haters.”

Voliva’s camp printed cards contrasting his “Zion Ticket” with his opponent’s “Devil’s Ticket.” The pamphlets accused the independents of lobbying for “free whiskey,” “free theatre,” “doctors,” “dancing,” and “democracy,” as opposed to Voliva’s platform: “anti-saloons” “no theatres,” “divine healing,” “no dance halls,” and “theocracy.”

Incredibly, the advertisements for joyless theocracy did not inspire voters, and the independents won by a narrow margin. Voliva accepted his loss about as well as Trump has.

Much as Trump would later accuse his opponents of relying on illegitimate voters, Voliva accused the independents of smuggling in votes from farmers who lived outside the city. “Voliva contends that at the most there are not more than 735 bona fide voters in Zion City,” the Kenosha News wrote three days after Voliva’s candidates came up short. “The returns on Tuesday revealed 837 ballots had been cast.”

Furious and alleging voter fraud, Voliva’s Theocratic Party simply refused to leave office.

The pro-Voliva mayor denounced reports of his loss as fake news. “You are therefore warned to pay no attention to the foolish statement upon the streets or in print as to there being any other officials at the present time than the old mayor and council,” ousted mayor W. Hurd Clendinen wrote in a proclamation.

The police sided with Voliva. “Zion City is trembling on the verge of riot,” the Detroit Free Press wrote on May 2. “The city hall there is filled with heavily armed policemen, supporters of Voliva, while the independent or anti-Voliva faction insists that it will seat its newly elected officers.”

“It means war,” Voliva said in a proto-Trumpian speech, reported by the Inter Ocean on May 2. “We are fighting for the right and for religion and we do not intend that these men shall gain control of the city through illegal voting. The old city officials were re-elected and must be given the offices. I’ve hired two big attorneys to prosecute those who perpetrated these election frauds. I mean business.”

In a press conference that day, pro-Voliva police chief A.K. Walker (who, by rights, should have left when his party lost the election) hinted that he would use force to keep power. “I’m for law and order,” Walker said. “I’ll guard the city hall if I have to swear in half the men in town as deputies.”

The pro-Voliva faction was willing to beat their opponents with clubs, should they try to take office. After a rumor claimed that the newly elected officials were about to swear themselves in at an administrative building, Mayor Clendinen called up Walker, who sent out a call to arms among Voliva supporters, who took up guns and clubs and marched to the building.

The rumor turned out to be a false alarm, and everyone went home.

While physically barring their opponents from City Hall, the Theocrats started holding sham city government meetings. Due to an anti-Voliva attorney seizing the keys to the city’s lockboxes, the Theocrats lacked access to important documents like ballots. They attempted to hold a recount during a May meeting, but “having no records, no treasury, and no ballots, the council merely re-appointed A.K. Walker chief of police,” the Inter Ocean reported.

It took a 300-person fistfight to finally oust the Theocrats from office. Fed up with being called frauds, the independent mayor, five newly-elected independent councilmen, and hundreds of their supporters stormed city hall in an all-out melee: “With Bare Fists From Early Evening Until After Midnight,” one headline read. The report logged hundreds of injuries.

The Theocrats retreated to the upper floors of City Hall, where they barricaded themselves while the independents finally swore themselves in.

Even then, the power struggle wasn’t over. A.K. Walker, the pro-Voliva police chief, blockaded himself in the local jail with stockpiles of food and water, preparing for a siege.

“Don’t come a step nearer or I’ll shoot,” he bellowed through an upstairs window at the new anti-Voliva Chief John Jaap, according to an Inter Ocean report on May 5.

“I’m the regularly appointed chief of police,” Jaap replied.

“You are not!”

“I demand that you give up the city jail!”

“You’ll never get this jail!” Walker shouted. “I’m here to stay for two more years.”

Ultimately, as with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, courts ruled against Voliva’s candidates. Raging from the pulpit, Voliva threatened to assemble a 4,000-man army to defend his throne, and even called on the courts to be abolished.

