Hey Governor Blagojevich, Were the Branch Davidians Busy?

As I wrote here and here, Democratic Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich has appointed a “minister” in the Nation of Islam (NOI) to some sort of state anti-hate commission. As I have already noted, the NOI is a bizarre group that spent years espousing the goofy idea that white people were invented by a black mad-scientist named Yakub six-thousand years ago. They also taught that Yakub and his successors spent the next six-hundred years “whitening” them. Amazingly Michael Jackson whitened himself in ten or fifteen years. Normally we reasonably describe groups like the NOI as a cult. I just don’t see a reasonable argument against the description. Recently they have modified their public utterances on a few of their particularly strange ideas.

The woman Mr. Blagojevich appointed is a leader in this NOI operation. Cults are composed of leaders who prey on the followers. This issue could be a killer for Blagojevich during the general election; I know that I would regularly mention this incident in campaign speeches.

I have had the distinct pain of having lived next door to two different cults in my life; one moved to California and I have no idea what happened to the other. While living in Wrigleyville (part of Chicago) during the early ‘90s I lived next to a small cult of lost souls who followed a really strange guy, literally. They would sometimes follow him around like a family of ducks, and get this; part of the spirituality of the group involved a Ouija board. I don’t know what the heck the Ouija board told them but they were scared to death of me. Now that I think of it, the members of the other cult were also pretty scared of me. I should mention that I am not exactly an imposing figure. One day the Wrigleyville group just up and moved to California; swimming pools, movie stars.

The other group lived next to my parent’s house for a time while I was young. They lived in a nice four bedroom house that really was not meant to sleep fifty or sixty. In the end we found out that there were out of state runaway kids living there with a group of strange adults. Those people would sit around all day and play the recorder; it was like living next door to a home of recorder crazed third graders. My bedroom window looked out on their house and when they started up with the recorder at night; well, let’s just say that may have explained their fear of me.

As I wrote in an earlier post, I am glad that the members of the NOI are not out terrorizing their neighborhoods. But I must ask, is the only path to that life one that involves evil scientists? In fact, if Governor Blagojevich had appointed a “minister” from a nearly all white religion that had recently espoused that blacks had been “invented” by an evil moonshiner named Bubba six-thousand years ago everybody, including the press, would understand that all involved are off their rockers.