​We have a new one: the God, Government, Greed and Gun Syndrome

By Ed Raymond

fargogadfly@gmail.com

A syndrome is defined as a group of signs and symptoms that collectively indicate or characterize a disease, psychological disorder, or other abnormal condition and any complex of symptoms of an undesirable condition or quality. So far, our medical experts have been treating about 7,000 rare diseases and thousands of syndromes for decades. After reading the life story of Vance Luther Boelter, the murderer and shooter of four Minnesota politicians and one dog, I think the world has a new syndrome to add to a puzzling pile. Boelter’s syndrome seems to have been guided, inspired, and seduced by four major conditions: religion (God), politics (government), money (greed), and the Second Amendment (guns). Let’s call it the 4G Syndrome because Boelter is a complex radical human being. He claims to be a man of faith, an evangelical Christian (Luther!) and a member of the Christian Identity Church (That’s the one Oklahoma federal building bomber Timothy McVeigh belonged to!). He is opposed to abortion, is a registered Republican and has attended many Trump rallies.

He is the privileged son of a middle-class family, one of five siblings who lived in a big house in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota. His father was a successful baseball coach who was selected for the Minnesota State High School Baseball Coaches Hall of Fame. His murdering son Vance was captain of the high school basketball team and elected “most courteous” and “most friendly.” However, when he was only 17, Vance Luther, a mainstream Lutheran, declared he was a born-again Christian, moved out of the big house to a tent in a park and often spent days shouting sermons to park visitors. He later graduated from St. Cloud State University and then attended a Texas Bible school called the Christ for the Nations Institute and was fascinated by the teachings of Gordon Lindsay, an organizer of an antisemitic organization called the Anglo-Saxon World Federation, which claimed white Anglo-Saxons were the chosen people of God, not the Jews. Boelter remembered a saying of Lindsay’s on the lobby wall of the Texas religious school: “Everyone ought to pray at least one violent prayer each day “

Are you old enough to remember or forget the Nazi Winrod kidnapping?

Lindsay’s group helped Henry Ford distribute his antisemitic tract, “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” and Nazi propaganda in the 1940s. Lindsay was also a close friend and associate of Gordon Winrod, who was a pro-Nazi spreader of propaganda, who in sermons often suggested that God would punish Franklin Delano Roosevelt for promoting four freedoms: the freedom from fear and want and the freedom of speech and worship. Lindsay claimed he had the freedom to hate, starve, and “disappear” people.

About 30 years ago, Winrod gained the attention of the country (and particularly the Midwest) by kidnapping six of his grandchildren ages 9-16 and hiding them on his farm in the Ozarks for four years. Winrod housed Our Savior’s Church on his farm where he was the Christian Identity Church pastor. His father, called “the Jayhawk Nazi,” passed on the main theology that Black individuals were created by God to be slaves for whites. He did mass mailings stating “Jewdicials” murdered white children to drink their blood. Sharon and Quinta Winrod, the mothers of the six, went to prison for the kidnapping.

Winrod and the children stored many firearms in the farmhouse basement in a room they called the “priest hole.” When authorities finally raided the farm to rescue the children (who were well-trained in firearms by Winrod) rushed to the priest room to get weapons. The 16-year-old granddaughter wrote a letter while hiding in the basement from police: “We don’t plan on them getting us unless they either get shot or us in this priest hole and drag out the corpses or they might have to catch us in the night with guns blazing...”

Winrod himself said “I hope they kill me trying to get these children.” This weird story about a Christian pastor kidnapping his grandchildren dominated the news for days. Certainly, Vance Boelter learned a lot about religion, law enforcement, and antisemitism during the entire Winrod affair. It helped to develop part of his 40-year-old GGGG syndrome.

The killer’s attempt to evangelize Africa and the Middle East

After graduating from Christ for the Nations Institute in 1990 with a degree in practical theology (!?!?!?) Boelter “wandered” as a missionary to the Democratic Republic of the Congo where he expressed some misgivings about what was happening in America

“There’s people, especially in America, they don’t know what sex they are,” he said in a sermon. “They don’t know their sexual orientation. They’re confused. The enemy has gotten so into their mind and their soul.”

One must assume the enemy is Satan, Lucifer, Beelzebub, Belial, Barbus, Molech, legion, Abaddon or some other Christian devils. I wonder which religion has the most gods and devils. C’mon, Google, get on it!

While “Christianizing” the Middle East in the West Bank, Gaza and southern Lebanon, he distributed pamphlets and created a website for a religious organization called Revoformation. He also managed a 7-Eleven, a gas station and completed courses in mortuary science. For many years he was a spirited fan of the weirdo conspiracy theorist Alex Jones who shook the microphone making his sicko points.