“I am not through fighting yet, I want you all to know!’ shouted Voliva. ‘I’ll carry the whole matter to the Supreme Court of the country. I will not stand for this lying, stealing, and cheating. I’m in the fight to stay. I want to make a formal announcement right now that in 10 years I will own every foot in Zion City. Take that and remember it.”

Unfortunately for the progressives, Voliva was sort-of correct. The independent candidates were able to take office, and lawsuits from independents briefly stymied Voliva’s political ambitions. But he was effectively able to take over Zion again the following year by purchasing much of the land back from a state bankruptcy receivership, which had held the properties ever since Dowie spent the city into debt.

Enshrined again in power, Voliva implemented even more draconian morality rules. Couples were prohibited from bathing within 50 feet of each other, historian Christine Garwood writes in her book Flat Earth, and bathing suits were criminalized. He enforced his rules with an 800-strong “Zion Guard,” members of which carried Bibles in their gun holsters.

Within four years of regaining control of Zion, Voliva went all-in on flat Earth, dissolving the city’s public schools and creating a new district under his control, which taught that the globe was a Satanic lie.

But the fringe beliefs under which Voliva ruled also led to his undoing. Through the ensuing decades, the flat-Earth schools became a crucible for political opposition in Zion, with school-board elections acting as proxy wars for the city’s political fights. A victory by independent school board candidates in 1934 would spell the beginning of the end of Voliva’s reign.

By the end of the decade, a secular government took over Zion and closed Voliva’s flat-Earth schools. One of the new government’s first tasks was designing a new vehicle-tax sticker to display on cars. As a last, great good-riddance to the former theocrat, the new officials chose a globe.

Like Trump fleeing New York City for Mar-a-Lago, reviled in the city where he’d made his fortune, Voliva soon slunk away to Florida to spend his final days fantasizing about rising to power once again.

 

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Thatguy
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Let me be candid and honest here my man. I cannot be sympathetic to your comments because this is how adult life has always been. From the moment I stepped out of my home and headed off to college I h

Francisco 2.0
Francisco 2.0
henrygandorf
henrygandorf

it won't matter if his taxes ever come out.  it won't matter if his taxes don't ever come out.  you wanna know why?  because we already know what's in them. since early 2017 when people starting

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14 minutes ago, hayden_horn said:

and i guess here's the thing. i know he's a product of hate, just like his father. so i find myself hating him (don jr) but yet still feeling sorry for him, and feeling sorry for his dad. but at some point, we got to fucking grow up and own our shit. none of this brood has done anything of the sort, aside, maybe, from ivanka, but she still married the kush in a weird, arranged sort of way. 

i know it's hard to feel sorry for any of them, but they are products of their environment. hate begets hate. it's sad. merry fucking christmas.

I know the feeling. There's a small part of me that feels sorry for Trump and Trumpkins, who are so transparently miserable due to their own self-sabotaging, vindictive, forever doubling-down mindset that, as far as I can tell, their sad, 2 foot summit of idealized happiness is schadenfreude. That's their ceiling.

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Biff Tannen

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2 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Ultimately, as with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, courts ruled against Voliva’s candidates. Raging from the pulpit, Voliva threatened to assemble a 4,000-man army to defend his throne, and even called on the courts to be abolished.

This is coming.

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Hornius Emeritus

Hornius Emeritus 12403

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On 12/26/2020 at 1:36 PM, 956 Worldwide said:


A young Maria Bartiromo was an absolute fox. More than a little bit “down market Sophia Loren” going on, NTTAWWT.

85cd369b5140ff74c2ca953cfbd66c47.jpg


I met her on the floor of the NYSE in 2000. She had a little mustache that, under the warmth of the CNBC klieg lights, was glistening ever so slightly, and all I could think about was Frank Zappa's song about Catholic Girls "with their tiny little mustache."

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RomaVicta

RomaVicta 29756

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On 12/25/2020 at 2:12 AM, Burt said:

I hate to say it because I loved this guy, but I hear a tad of Johnny Carson in there.

Tea Time Movie Carson.

spacer.png

Art Fern, Carol Wayne, and Teresa Ganzel forever! I had a mad crush on Teresa. Got her to laugh in a group of people at a an Academy Theater event back in the 90s. 

