The above is from a court document prepared by one of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, Pauline Bauer, who is representing herself. In my job, I used to come in contact occasionally with crackpots of this genus and it's sort of fun to recognize their calling cards without having to talk to them in person. For one thing, there is this distinction they like to make between, on the one hand, someone with their name who has legal problems and, on the other, this more exalted entity who is beyond the reach of whoever is pursuing them—in Pauline's case, "the United States of America, a private corporation." I'm sure she has ideas about what makes Uncle Sam a private corporation and why it therefore cannot prosecute her, I mean her "vessel," for any crime someone named Pauline Bauer, who owns a pizzeria in Pennsylvania, may have committed in the District of Columbia last January 6.
I'm also sure that the smudge over the end of her signature is her fingerprint. She dabbed a digit, or maybe her thumb, in red ink, unless it's her own blood—a common practice—and then made an imprint over the document's signature line. Solemn rites for solemn matters! Their documents always made me think of children playing at being adults: the game is about a world beyond their comprehension, so it must be endowed with mysterious elements. It's the same with their cousins the militia members who dress up like soldiers and crawl around with guns in farm fields in preparation for . . . something BIG. Only they understand.
Should they be regarded with scorn or pity? The ones I met were usually having their mortgage foreclosed. The fellow who made the biggest impression on me wanted to record a document called "Revocation of Power of Attorney." Naturally, you have to identify the Power of Attorney being revoked, and, in that part of the document, he had cited a certain Mortgage—his mortgage that was being foreclosed, no doubt. Someone else had already tried to explain that he could record a revocation of a previously recorded Power of Attorney, but he'd have to identify that Power of Attorney, not a mortgage. I got to continue this conversation with him and, as we talked, it eventually dawned on me that he was confused by the similar phrases "power of attorney" and "power of sale": in a standard mortgage instrument, the latter always occurs in a section enumerating the lender's remedies in the event the borrower defaults on the loan. He was trying to revoke the bank's remedy for his failure to pay his mortgage. Wouldn't it be nice if we could all do that? Bad for the banks, however. Anyway, I wasn't able to satisfy him, and our colloquy came to a conclusion when he took a couple steps backward, removed from his man purse what looked like a large wooden coin, held it up by the side of his head, and recited what sounded like it was supposed to be a hex upon me. I remember it began, "I am the only sovereign upon this premises." ("Sovereignty" occupies considerable space in their imaginations.) I could look past him and see my colleagues peeking over the tops of their cubicles, prairie dogging it. The guy was desperate, losing his house, and I felt bad about that but he was also a nut and it's good he had to go through weapons-screening before he could talk to us.
If I knew all there was to know about Pauline and many of her co-insurrectionists, I might have some of the same vague, mixed feelings. Alas, they're just the type to be carrying, and usually they don't have to go through weapons-screening, which they regard as an abridgment of their sovereignty. It’s possible to be both dangerous and pathetic.
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