Micronational Understanding

Some of you reading the words “Micronational Understanding” may have an immediate grasp or interest at these words together. Some may be thinking, micro…what? What is micronational understanding? Is it simply trying to understand what a micronation is? I think when one really thinks about it, you have to go deeper than just looking up that simple definition of a micronation.

The reason why is because a micronation and micronationalism really isn’t simple at all. This is because of the seriousness of some micronations and because of the diversity of each micronation. Each nation is a unique world of its own. Most try to copy a current micro nation in actions and in it’s founding, while others chart a course all their own.

I recently led my nation through a first for us. To be short, two male subject in their early 20’s began attacking our citizens by hitting them with drones and later resorted to throwing rocks and the constant foul mouth assaults. This occurred over a few days until we captured one drone, destroyed the other drone, and eventually captured them trespassing on our land. A day or so later I was asked if the subject had any micronational understanding at all. Those two words have been beating in my head ever sense. Micronational Understanding. The words in the following pages are some of my own personal thoughts on the subject.

Is there a dark side to micronationalism? To that I say as long as there are humans breathing, darkness will invade or attempt to invade almost every aspect of life. Some may associate the ‘sovereign citizen” movement with micronations. However most true micronationalist will be quick to defend their labor of love and disassociate their world of micronations with those of the more criminal element.

Do those of us in micronations have a responsibility to educate the outside world of micronations? At this point let us say who is to say we do or don’t. However, if micronational understanding (education) is done properly I think it could be a great benefit to us in micronations. I believe this is one reason my micronation was assaulted by two young males recently. Their total lack of understanding of who we are and who we are not.

To them they seen something they didn’t have any concept of and immediately in their small faucet of a mind associated us as some type of cult or an illegal mob type gang. All the while they themselves breaking the law of the macro with trespassing, illegal hunting, fishing and camping on someone else’s land. While these circumstances all together may also lead to the thought, they are probably going to be products of the criminal justice system anyway, as they were attempting a homestead scheme on that land, the whole issue has made me reflect on the issue of, is their enough micronational understanding in the micro world.

Allow me to establish my involvement in micronations. I was involved in micronationalism before I even knew what a micronation was. Before I had even heard the term, micronation. I can remember in my youth I always had a love of maps, flags, national boundaries and life along these, and the whys of all those mentioned. I would love to study maps. I would go to the bookstore and by a US Atlas and or a World Atlas. This was before google maps and google earth days. I would look over it and dream of seeing it all one day. Not just seeing it all but having some kind of understanding of it all as well. I loved flags and what they would represent.

I remember in my high school years I would often find my self drawing on paper in class and making my own cities or small made-up countries. One day I looked over at a friend of mines desk and he was doing the same thing. I first noticed the drawn-out airport on his paper. I whispered to him along the lines of what are you drawing. He kind of brushed it off at first but when he realized I was interested in the same thing, we began creating worlds together. Sometimes we would act like these cities would trade with each other. This was all before the days of the modern games on computers and gaming consoles. In fact this was before the popular video game Sim City came out on the Super Nintendo in 1991. When that came out it had me captivated. I was able to get a copy and spent many hours of my life developing the perfect city. Or attempting to.

But all this led to the eventual founding of my micronation. I just didn’t know it yet. All this compiled with who I am just made micronationalism for me, a natural feeling. So, what do I mean by who I am? Another thing I’ve always known since I was a child was that I wanted to be a soldier or a police officer. I wanted to do something to help people. Be on the front lines fighting the good fight, so to speak. Making a difference in peoples lives. I have accomplished both those things in my life. Those stories alone could be two whole separate books. But all of this inside me is the making of me being the type of person who truly wants to leave this planet, or life, a little better than it was when I came into it. This made the idea of micronations to me just a path I had to follow.

After my high school days, life happens as it does and my lifelong childhood friends up that point where gone. In fact, everything I knew in life was gone. This is because I had joined the military at the age of 17 ½ with my parents signing a waiver for me to be able to join. I enlisted in the Oklahoma Army National Guard. During the summer of my junior year in high school, while the average kids was enjoying summer, I was put on a plane and sent 1,100 miles away to the eastern coast of the US and sent to US Army Basic Training. I left about 2 days into my summer break and got back home a day or two before my senior year of high school started.

