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Did anyone watch this 6-part miniseries earlier in the year? What were your thoughts?

Taylor Kitsch did an incredible job portraying David Koresh, imo. It was such a stunning transformation and based on all the documentary footage I've watched, thought he nailed the mannerisms and constant paranoia.

Michael Shannon and Rory Culkin were perfectly cast.

Think they did a great job of showing just how frustrating, yet empathetic, the Davidians were. Such a tragic story and I'm glad I was able to watch a great dramatization of it.

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  • 2 years later...

Just watched it this weekend.  It was definitely done with a sympathetic slant toward the Davidians.  After watching it, I can understand why.  Changed my opinion on a lot of this.  I still think they should have come out sooner, Koresh did seem to be stalling, and he also seemed like a bit of a lunatic*, but that was about as good a representation of him that he was going to get.

 

He was banging underage girls, so all his religious shit is iffy to me.   I think those guys set up their cults just to get laid.  

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22 minutes ago, Go Pokes said:

Just watched it this weekend.  It was definitely done with a sympathetic slant toward the Davidians.  After watching it, I can understand why.  Changed my opinion on a lot of this.  I still think they should have come out sooner, Koresh did seem to be stalling, and he also seemed like a bit of a lunatic*, but that was about as good a representation of him that he was going to get.

 

He was banging underage girls, so all his religious shit is iffy to me.   I think those guys set up their cults just to get laid.  

Being a follower in a cult is more fun. But being the leader pays better.

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Just finished this on Netflix.

Done well.  No doubt has a slant toward Koresh however, what I'm more concerned about is the depicted abuse of power by the alphabet-soup-federal-agencies involved.  Did the ATF/FBI really fuck up as bad as was represented in the series?

Look - Koresh was a nutjob...no doubt.  However, those people were US citizens and, based on what I just watched, they were denied due-process, life, and liberty.

Part of me is pretty pissed off about all this.

Part of me is just amazed at how pathetic the people that followed Koresh were.

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3 hours ago, vox said:

Just finished this on Netflix.

Done well.  No doubt has a slant toward Koresh however, what I'm more concerned about is the depicted abuse of power by the alphabet-soup-federal-agencies involved.  Did the ATF/FBI really fuck up as bad as was represented in the series?

Look - Koresh was a nutjob...no doubt.  However, those people were US citizens and, based on what I just watched, they were denied due-process, life, and liberty.

Part of me is pretty pissed off about all this.

Part of me is just amazed at how pathetic the people that followed Koresh were.

I think it's pretty accurate in that regard.  Both that and Ruby Ridge were some serious government fuckups in the cold light of day.

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On 5/10/2020 at 11:12 AM, vox said:

Just finished this on Netflix.

Done well.  No doubt has a slant toward Koresh however, what I'm more concerned about is the depicted abuse of power by the alphabet-soup-federal-agencies involved.  Did the ATF/FBI really fuck up as bad as was represented in the series?

Look - Koresh was a nutjob...no doubt.  However, those people were US citizens and, based on what I just watched, they were denied due-process, life, and liberty.

Part of me is pretty pissed off about all this.

Bless your heart 

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I was getting my haircut the other day and there was a lull and the stylist started talking about Netflix shows.  This one came up.  I remember watching it when it first came out and I don't remember anything that struck me as anything I was not already aware of when all of this was sorted out.

Probably my main gripe, a small one, was how they portrayed Jack Harwell the McLennan County Sheriff.  He always wore his stetson tilted to the side along with a tan leather jacket.  You can see him in some clips with that Henry Lee Lucas bio pic that Netflix did.  He seemed larger than life if you ever met him.  

The main thing I remember was watching all of this unfold in real time about 15 minutes away from where I lived.  It was about 2-3 miles away from my parents house.

Another side to this is I knew other local law enforcement officers that were in contact with the Davidians the day of the raid.  Firefighters that were on scene the last day. And finally, 4 people I had met in a laundromat back in 87, including Vernon Howell.

Apologies if I have l brought this up before.  