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pyrohornIII

pyrohornIII 4801

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21 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

 

Yeah, I could have.  But I'd rather spend a few bucks more and not have to deal with everything a trip to Wal-Mart entails.

It's not as if Best Buy is some kind of Mecca for great customer service.  But I can park close to the door, not have to deal with hoards of people, and spend less than 5 minutes in the store and be on my way.

 

I'm with you on that Francisco.  I abhor walmart.   I might go in one once a year.   Also hate Best Buy, so am happy to see a Conn's opening up in the old Sears at the mall.

As far as the flags go, thinking of buying some and making toilet brushes out of them.  Think they'd sell like hotcakes.

3 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

and i guess here's the thing. i know he's a product of hate, just like his father. so i find myself hating him (don jr) but yet still feeling sorry for him, and feeling sorry for his dad. but at some point, we got to fucking grow up and own our shit. none of this brood has done anything of the sort, aside, maybe, from ivanka, but she still married the kush in a weird, arranged sort of way. 

i know it's hard to feel sorry for any of them, but they are products of their environment. hate begets hate. it's sad. merry fucking christmas.

I get this.  People raised by manipulative narcissists have the deck stacked against them from day one.  They are groomed to serve and please that parent.  When you mix in money, then that just adds to the hold the parent has.  Worse even when you are raised in a family like that and marry into another.  Then you're dealing with dueling narcissists competing over your marriage and children.  And you don't even realize it, since the devotion to the dominant parent in each family is so ingrained in the players.  Heaven forbid if one of the children is either a narcissist themselves.  

None of Trump's are.  Just him.  You see them falling over each other for a pat on the head.  You see his drive to prove himself to his long dead father.  None of his kids are very sharp.  They have been schooled by the best at shady shit and con tactics.  No need for real education when you know how to cut the legal corners.   So the likelihood of their being self aware of their actions is unlikely.  And they are going to marry people who revere dear father as much as they do.   What a deal.

Some people recognize it for what it is, others never do, and their lives are always wanting, due to never being able to satisfy that demanding parent.  They are so deep into trying to get positive feedback, they never stop to look at themselves.   

I know, I've been there.   It sucks.  And what's bad is when you do figure it out, you get no support from your family, because they are all still bought in on the grooming.   

Edited by pyrohornIII
horrible typos
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TwiceHorn

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2 hours ago, hayden_horn said:

and i guess here's the thing. i know he's a product of hate, just like his father. so i find myself hating him (don jr) but yet still feeling sorry for him, and feeling sorry for his dad. but at some point, we got to fucking grow up and own our shit. none of this brood has done anything of the sort, aside, maybe, from ivanka, but she still married the kush in a weird, arranged sort of way. 

i know it's hard to feel sorry for any of them, but they are products of their environment. hate begets hate. it's sad. merry fucking christmas.

It's not hatred.  Trump doesn't have the ability to direct that much energy away from his own self-maintenance.

Trump is the product of neglect and likely addiction, and so, it would seem, are his grandchildren.  At least those three.

 

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Beau Vine

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1 hour ago, RomaVicta said:

Tea Time Movie Carson.

spacer.png

Art Fern, Carol Wayne, and Teresa Ganzel forever! I had a mad crush on Teresa. Got her to laugh in a group of people at a an Academy Theater event back in the 90s. 

When I was a teenager, I pretty much wore out the spot on the VHS tape where she takes her top off in that National Lampoon movie.  

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Horndog

Horndog 2216

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2 hours ago, RomaVicta said:

Tea Time Movie Carson.

spacer.png

Art Fern, Carol Wayne, and Teresa Ganzel forever! I had a mad crush on Teresa. Got her to laugh in a group of people at a an Academy Theater event back in the 90s. 

I hadn't thought of Carol Wayne in years. Googled her to find out what had become of her. She drowned while on vacation in Mexico in 1985. I had no idea. Got into an argument with her boyfriend, went for a walk on the beach, and disappeared. Her body was found a few days later by fisherman. 

 

Dotard are you listening? 