My whole senior year I was also drilling at least one weekend a month with the national guard and spent as many man-days as I could at the armory working. So just a few days after my high school graduation I was on a plane and again sent to the east cost to finish my training. I was there about 4 months. Long enough that by the time I got back home, most of my friends had left my small farming town and started life. Within 6 months I had transferred to active duty and was stationed overseas. I would spend the next 5 years of my life in Germany and Europe.

Until you get fully meshed with the fellow soldier in your unit, your alone time can be, well lonely. I reverted back to my drawing and creating small nations in my mind. On the tv we only had one channel, AFN Europe, and maybe a couple of German tv stations over the air in 1996. So, my drawings passed my down time in the barracks late at night. Trust me I was out and about seeing all I could back then too, but at a certain point shops and places close for the day and you find yourself left in your room until you decide to go to sleep.

I somehow started focusing on making one nation instead of drawing several. I developed this on paper, had a flag drawn out and the whole works. I kept this paper nation going for quiet some time. It wasn’t until I finally was able to get a pc in my room in the barracks and get internet that I would discover micronations. I remember being in my room, on the internet, I was searching for maps or something along those lines, maybe a coat of arms, but in the search suggestions came up with a result for The Republic of Molossia. I remember thinking what is this place? Is this real? What’s going on here? I did click on the website link and started exploring the website of Molossia. Talk about an eye-opening experience. I had not only stumbled onto Molossia but onto micronations. This was the late 1990’s so there still wasn’t a lot of micronation websites on the web back then, but with my new horizons opened up, there was about to be another one.

I immediately set out creating my new national website. I was bringing my paper nation and this past time I’ve had to life. The internet its self is a major tool in micronational awareness and communications. Especially back in the late 1990’s. So, from that point on I have quietly went about my way as a micronationalist. I say quietly because I feel there is still a stigma about us who have a micronation. Especially in my position as then a soldier, later a police officer, police chief and still in my position in law enforcement and emergency services for the macro. My nation has had several mutual recognition treaties and several friends in the micronational world but we have kept it to a minimum on the amount of exposure we are willing to put out there.

Now that you have an understanding of my evolution in micronations, let me loop you back to what I was saying before. Do those of us in micronations have a responsibility to educate the outside world of micronations? I feel being a micronation is a part of me. I would like to make a serious nation, but I do not ever intend to challenge the authority of my macro. I have been a faithful servant of my macro all of my adult life. Which to that end has also led to me a sad self-admitting belief that as much as I do love my country I don’t necessary trust the federal government. I also believe, being an American, that a heart can have a home in two nations. Most of us being American are also a part of some other national identity. This is the melting pot of the world. I know nations can exist within a country in it’s society and be a successful part of both. This derives from me being a member of my native American tribe. I’ll get to more to that in a moment.

However, back to the subject matter, to be truthful I could care less if a macro or any person “recognizes” my nation or not. Regardless of what you believe, I am real, my nation is real and it exist. It can also in a way exist which doesn’t violate any laws of the macro, but that can have programs and improve the happiness of the life of its citizens.

Now my view on this is because I have a clear understanding in my head about the difference in a nation and a country. Maybe this view is influenced by me being a member of a native American tribe and living in a state where these tribes are legally recognized as their own nation. They have their own laws, their territory they operate in, health care services, educational services, they help the macro maintain roads and transportation networks, they operate casinos and hotels, golf courses and all kinds of profitable tourism. They have their own I.D. cards (My kids and I all have ours and mine is in my wallet) and a citizen of the tribe can even register their personal vehicle with these nations. They have their own flag and own elected leaders. They are indeed nations, but operate in co-existence with the macro. I have a respect and love for both my tribe and America in my heart. Some people can associate this with being both a member of your state and your nation. Both are separate but the same are they not? That is why we are the United States. United being the key word. Each state is different and independent of each other but have the knowledge that strength can be in size and numbers. So they share some common beliefs, focused in a central, federal power, that makes and hopefully keeps them United. Working together, being united as one.