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The whole thing came down to that mailman, who happened to be a Branch Davidian.

He doesn’t drive by and see the lost television people, get asked for directions to Mount Carmel, see some of the prep for the raid, and then rush to tell Koresh, the ATF probably catch them off-guard and none of it ever happens.


McLemore’s colleague Jim Peeler, a cameraman, had inadvertently aroused the suspicions of the Branch Davidians after getting lost on the way to Mount Carmel that morning and talking with a postman, who turned out to be Branch Davidian David Jones.
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  • 2 years later...

I had no idea this show was that old.  It would never have been produced in the post Jan 6th psychodrama.  

 

It was good although pretty anti-gov and  one sided.  These stories always start in media res when the cult is already organized and active.  I wish they would spend some eps showing how the cultists get recruited. 

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6 hours ago, notre dame joe said:

I had no idea this show was that old.  It would never have been produced in the post Jan 6th psychodrama.  

 

It was good although pretty anti-gov and  one sided.  These stories always start in media res when the cult is already organized and active.  I wish they would spend some eps showing how the cultists get recruited. 

Like I mentioned a while back, while I was at the laundromat, one guy just came up and started talking to me.  Can't remember how religious it was in nature but it was probably no different than how Christian denominations and their offshoots handle the growing of their flocks.

 

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I went to school with some of these kids.  They were always a little "different" but nice kids.

I remember that in elementary school before break when we would have a day where we would watch movies they couldn't.  They had to go to another classroom and do something else.  That was probably my first realization that something was different but I didn't think twice about it. 

My mother taught some of them. If I live to be 1000 years old I'll never forget her screams and tears when she saw the thing burning. 

"They had to let the children out" "surely the children aren't in there"

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The new three-part Netflix doc "American Apocalypse" doesn't add significant new info, but definitely some new footage both inside and outside the compound. Plus very helpful 3D animation of the battles...I always had a hard time figuring out who was where based on the 90s quality footage.

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Not going to watch this but I remember reading after that Kouresh did his own shopping in town and routinely jogged the roads outside the compound. So he could have been picked up any time they wanted to with no fanfare. Am I not remembering that correctly?

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3 hours ago, Sawbonz said:

Not going to watch this but I remember reading after that Kouresh did his own shopping in town and routinely jogged the roads outside the compound. So he could have been picked up any time they wanted to with no fanfare. Am I not remembering that correctly?

There's a dozen different ways they could have not fucked this whole thing sideways.

 

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On 5/11/2020 at 11:30 AM, gsoda3 said:
On 5/10/2020 at 12:52 PM, TwiceHorn said:
I think it's pretty accurate in that regard.  Both that and Ruby Ridge were some serious government fuckups in the cold light of day.

Iirc there were no repercussions either

Are there ever?

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On 3/22/2023 at 2:34 AM, notre dame joe said:

I had no idea this show was that old.  It would never have been produced in the post Jan 6th psychodrama.  

 

It was good although pretty anti-gov and  one sided.  These stories always start in media res when the cult is already organized and active.  I wish they would spend some eps showing how the cultists get recruited. 

 

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4 minutes ago, Jshep34 said:

Watched the Netflix, the sniper dude really aggravated me. Said it was like a war zone during the fire and was sad to know kids lost thier lives but still took a picture with his rifle in front the rubble.

"They signed up to use their weapons"

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Watched this last night.

Not sure why anyone would think they were trying to be "sympathetic" to the Davidians.  They gave all the parties equal time.  The ATF, HRT, the Davidians and the press.

It's been so long and I've seen both documentaries and dramatic portrayals of what happened, so I expected not to be angry, but that wound up being a mistaken assumption.

Plenty of people on both sides had a hand in this nightmare, but whoever it was who authorized the decision to deploy tear gas against 20+ children, I'd like to get my hands around that dude's neck.

 

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On 3/23/2023 at 2:12 PM, Sawbonz said:

Not going to watch this but I remember reading after that Kouresh did his own shopping in town and routinely jogged the roads outside the compound. So he could have been picked up any time they wanted to with no fanfare. Am I not remembering that correctly?