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Dr. Teeth

Dr. Teeth 5813

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22 minutes ago, HenryJames said:

Idiot signs the bill after allowing unemployment benefits to end for no other reason than he’s a fucking cocksucker.

No, he signed an entirely different bill. This one is so much better because of him. This one has $600 in stimulus checks that the other didn’t have, he fought for it. He took out all the pork, but you can’t see it because you are part of the liberal media. 

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AnTiM

AnTiM 1656

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1 hour ago, tchookem said:
18 hours ago, Bama Chick said:
These fucking assholes.

0c1687a8f3eb3a040c40b5cca247afce.jpg

The Marines on Iwo Jima had friends that list their lives to enemy fire. These dipshits have friends that lost their feet to diabetes.

I don't know of anything that is beneath contempt but these worms are close.  Left up to me they would have their feet set in concrete in front of an Iwo Jima memorial and be left there until the rodents clean their bones.  

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Dr. Teeth

Dr. Teeth 5813

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3 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

cnn claiming that he signed it with the understanding that mcconnell would bring the $2k direct checks to a vote.

which they will then vote against.

4 years and he still has no idea how any of this works.

Increased stimulus, repeal of 230 and investigation into voter fraud. So they can now blame Democrats for not giving people more money because they are communists who commit voter fraud. 

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89362

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4 minutes ago, henrygandorf said:

cnn claiming that he signed it with the understanding that mcconnell would bring the $2k direct checks to a vote.

which they will then vote against.

4 years and he still has no idea how any of this works.

There's a decent chance Mitch will push it through.

Trump has been dangling this out there in front of people very publicly, including the voters of Georgia, and has been publicly telling Mitch to get it done.   Warnock and Ossoff have been hammering the Georgia Republicans over this, and everybody knows that if it doesn't happen, it's because of Mitch and the Senate.

If Mitch prevents this, it's going to hurt Loeffler and Perdue.  Warnock and Ossoff have already been hammering them over Trump holding up the signing.

Mitch will absolutely give up the $2,000 in order to keep those Georgia seats.

But I imagine that Mitch will lean hard on any Republican Senators who think about siding with Trump on the 6th.   If Tubberville makes a spectacle with the electoral votes, I imagine Mitch will make sure he won't have jack shit to do in the Senate.

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

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2 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

There's a decent chance Mitch will push it through.

Trump has been dangling this out there in front of people very publicly, including the voters of Georgia, and has been publicly telling Mitch to get it done.   Warnock and Ossoff have been hammering the Georgia Republicans over this, and everybody knows that if it doesn't happen, it's because of Mitch and the Senate.

If Mitch prevents this, it's going to hurt Loeffler and Perdue.  Warnock and Ossoff have already been hammering them over Trump holding up the signing.

Mitch will absolutely give up the $2,000 in order to keep those Georgia seats.

But I imagine that Mitch will lean hard on any Republican Senators who think about siding with Trump on the 6th.   If Tubberville makes a spectacle with the electoral votes, I imagine Mitch will make sure he won't have jack shit to do in the Senate.

but the bootstraps!

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Mdhorn

Mdhorn 5908

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2 hours ago, HenryJames said:

 

Fucking great, another DC area super spreader event. These dbags just can't help themselves--just when we try to curb the current conditions, they bring in another wave.  

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956 Worldwide

956 Worldwide 34314

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6 hours ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

History does repeat itself.

 

https://www.thedailybeast.com/when-a-flat-earther-refused-to-concede-and-all-hell-broke-loose?ref=home?ref=home

 

 

 

 

 

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Now at the helm of Dowie’s “Christian Catholic Apostolic Church,” Voliva effectively ruled the city. Zion had a mayor and a government, but all of them answered to Voliva, who held the title of “general overseer.” After wresting control from Dowie (who died soon thereafter, a broken and betrayed man), Voliva set about making Zion even less fun. Alcohol and dancing were banned, smokers were hauled into jail, and many newspapers were verboten.

When Voliva named his political party the “Theocratic Party,” it was a simple statement of fact.