Boelter also got into the security business by creating the Pretorian Guard and modifying two black Ford Explorer SUVs to look like police cars, down to the fake police licenses. He named his wife as CEO of the security firm. He stockpiled firearms, tactical gear, and uniforms, but never seemed to have any business.

No authority has said where all the money came from to buy vehicles, dozens of firearms and tactical gear. When his wife was stopped while driving to Wisconsin with their children and passports, she had $17,000 in cash in the car. She is essentially an accomplice in the murders. No authority has said what charges she will face. Will the children be charged?

The killer had more than enough firearms to equip an infantry platoon

Law enforcement found more than four dozen firearms scattered around the killer’s home and outbuildings, with magazines and ammunition that was too numerous to count stored in tubs and totes. There were 20 rifles, including semi-automatic AR-15s and AK-47s capable of firing many kinds of ammunition, nine shotguns including 12-round streetsweepers with magazines and five semi-automatic pistols. No word on whether he had bump-stocks for the rifles or special triggers for pistols that turn them into automatic machineguns. They also found a list of more than 45 politicians he was stalking.

He also possessed a full body, military-style camouflage suit, numerous masks, computer towers and laptops, a cellphone and had $18,000 in cash in a safe in an upstairs closet. The family has 12 vehicles registered. Where did all the money come from to buy all these firearms and ammo? This story represents the insanity of having more than 450 million firearms in a country that has a Supreme Court which misinterpreted a sentence containing the word “militia.”

Yes, George Washington wanted every homeowner to have a musket in case the government needed more firepower. But it’s a matter of one round a minute 250 years ago or a thousand rounds a minute today. There is no reason a civilian should have semi-automatic firearms that can fire more than six rounds at a time with ammo that has a muzzle velocity of more than a thousand feet per second.

The firearm industry and the National Rifle Association has flooded the country with weapons that have made bullets the leading cause of death of children. And greed is a big motive. I would like to see the Fargo Police Department indicate how many days a year it has a firearm incident now compared to the number of firearm incidents experienced in a year 40 years ago. A shooting used to be headline news.

When will the American people recognize there are so many guns in this country that people debate with guns instead of words? We must gain control of the purchases of both firearms and ammunition, otherwise this insanity will never be treated.

The killer is a member of the racist Christian Identity Church

The Christian Identity Church, also known as Identity Christianity, teaches that all non-whites — that is, people who are not of wholly European descent — will be exterminated or enslaved when Jesus Christ performs the Second Coming and the white race reigns on Planet Earth. It is not only racist and antisemitic, it is basically white nationalist bunkum. It supposedly accepts only Germanic, Celtic, Nordic, Aryan people who are also descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. There is nothing “Christian” about it. Its doctrine states that only white people can achieve salvation and enter paradise. Christian Identity pastors who believe that whites are the “chosen people” have convinced millions of white southerners to join them. They don’t want to be governed by “inferior” Black individuals and think that Jews are the cursed offspring of Cain.

Although Christian Identity churches are not affiliated with specific Christian denominations, the movement is popular with the MAGA cult of Trump, who has no religion except himself at all. It also has proven to be “fetching” with individuals such as Boelter and is often practiced in independent congregations and in many southern jails and prisons.

The church of “The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn'ts"

The church that has the most compassion and demonstrates more empathy than any Christian church I know of is the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is led by a “pope” called His Noodly Appendage. It is based on a satirical “religion”: called Pastafarianism.

Instead of The Ten Commandments, it has “The Eight I’d Really Rather You Didn'ts:"

1. I’d really rather you didn’t act like a sanctimonious holy person when describing my Noodly Goodness.

2. I’d really rather you didn’t use my existence as a means to oppress, subjugate, punish, eviscerate, or, you know, be mean to others.

3. I’d really rather you didn’t judge people on how they look, or how they dress, or how they drive, or how they choose to eat.

4. I’d really rather you didn’t indulge in conduct that offends the sensibilities of your partner, if you have one (provided they are consenting).5. I’d really rather you didn’t challenge the dogmatic, ridiculous, or absurd promises presented by those who claim to speak for me, if someone insists on believing things that are not in line with rational thought, then that is their business, so let them be, really.

6. I’d really rather you didn’t go around building expensive churches, temples, mosques, or shrines in my name because my Noodly Goodness can be enjoyed anywhere.

7. I’d really rather you didn’t go around saying I talk to you.

8. I’d really rather you didn’t do anything that would make you feel like you’re not having fun.

These “suggestions” about how to gain salvation are probably the best “commandments” coming from any of the other 4,299 religions now stalking the world looking for victims of a syndrome caused by gods, governments, greed, and guns.