That's true of a lot of swat raids. 

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Another thought:  Someone upthread referred to the HRT sniper, and him getting photographed before the rubble, etc.  

I have mixed thoughts about that dude.

But ultimately, I think he's the kind of guy who's built to be an absolute American hero as a US Marine, or a Seal team member, Army Ranger, etc.

I don't think domestic law enforcement is a good role for him.

And I didn't like how disingenuous he was when talking about how, if he'd taken the shot and killed Koresh, he'd have spent "the rest of his life in prison."  Don't give me that bullshit.  He was an HRT sniper so he damn sure knew who Lon Horiuchi is, which means he knew damned well that Horiuchi put a round through Vicki Weaver's brain when she was just standing on a porch holding a child, and there was never a chance he was going to prison.

All this dude had to say was "Koresh was pointing a weapon at me" or "he made a sudden move" and that's that.  Not that I'm arguing he should've done that.  I don't thinking going back to the Hoover/Purvis days of the FBI showing up and just turning the bad guys into swiss cheese is a solution.

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On 3/25/2023 at 7:14 PM, Augustus said:

Another thought:  Someone upthread referred to the HRT sniper, and him getting photographed before the rubble, etc.  

I have mixed thoughts about that dude.

But ultimately, I think he's the kind of guy who's built to be an absolute American hero as a US Marine, or a Seal team member, Army Ranger, etc.

 

You strike me as a very gullible person. I don’t think the sniper guy would’ve been a badass anything, and I struggled to believe a lot of what he said. He clearly had a high opinion of himself. Only he knows if he ever really had David Koresh in his sights one night.

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On 3/22/2023 at 9:20 AM, BonzoMontreaux said:

Like I mentioned a while back, while I was at the laundromat, one guy just came up and started talking to me.  Can't remember how religious it was in nature but it was probably no different than how Christian denominations and their offshoots handle the growing of their flocks.

 

I've thought about this a bit more.  Lot's of folks described him as charismatic and that probably helped bring people in.  However, like Epstein and Maxwell, I think he knew how to pick out people to join him that would be willing to do anything he asked.  Maybe that is stating that obvious.

I watched the Netflix thing this past weekend.  Kathy Schroeder is still certifiable. 

The ATF had leased space in the same building my wife worked in during this time.  One day, a few weeks into the siege, I was going with my wife back to her office. We walked into the lobby and hit the up button at the elevator and a few seconds later, the doors open and standing in the back of the elevator is Kathy Schroeder in chains surrounded by federal agents,.  We gave them a wide berth as they exited the elevator and building. 

When the compound went up on April 19th, my wife could see the smoke and flames from her office on the top floor of that same building.  It was not lost on me that folks from the ATF probably had the same vantage point.

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On 3/23/2023 at 4:12 PM, Sawbonz said:

Not going to watch this but I remember reading after that Kouresh did his own shopping in town and routinely jogged the roads outside the compound. So he could have been picked up any time they wanted to with no fanfare. Am I not remembering that correctly?

You are correct.   I recall in a documentary I saw not too long after the chain of events, the local Sheriff said the ATF could've handed him the warrant or asked David to come to his office.  

I watched the whole new Netflix documentary last night and it was evident the whole federal bureaucracy screwed up.   Ironically it was the negotiating team from the ATF who was trying to defuse the situation after the fact and was making progress in getting children and women released when the on the ground FBI chief and his boss in Washington got impatient and called in the Bradley's from Fort Hood to at first start circling the compound and then deliver the tear gas.   One thing that really pissed off the negator's was the Brandley's driving around smashing vehicles and destroying stuff which practically killed the dialogue they had going with Koresh and his chief wingman.  

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one thing the Netflix doc convinced me of is that the BD's started the fire themselves, on purpose. i'd always felt there was some question since the feds pretty much fucked up everything else.

but as fast as it engulfed the entire structure, the fact that fire visibly started simultaneously in at least three different areas, far apart, and this was the first time i'd heard the audio where they were talking about 'needing more fuel' and something about 'hay'... also the way Thibodaux described the 'wall of fire' that raced past him down the hallway. seems pretty clear they really did start it themselves. damn.

