Malcolm Gladwell: David Koresh was just misunderstood!

I'm really not trying to be a contrarian, but I've never fully understood why some nutty religious beliefs entitle the holder to respect for their piety, but holders of other, less popular beliefs are considered insane.

Why couldn't David Koresh be the son of God? What is so outrageous in believing that?

We live in a world in which billions of people believe a carpenter rose from the dead; in which billions pray to an unseen diety and believe he gives them advice and direction in their daily lives; in which the most revered prophet in one part of the world had sex with child slaves whose parents he had just killed in battle.... (etc.)

Believing David Koresh is the son of God seems positively reasonable in that context, not a reason to break up families.

 

But after that Scarlett Johansson profile, The New Yorker might as well be Maxim.

 

I talked, at length, with a Branch Davidian survivor/escapee about 15 years ago.

Whoever actually put the bullet through Koresh's head should have been given a ticker-tape parade.

He was guilty of everything. Got that?

 

Yes, you are.

He was a pedophile. It didn't become a talking point until after the siege started because nobody outside of Waco had heard of the pervert until then.

 

When the police tell you to come out with your hands up, you do it. I think that is goals driven, not values driven. Or vice versa.

 

Most people who lived in Waco had never heard of him until the local paper began running a series on the Davidians, and that seemed to force the fed's hand, as in, let's go in now. I lived in Waco then, and I hadn't heard of Koresh or the Davidians until then.

 

Gladwell notes that he was a big-time peacenik who just liked to play some live music and drain a few beers with the locals.

 

And fuck preteen kids and savagely beat those who resisted. Just a good ol' boy.