By 1909, anti-Voliva mutiny was brewing. In this town where theaters, dancing, and eventually even whistling were banned, rivals wrote “a little song concerning Voliva which is hummed sotto voce by some of his opponents,” the Chicago Tribune reported that April. The lyrics of the song unfortunately are lost to history, but the verse was “most decidedly unscriptural in its composition,” the paper wrote.

While unholy verses about Voliva drifted around Zion that month, the city was preparing for one of its most consequential elections ever. For the first time, a slate of anti-Voliva candidates stood a decent chance of beating the preacher’s stooges, who controlled the entire city government.

The two groups’ warring slogans sounded eerily like those of 2020. The anti-Voliva “independents” accused him of trying to build a “wall” around the city—an echo from the future when Democrats would campaign against Trump’s border wall. Voliva’s side accused the independents of being degenerate Satan-worshippers. “Down with the devil’s ticket!” they chanted, according to Chicago’s Inter Ocean newspaper.

Voliva even deployed one of Trump’s favorite insults more than 100 years before the eventual president, calling his opponents “haters.”

Voliva’s camp printed cards contrasting his “Zion Ticket” with his opponent’s “Devil’s Ticket.” The pamphlets accused the independents of lobbying for “free whiskey,” “free theatre,” “doctors,” “dancing,” and “democracy,” as opposed to Voliva’s platform: “anti-saloons” “no theatres,” “divine healing,” “no dance halls,” and “theocracy.”

Incredibly, the advertisements for joyless theocracy did not inspire voters, and the independents won by a narrow margin. Voliva accepted his loss about as well as Trump has.

Much as Trump would later accuse his opponents of relying on illegitimate voters, Voliva accused the independents of smuggling in votes from farmers who lived outside the city. “Voliva contends that at the most there are not more than 735 bona fide voters in Zion City,” the Kenosha News wrote three days after Voliva’s candidates came up short. “The returns on Tuesday revealed 837 ballots had been cast.”

Furious and alleging voter fraud, Voliva’s Theocratic Party simply refused to leave office.

The pro-Voliva mayor denounced reports of his loss as fake news. “You are therefore warned to pay no attention to the foolish statement upon the streets or in print as to there being any other officials at the present time than the old mayor and council,” ousted mayor W. Hurd Clendinen wrote in a proclamation.

The police sided with Voliva. “Zion City is trembling on the verge of riot,” the Detroit Free Press wrote on May 2. “The city hall there is filled with heavily armed policemen, supporters of Voliva, while the independent or anti-Voliva faction insists that it will seat its newly elected officers.”

“It means war,” Voliva said in a proto-Trumpian speech, reported by the Inter Ocean on May 2. “We are fighting for the right and for religion and we do not intend that these men shall gain control of the city through illegal voting. The old city officials were re-elected and must be given the offices. I’ve hired two big attorneys to prosecute those who perpetrated these election frauds. I mean business.”

In a press conference that day, pro-Voliva police chief A.K. Walker (who, by rights, should have left when his party lost the election) hinted that he would use force to keep power. “I’m for law and order,” Walker said. “I’ll guard the city hall if I have to swear in half the men in town as deputies.”

The pro-Voliva faction was willing to beat their opponents with clubs, should they try to take office. After a rumor claimed that the newly elected officials were about to swear themselves in at an administrative building, Mayor Clendinen called up Walker, who sent out a call to arms among Voliva supporters, who took up guns and clubs and marched to the building.

The rumor turned out to be a false alarm, and everyone went home.

While physically barring their opponents from City Hall, the Theocrats started holding sham city government meetings. Due to an anti-Voliva attorney seizing the keys to the city’s lockboxes, the Theocrats lacked access to important documents like ballots. They attempted to hold a recount during a May meeting, but “having no records, no treasury, and no ballots, the council merely re-appointed A.K. Walker chief of police,” the Inter Ocean reported.

It took a 300-person fistfight to finally oust the Theocrats from office. Fed up with being called frauds, the independent mayor, five newly-elected independent councilmen, and hundreds of their supporters stormed city hall in an all-out melee: “With Bare Fists From Early Evening Until After Midnight,” one headline read. The report logged hundreds of injuries.

The Theocrats retreated to the upper floors of City Hall, where they barricaded themselves while the independents finally swore themselves in.