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On 3/26/2023 at 8:50 PM, Helobious said:

You strike me as a very gullible person. I don’t think the sniper guy would’ve been a badass anything, and I struggled to believe a lot of what he said. He clearly had a high opinion of himself. Only he knows if he ever really had David Koresh in his sights one night.

Herein lies the problem that you just fail to grasp:  You want him on that wall.  You need him on that wall.

Your perception of my gullibility might arise from your lack of cynicism.  Maybe I should've put American hero in quotes.

My point is that he's absolutely NOT someone who needs to be entrusted with the kind of enormous responsibility that his job entailed.  But as a rabid dog to turn loose on the enemy?  Sure.  He could be useful there.

And I thought I made clear I thought he was full of shit regarding his "I could have ended everything" but would have spent the rest of his life in prison.  He was trying to say he weighed making a noble sacrifice but nevertheless followed the letter of the law.  Horseshit.

On 3/28/2023 at 11:17 AM, Sgt Hulk said:

Got to episode 3 of the Netflix doc.  The rabbit being slaughtered at 130 dbs day and night is something else 

 

Again...  there were children on the receiving end of this psychological torture.  And tear gas.

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20 minutes ago, Augustus said:

Herein lies the problem that you just fail to grasp:  You want him on that wall.  You need him on that wall.

Your perception of my gullibility might arise from your lack of cynicism.  Maybe I should've put American hero in quotes.

My point is that he's absolutely NOT someone who needs to be entrusted with the kind of enormous responsibility that his job entailed.  But as a rabid dog to turn loose on the enemy?  Sure.  He could be useful there.

And I thought I made clear I thought he was full of shit regarding his "I could have ended everything" but would have spent the rest of his life in prison.  He was trying to say he weighed making a noble sacrifice but nevertheless followed the letter of the law.  Horseshit.

 

Again...  there were children on the receiving end of this psychological torture.  And tear gas.

Wooooo...

 

janet-reno-will-ferrell.gif

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21 hours ago, Deej said:

Wooooo...

 

janet-reno-will-ferrell.gif

Have some rep.  Hadn't thought about those sketches in years.  I was going to law school in California when Will started doing his Reno.  And one of our professors used to work for her back in the 80's (IIRC).  Anyway, he's playing softball with us one evening after class and we go out for beers.  And he's getting hammered and does a fantastic Janet Reno impression, only outdone by Will Ferrell.  And he also lets slide that she really escalated that thing and didn't have to.  

1 hour ago, aggie08 said:

Eery how easily a mob will form around someone with a little charisma offering them purpose, religious or otherwise. Very little has changed.

I never, ever will understand the battered woman's syndrome.  How a woman can turn off her biological, evolutionary instinct for self-preservation and that of her offspring.  100,000 years of evolution turned off in an instant because some violently abusive asshole tells her she's pretty every other week.  But then I look at who people, men and women, fall for and worship and adore.  Charisma, offering them purpose, making them feel engaged and having a seat at the table, that their inner most dark bullshit is actually a feature not a bug.  The people that Americans flock to and worship have another thing in common though.  Those leaders are also abusive.  They make their followers feel a little shitty, not too shitty, but they certainly don't look upon them as equals or even worthy of their praise.  That's the trick, that's the mark of a truly great confidence man.  Lift you up, offer you prospects, berate those different than you, make you feel like your ugliest self is your best self.  But still, push you down a little bit, make you think you have more to sacrifice, shit on you a little bit, make you feel unworthy but lucky for the little nuggets you get tossed.  It's a delicate balance by I have seen some true masters in my short time in this country. 

Admiral McRaven saliently summarized the desire for good people to be validated by pieces of shit.  The military mantra of true leaders are not born, they are made.  Forged.  But a true confidence man cannot be made, he absolutely born to be it.   

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