If You Really Want to Destroy Yourself, Crack is Faster

He's a big-time American patriot. You know that, because he appears in a video for the American Patriot Foundation. Of course, since Timothy McVeigh and the "Super Patriot" movement, the word has lost a lot of its value. As a general rule of thumb, people who take the label "patriot" and slap it on themselves tend to be the least patriotic of Americans. They owe their fealty to an America that doesn't exist and want to "return it" to values it never had. This America, the one we live in and the one that reflects historical accuracy, they don't have a lot of use for. They don't love this country, they love a country that exists only in their imaginations.

So Army doctor Lt. Col. Terry Lakin is a patriot in his own mind and the minds of those fellow wingnuts who only worry about the Constitution when a Democrat's in the White House. And for standing by what, for lack of a better word, we're going to have to call "principles," Lakin has been accused of a crime against the nation he claims to love just so damned much.

MSNBC's First Read:

U.S. military officials tell NBC News that the U.S. Army will court martial a lieutenant colonel who refuses to deploy to Afghanistan because he considers orders from President Obama to be "illegal."

Army doctor Lt. Col. Terry Lakin believes Obama does not meet the constitutional requirements to be president and commander-in-chief, because he believes (incorrectly) that Obama wasn't born in the United States.

Lakin refused this week to report to Fort Campbell, KY for deployment to Afghanistan, but instead showed up at the Pentagon, where he was confronted by his brigade Commander Col. Gordon Roberts, a Vietnam Medal of Honor recipient.

"A website called SafeguardOurConstitution.com has set up a legal defense fund for Lakin," WorldNetDaily reports, "and has posted a long list of the doctor's awards, including the Army Flight Surgeon's Badge, Combat Medical Badge, the Bronze Star Medal, the Meritorious Service Medal, the Army Commendation Medal with three Oak Leaf Clusters, the Army Achievement Medal with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the National Defense Service Medal with Bronze Service Star, the Armed Forced Expedition Medal, the Army Reserve Component Achievement Medal, the Army Service Ribbon, the Overseas Service Ribbon and the NATO service medal."

Good for him. Unfortunately, a fine record of military service doesn't change the facts that he's both a lunatic and provably wrong.

And it's here that Lakin's big plan is likely to backfire on him. See, all the evidence suggests that Lakin wanted to be court martialed. All the lawsuits challenging Obama's eligibility have been thrown out, mostly because they all share one trait -- a total lack of any evidence. Since no court will hear these ridiculous nuisance lawsuits, Lakin and his birther compadres believe they've discovered a backdoor to the legal system. Lakin will present evidence in his defense that Barack Obama is really a secret Kenyan Muslim terr'ist, he'll get off, and "President" Obama will be led out of the White House in handcuffs (he's an illegal alien, you see).

TheBirthers.org:

...Once Lt. Col. Lakin is charged, he will be afforded a defense, which under the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) Article 46, Lt. Col. Lakin will have the opportunity to obtain witnesses and other evidence. This is why we called Lt. Col. Lakin's action a game changer.


What witnesses can he obtain and evidence can he call into the record? Everyone from Grandma Sarah to the custodian of records for any hospital Obama chooses to name, he can demand a full release of Hawaii's vital records from the time in question (to prove there are not forgeries,) to every application Obama made. In short his witness list and evidence inventory can include every thing that could possibly prove BHOJr is a fraud and an imposter acting as CIC.

In other words, he'll try to rehash all the "evidence" that's been shot down time and time again. That ought to work out well for him.

As anyone who reads this blog with any regularity knows, I'm fascinated by people who believe whatever it is they want to believe, despite all evidence to the contrary. Creationists fall into this camp, as do global warming deniers, holocaust deniers, flatearthers who believe the lunar landings were faked, most of Glenn Beck's audience, and of course the birthers. Here's a guy who's so sure that President Obama isn't really the president that he's willing to stake his career, his military record, and his freedom on it. Further, he's taking all that risk in spite of the fact that he literally has all the evidence that exists in the world that he's wrong.

And so, of course, his defense will fail. I don't think there's any question of that. It's one thing when believing what you want to believe just makes you eccentric, it's another when this belief starts destroying people's lives. Lakin is being destroyed by a lunatic belief system, just as surely as he would be if he were taking crystal meth. He's willing to throw everything away for a fevered, paranoid fantasy while other, more cowardly, delusionals are cheering him on in this hopeless kamikaze run at the Obama presidency.

And they all call themselves "patriots." Apparently, that word has come to mean a pigheaded fantasist who's mistaken beliefs cannot be corrected -- ever. When Lakin's defense is laughed out of the court martial, they won't take "you're insane and here's why" for an answer. They'll go on with their closedminded certainty that the United States is under the thumb of a foreign usurper and that Lt. Col. Terry Lakin is a righteous political prisoner on the par of Nelson Mandela.

Lt. Col. Lakin is on the path to self-destruction. My only complaint about it is that his fellow birther nutjobs don't have the courage to destroy themselves in a similar fashion.

-Wisco


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