Marvin "Popcorn" Sutton, the legendary moonshiner and genuinely unique American character, was sentenced today in federal court in Tennessee to a prison term of 18 months, after earlier pleading guilty to the charges stemming from the raid on his still last year.And adding insult to injury, Sutton "agreed to allow his moonshining photos and videos and criminal history to be used to further the education and deterrence goals of Project Safe Neighborhoods."
In other words, rather than praising Popcorn Sutton as the living cultural resource that he is, the sons of bastitches from the government are going to force Popcorn to go fully against his unique sense of identity. The lesson here could not be more obvious: "Conform to the state or we will hurt you."
No, I don't have any sympathy for those assholes. If you want to see what is destroying America, look at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, the judges, and everyone else who has conspired, against an overwhelming tide of public sympathy with Popcorn, to quash him good.
Grrrrrr...
Well, I'm gonna keep the "Free Popcorn Sutton!" icon in the margin of this blog, as ongoing testament against how our own government is all too often the enemy of freedom and liberty. "Change"? My ass!
FREE POPCORN!
ReplyDeleteAm I the only one here is who is completely lost as to why this Popcorn fellow is such a big deal?
ReplyDeleteDidn't he do something illegal?
Didn't he go over state lines?
I fail to see all of the "Free Popcorn" shenanigans has any relevance, not to mention how he is some "American figure".
Matt, I will grant you that what Popcorn did was "illegal", but that does not mean that what he did was wrong. This is all about government wanting to control something. In the case of moonshining, the government can't stand seeing people producing something without it likewise being a revenue stream for the state.
ReplyDeleteWhat a lot of people don't appreciate and maybe don't even realize at all, is that moonshining is not about producing your own alcohol for the heck of it. This is an art that goes back hundreds of years in Appalachia because the alcohol was a needed product. In the days before readily-accessible pharmacies, mountain folk used moonshine as the base ingredient for a lot of home remedies... like cough syrup.
And nobody raised a fuss about it until around the 1920s and 30s, when the government began a vicious propaganda campaign against moonshining: often deriding those who practiced the art as "slack-jawed yokels".
Nothing could have been further from the truth. It takes some sophisticated know-how to build and operate a distillery. And Popcorn Sutton is widely regarded as not only the most classic of the old-style moonshiners still around, but the most safety-conscious too.
He may have "broken the law" (and possibly good sense too, seeing as how most folks believe he should have stuck with moonshinin' in Maggie Valley, North Carolina) but he did not commit some kind of sin or otherwise violate common morality. It's only "wrong" because the state has decreed it to be wrong... and we can talk all day about how many times that governments have done THAT in history.
He was even featured on a History Channel program about moonshine, bootlegging, etc
ReplyDeleteFREE POPCORN!
ReplyDelete"Change"? My ass!
ReplyDeleteNot as pointed as McAuliffe telling the Germans "Nuts!" but still a great quote :)
FREE POPCORN!
This couldn't have happened to soon. Popcorn didn't learn his lesson from the first time he was caught. He's no different than any other 'criminal' with a 'criminal record' that keeps getting in trouble while breaking the law. Misplaced sympathy, folks. If you don't like the law, change it; if you can't change it, abide by it; if you can't abide by it, suffer the consequences in silence.
ReplyDelete