I Know This, Too: "Transformers" Is A Really Bad Movie

 

I spent most of the day with my getting-better-but-still-really-delusional (former) roommate, who was 100% positive of three things:

1) His parents were coming to see him today - even though they're long deceased.

2) Someone in his care facility was stealing money from him - even though the facility hasn't allowed him to have money since the day he arrived.

And 3) He claimed to be currently working, selling time shares in Florida, even though,...well, you get the picture.

  Reading this reminded me of spending time with him:

Clive Doyle is a pleasant-looking man of 72, with wavy graying hair. Australia lingers in his accent. He wore a leather jacket on the chilly recent afternoon when we spent more than an hour together at a picnic table in a Waco park. He was soft-spoken, articulate and seemingly very sane. 

Yet 20 years ago this Friday, this same man was one of only nine Branch Davidians to survive the internationally televised inferno on the Texas prairie. Killed that day near Waco were cult leader David Koresh and 73 followers, including Doyle's 18-year-old daughter, Shari, and 20 children under 14. Before the fire and the 51-day standoff with the federal government, Doyle's daughter had been one of many women and girls of the cult taken into Koresh's bed. Koresh -- who preached that he was the Lamb of God, drove a sports car and motorcycle, and had a rock band and an arsenal of illegal weapons -- had ordered his male followers to be celibate. 

Doyle has had two decades to reflect on these things, and clearly he has. So my question was obvious. 

"You mean, have I woken up?" Doyle said to me with a smile. 

Well, yes. 

"I've had questions and adjusted my beliefs somewhat," Doyle said that day in the park. "But I still believe that David was who he claimed to be. You are sitting there listening to him. You hear all these things and the Scriptures come alive. And at the time, everything seems so imminent. That's why I believed the way I did. 

"I believe he was a manifestation, yes, of God taking on flesh," Doyle said. "God has done that more than once." 

Most of the other survivors remain similarly steadfast, Doyle said, a handful of people who still gather in Waco on Saturday mornings to pray. Thus one of the most tragic and bizarre episodes of American history remains just that. Bizarre, unexplainable.

 It's always "I believe" this and "I believe" that. These people never "know" anything. 

                                                               Here's what I know:

Accept some people are crazy - even the "seemingly very sane" - and then it all makes sense,...