Every Knee Shall Bow by Jess Walter
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Non-Fiction, True Crime
“That unto me, every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear.” -Isaiah 45:23
“Vickie told friends that H.G. Wells’s fifty-year-old stories had a lot of relevance in modern America, especially for someone like herself, someone who had begun getting messages from God while she took baths and who was having dreams of great violence and a cabin on a mountaintop.”
The Weaver family had racial Old Testament religious views and believed that the apocalypse was coming. Called to the woods and a mountaintop, they moved the family to North Idaho where they prepared for the end to come. There they met others that shared similar beliefs in white separatists and the Aryan Nation.
“Fear thrives in Boundary County. It takes form in tall mountain grass, peers down from granite crags, and waits in shaded creek beds. It jostles and pops along dirt roads and stares unflinchingly through stands of pine. Fear is the last cash crop left in North Idaho, the last big predator, the last roadside attraction.
From all over the country, fear dragged people away from cities and into mountains of North Idaho. In the early 1980s, when the reasonable folk of North Idaho noticed all these strange newcomers, they quickly saw the hatred: of racial minorities, of the government, of the decadent society. But what many failed to notice was the fear, the choking paranoia that made young, reasonable families seek out a place where they felt in control of their lives again.”
During the 80s, the ATF was very deep in investigating the Aryan Nations in North Idaho and that is when Randy Weaver hit their radar. During a sting operation, Randy sold sawed off shotguns to an undercover ATF agent. Feeling that he was set up by the government and would never get a fair trial Randy refuses to show up to court.
“Randy didn’t seem to get it. ‘Usually, I’m dealing with someone who knows, deep down inside, that he’s committed a crime,’ Gunderson said. ‘But with Randy’s beliefs, I don’t think he felt he’d done anything wrong in the first place. He just looked at us with these vacant eyes…. It was going right over his head.’ It would not be the last time federal agents would misjudge Randy Weaver.”
“Randy and Vickie Weaver were especially dangerous, because to them, it was almost all about religion. And Hunt knew that when someone thinks they’ve been ordered by God to do something, they’re going to do it.”
18 months of attempted negotiations and an 11 day standoff with the FBI, at the end one marshal is dead as well as Vickie and the Weaver’s young son. So much with this case had gone wrong, the government made so many mistakes including a coverup by the FBI and a botched trial by the prosecution.
“Julie hoped an upcoming Justice Department investigation into the case would bring the truth out. It had to at least acknowledge that the FBI has made horrible mistakes, that it gave its agents the power simply to kill people without provocation. Even if they hadn’t killed Vickie on purpose, they’d drafted rules that gave the snipers permission to kill anyone they wanted. The Justice Department investigation had to at least punish the people responsible. That seemed like the only thing that could help the family move on.”
This was very well written by the journalist who covered the case. I felt that he did a great job remaining unbiased and covering both sides of the story. I started this book with very firm opinions and by the end those convictions had totally changed. I think that is what a good book should do, challenges you to open your mind and see the world from a different point of view.
The Weavers were not your average family and had beliefs that I certainly don’t condone but the truth always must be told. I live about 60 miles from Ruby Ridge and I didn’t realize all that occurred here. I knew that the government had made mistakes but I did not realize the extent of those errors. The Weavers were not an innocent family but it is imperative that our government stand above reproach and they failed in this case. You can never lower yourself to lie or hide the truth no matter how bad it looks. Bad deeds must not go unpunished even if those are committed by lawmakers, that is the core of what we stand for. Two wrongs never make a right.
The Weavers feared that the government was out to get them and in the end that couldn’t be disproved.
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