BY RAUL HERNANDEZ
Notebookventura@gmail.com
Richard McLaren , the self-professed ambassador of the Republic of Texas, would have been a great orator and gifted politician today with a humongous following.
Richard was a folksy kind of guy with a sense of humor and miles of country charm, the kind that could sell video games to the blind, and he was way ahead of this time, some would argue. But Crazy Land USA was not yet open for business.
Still, McLaren spent a lot of time at the courthouse in Fort Davis slapping costly liens on people’s property.
The Republic of Texas’s Leader
In 1997, however, McLaren wanted Texas to succeed from the Union and waved courthouse documents to shore up his strong beliefs. This Republic would print his own money, and make its own rules. The town folks at Fort Davis, a community of more than 1,200 residents sits in the West Texas desert, had written McLaren off as one of the local crazies with a lot of time on his hands.
Nobody took Richard seriously until McLaren, his wife and five of his Republic of Texas followers took hostages. McLaren took the hostages to his remote mountain hideout “embassy” that was quickly surrounded by dozens of local, state and federal law enforcement officers.
The now-closed El Paso Herald-Post sent Photographer Billy Calzada and me to cover the story. Billy and I got on I-10 drove nearly 200 miles east to Fort Davis.
Soon, we were among the hundreds of reporters, dozens of cameras and large trucks with gigantic satellite dishes, who were also assigned to cover the “Texas Standoff.” All the big names were there including the New York Times and CNN.
The Italian Reporter Covers the “new Alamo”
An Italian newspaper sent Massimo Loche and a French AP reporter Francis Temman was there along with other foreign journalists.
Massimo told me that he didn’t know that there was a Texas separatist movement.
“I know now and so do millions of Italians,” he said, adding that his newspaper dubbed the Texas Standoff as “the new Alamo.”
“All my generation, we grew up with John Wayne and Western movies,” said Loche.
Richard McLaren claimed that Texas was illegally annexed by the United States in 1845, and that the federal government owed the Lone Star State $93 trillion.
“Mayday! Mayday! Mayday!,” McLaren was heard to say over a shortwave radio when his group saw police moving in. “We have hostiles in the woods. This is a Mayday call for any nation in the world! We are being invaded!”
In Texas, McLaren Would Have Thrived Politically
In today’s political climate, McLaren would have thrived.
He could have lead a small army of armed crazies in a squabble in the desert with the federal government over cattle or with the right words make a congressional run and climb to the top of a political tracking poll.
The Republic of Texas story came to mind when I watched an interesting segment on HBO’s show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver about another group of scoundrels and BS artists.
The segment was about TV evangelists, who convinced those who love Jesus to buy them private jets.
Donald Trump and Tapping into a Gold Mine
In the land of the gullible, if religious snake-oil salesmen can convince those who trust in the Lord to write checks for private jets, the likes of Donald Trump and other political con men know exactly how to tap into this American gold mine of fools.
Trump knows what to say to appease the ignorant, fearful, paranoid and even hateful. Those who can be easily distracted with political trinkets like pep-talks, feel-good speeches, glitzy slogans, snappy answers and quick-fix solution to many complex problems
Meanwhile, the TV pundits are still reaching into the Trump Outhouse of Thought and trying to find some gems to explain, analyze and philosophize as though this rude loudmouth simpleton was a political enigma.
The best description of what Trump epitomizes came from New Zealand.
Paul Thomas wrote in The New Zealand Herald: “Trump personifies everything the rest of the world despises about America: casual racism, crass materialism, relentless self-aggrandisement, vulgarity on an epic scale. The fact that so many Republicans are comfortable with the thought of this monumentally unqualified man in the Oval Office shows how warped the Party has become.”
McLaren “Harmless” Oddball
In my story about the Republic of Texas, Constable Jack Bell who had arrested the unemployed oddball McLauren twice, described him as harmless and hyper.
“As an individual, he’s harmless,” Bell said. “He’s got all those nuts backing him up. Now, it’s a totally different picture.”
McLaren’s two hostages, a married couple, weren’t hurt, and McLaren and his boys got long prison sentences.
The members of the Republic of Texas had nearly a dozen rifles and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Police later found an arsenal of pipe bombs and other explosives.
The Master Propagandist
A mustachioed madman and propagandist, who lead the world into a war that took millions of lives, was the master of the political con, and an expert in manipulating the fools and nuts of his day who worshipped him, said it best.
“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach.” — Adolf Hitler
He also found scapegoats who he could blame for all of his country’s woes.