Even then, the power struggle wasn’t over. A.K. Walker, the pro-Voliva police chief, blockaded himself in the local jail with stockpiles of food and water, preparing for a siege.

“Don’t come a step nearer or I’ll shoot,” he bellowed through an upstairs window at the new anti-Voliva Chief John Jaap, according to an Inter Ocean report on May 5.

“I’m the regularly appointed chief of police,” Jaap replied.

“You are not!”

“I demand that you give up the city jail!”

“You’ll never get this jail!” Walker shouted. “I’m here to stay for two more years.”

Ultimately, as with Trump’s attempt to overturn the election, courts ruled against Voliva’s candidates. Raging from the pulpit, Voliva threatened to assemble a 4,000-man army to defend his throne, and even called on the courts to be abolished.

“I am not through fighting yet, I want you all to know!’ shouted Voliva. ‘I’ll carry the whole matter to the Supreme Court of the country. I will not stand for this lying, stealing, and cheating. I’m in the fight to stay. I want to make a formal announcement right now that in 10 years I will own every foot in Zion City. Take that and remember it.”

Unfortunately for the progressives, Voliva was sort-of correct. The independent candidates were able to take office, and lawsuits from independents briefly stymied Voliva’s political ambitions. But he was effectively able to take over Zion again the following year by purchasing much of the land back from a state bankruptcy receivership, which had held the properties ever since Dowie spent the city into debt.

Enshrined again in power, Voliva implemented even more draconian morality rules. Couples were prohibited from bathing within 50 feet of each other, historian Christine Garwood writes in her book Flat Earth, and bathing suits were criminalized. He enforced his rules with an 800-strong “Zion Guard,” members of which carried Bibles in their gun holsters.

Within four years of regaining control of Zion, Voliva went all-in on flat Earth, dissolving the city’s public schools and creating a new district under his control, which taught that the globe was a Satanic lie.

But the fringe beliefs under which Voliva ruled also led to his undoing. Through the ensuing decades, the flat-Earth schools became a crucible for political opposition in Zion, with school-board elections acting as proxy wars for the city’s political fights. A victory by independent school board candidates in 1934 would spell the beginning of the end of Voliva’s reign.

By the end of the decade, a secular government took over Zion and closed Voliva’s flat-Earth schools. One of the new government’s first tasks was designing a new vehicle-tax sticker to display on cars. As a last, great good-riddance to the former theocrat, the new officials chose a globe.

Like Trump fleeing New York City for Mar-a-Lago, reviled in the city where he’d made his fortune, Voliva soon slunk away to Florida to spend his final days fantasizing about rising to power once again.

 

Stories like these are important to remind Americans exactly how damn crazy we can be. We allowed an actual flat earther to seize control of a town in the 20th century.  We’re not immune to fanaticism at all.

The baroque Q conspiracy reminds me a lot of ideas I heard when I was living in Pakistan.

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atomheartbevo

atomheartbevo 89362

Posted
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1 hour ago, henrygandorf said:

but the bootstraps!

Donnie only cares about Mitch betraying him a week or two ago with his congratulating Biden.

Mitch cares about retaining control of the Senate.

And as somebody else said, Mitch and Co. are already looking for somebody who will pull in the Trump base, but who can be controlled.

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henrygandorf

henrygandorf 29174

Posted
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31 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

And as somebody else said, Mitch and Co. are already looking for somebody who will pull in the Trump base, but who can be controlled.

that person does not exist.  the "trump bloc" is non-transferrable.  even if trump stands next to someone and says this is the guy, the yahoos and the mopes and the yokels and the hillbillies will not vote for him/her.

these people are not republicans.  they do not care about issues.  there are no issues.  only trump.

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Hagbard Celine

Hagbard Celine 10734

Posted
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30 minutes ago, Constant said:

Divisive despot til the bitter fucking end. Fuck this piece of shit and everyone and everything that enables his bullshit. Please let history books tell the stain of his presidency with accuracy. Twitter better ban his punk ass the second it can. 

how many dpd are trumpkin/kraken (percentage)

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