After reading this Wonkette article about a Florida judge LOLing at a Sovereign Citizen in his court, I was fascinated enough by the SC gibberish to follow the links to here.

Do not click those last two links.

Mercy, people, there are some serious whackjobs out there.  I am sniffing around a very deep rabbit hole here and am really thinking I don’t need to dive any deeper.

So far I’ve only read secondary sources, i.e., sane people who try to explain/untangle the concepts that have seized the brains of these whackjobs.  I know, though, that sooner or later I’m going to go looking for the whackjobs themselves.  (I briefly encountered them in comments at that last link above, and OMG are they impenetrably deluded!) There’s only one thing I want you fellows to do: talk me out of it.

At the moment I’m reading through a 176-page Canadian legal decision wherein the judge outlines the entire basis of Sovereign Citizen stupidity, mincing no words and outlining the reasons why he will no longer tolerate the pseudolegal nonsense in his court. I’m on page 17, and it’s fascinating.

One reason I am interested in this kind of thing is the real-life ramifications when your average Sovereign Citizen tries to engage what you and I laughingly refer to as the Real World.  The whole Bundy Ranch and Malheur Bird Refuge debacles were driven largely by Sovereign Citizen concepts, and we all know how well that turned out.  Unmoored egos + righteous sense of authority + guns = seriously dangerous craziness.

I’ll send dispatches back from Wonderland as I go.