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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 11, 2024

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For those who don’t know, this guy’s trial got live-streamed. It was one of the funniest things I have ever seen. He represented himself, made a gigantic fool of himself, and constantly interrupted the proceedings with insane legal theories. The best part was the judge couldn’t do anything about it. Normally you would hold somebody like that in contempt of court, but this guy was already in jail, and already facing down almost certain life without parole. Holding him in contempt would have done nothing except delay the inevitable, so everyone had to just sit there and take it for weeks.

He was a black supremacist sovereign citizen. I suspect, based on police statements that sovereign citizens are a major threat but also the relative lack of sovereign citizens in the news, that these ideas go together very frequently,

The judge did plenty, though granted him a whole lot of leeway. Eventually he ended up having to attend the trial from a separate room via videoconference so that he could be muted when he wouldn't behave.

This was a fun watch. The guy was a Soverign Citizen, and a small corner of Reddit went nuts with it. "Estoppel" became a catchphrase. I just checked and it's actually still quite active: https://old.reddit.com/r/DarrellBrooksJr/

“Grounds?”

I still audibly chuckle every time I hear the phrase “subject-matter jurisdiction”.