I traveled from Donnelly down the Payette River Valley with John, a member of Reverend Smith’s secret congregation. We traveled in a Honda hatchback decorated with bumper stickers8212;there was an “Obama ’08” and an “Impeach Bush” to the left of the license plate. I asked John about them and he told me that they were cover.
“The highway patrol impounds cars if they’ve got an elephant or a “W’ on them,” John said.
We spent a couple days on the road, driving through Boise, down to Salt Lake City, where I was to meet up with a friend of the reverend’s8212;a man whose code name is “the Raven”8212;who runs a resistance cell down here in the erstwhile center of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The LDS church disappeared under a flurry of federal lawsuits and property seizures shortly after Barack Obama took office, but much of its organizational structure simply went underground.
Resistance in this formerly reactionary corner of the United States is stronger than anywhere else. Nation of Islam elite troops have been repeatedly called in under General Farrakhan to subdue periodic civil disturbances. Last year’s Jell-O Riots were still a fresh memory when I arrived, and patrolling motorcades of Escalades adorned with the Nation’s trademark hammer, sickle and crescent logo could constantly be seen plying suburban streets, pumping rap music at high volume.
The Raven was waiting outside his ranch home in the west valley for us. He brought John and I inside and told us to join him in the basement.
Down there, a workbench covered in wires, explosives and tools ran the entire length of a wall, and in the middle of the basement on a large table a map of the entire state was spread out, with small red flags sticking out from different towns8212;five of them for Moab, three for St. George, another two dozen in downtown Salt Lake City.
“Each red flag is a planned bomb strike,” the Raven said.
In the West Desert, to my curiosity, there were more flags than anywhere else. I asked him about it.
“That’s where the camps are,” he said. “We’re planning a prison-break operation later this month.”
I asked him what was going on in the camps, and he solemnly led me back upstairs, to a bedroom where a young man was sitting at a desk writing. The Raven told me to talk to the man about the camps. I tapped him on the shoulder, he jumped, and only after he’d been reassured by the Raven that I was “to be trusted” did the young man take his hand off his hip, which, I saw, held a pistol in a holster.
“The camps they run out there are for re-education,” was all he would say.
It took another five minutes to convince him to tell me what, exactly, the re-education entailed. Finally, like a dam bursting, he let everything out. He told me the camps were meant to convince Mormon youth to abandon heterosexuality and orthodox economics, he told me he was forced to eat arugula and sushi and attend poetry readings. He told me prisoners were forced to perform yoga exercises each morning in revealing spandex, and were force-fed Marxism and queer theory. He whispered, sobbing into his hands, “I saw a man admit that gender was a construct. I had to tell them that I agreed with the labor theory of value before they let me leave.”
I left the room and the Raven said, “Tomorrow, I’ll show you how we rescue men from such a fate.”
Editor’s Note8212;The above article is a satire and should not be taken seriously.