This is avenue of approach I think would work better for recognition then the classic, shove off I’m here, respect me, I don’t need you and I’ll do it on my own approach. Well, the chances of that approach being successful are slim to none. Let’s look at it from a smaller and different approach. If you think about it, a newly developed addition with a home owners association (HOA) is a small nation into itself. Their goal is to strengthen and keep or raise the land values within their subdivision and maintain local road and increase the quality of life. Unfortunately, they are used for other purposes many times. Greed, pride and control often run ramped in these HOA’s. Being too much of an authoritarian is often the culprit. A nation has different meanings. One definition is: A group of people who share a history, traditions, culture, and often language, not necessarily defined by a geographically territory, but it may have one. A nation usually is associated with having different characteristics.

A nation has also been described as a large type of social organization where a common identify has emerged from a combination of shared features across the members or its population. Some of these features are language, ethnicity, culture, territory and even its own society and as it develops it’s own history. What makes up a nation can include many things. Just like the points listed above we might also add some nations are developed around ethnicity while others are bound by political reasons, such as civic groups that evolve and develop. So going by these reasons you can see the comparison to an HOA being a small nation, a micronation if you will.

But my example is a micronation can operate and function in many ways and could achieve recognition by a more positive approach in the way they do things.

By doing things, by our actions, is this not also education, or an invitation to education. If a person sees something or someone doing something good but different and they don’t know fully what is going on, they will want to learn more about it. So, everything we do in micronations can affect micronational understanding.

In this understanding though we have to admit and recognize micronations are a fine line that attracts all kinds of people, and for all kinds of reasons. So, it is absolutely important that we admit some micronations are the development of the mentally instable, some are from megalomania, some from the attention seeking narcissist, but other exist for a pure and good reason(s). Some micronations are created as a hobby and some with pure serious intent. We have to back up our words with actions and let those actions also be a testimony to education into the world of micronations and promote better micronational understanding.

It absolutely infuriates me that two non-understanding drains on society deliberately attacked my citizens with drones and rocks, not to mention the hate speech and cursing as well. However, I firmly believe we as a nation and a responsive government responded in a way that brings credit upon not just my nation, but micronations as a whole.

This incident could also bring forth another question. Could all the understanding in the world stop incidents of harassment towards micronations? This is an answer we may never know, but we must always strive to eliminate. Education is a key to the future. Understanding can bring about peaceful resolutions. How ever as much as any micro or macro government can try, some just will not take that knowledge and act good with it. This is also an example of poorly funded educational institutes, but that is another topic. It takes only small research to establish patterns in education and crime statics, seeing how they affect each other. But again, a whole other topic.

So, back to the questions, what is Micronational Understanding and as I ask for the third and final time, do those of us in micronations have a responsibility to educate the outside world of micronations? This time let my try to answer it. My answer is you bet we do. For if we don’t, micronations will never achieve recognition by anyone much less another form of government. But in this question, should we also ask a sub question. Should all micronations be judged in a lump category? I don’t believe they should any more than the macro nations are.

The United Nations does not even do this. The U.N. classifies all nations into one of three categories: developed economies, economies in transition and developing economies. So, is it fair to judge micronations in lump category? Once a classification is established how might it look? Would it even matter to some micronations? Whether or not some may admit it, I bet all micronationalist would think on it.

What about the serious micronations? Should or can a well established and serious micronation govern themselves in somewhat of an independent or autonomous fashion? I believe they can and possibly should. Most of the direct contact a citizen has with its government is done on a local level. Who better knows the immediate needs of citizens in a specific area than those in that area living it. Not some bureaucrat in a far away place. Yes, in the American government, representatives are voted on and sent to Washington. They are supposed to spend their time as equal as possible back and forth between their home place and Washington. But let’s be truthful. Most politicians get Washington-ized and become somewhat detached from the problems in their citizens life, the problems immediately affecting them. This is where I believe micronations have a chance to outperform and excel where national governments struggle.

Yes, there is strength in numbers and size, but I think getting too large also brings a huge number of obstacles. Being out of touch and being able to address the immediate needs of the citizenry is just but one of them. Immediate needs directly effect the happiness of the citizens. Happiness effects the work production, substance abuse issues, and all kids of aspects of a nations GDP.

Where do we start, how do we achieve this micronational understanding. I don’t think we can measure it in an achievable factor. Rather a continual issue we must spend the proper time and resources on. Are we doing our part to promote not just our own micronation in a positive light, but in a way that people who will judge can say, this can work, this can succeed, this micronation is doing it right. I believe there are many micronationalist who if they had the finances and resources could do things better than a large majority of the macro nations in existence.

Micronational Understanding is a constantly evolving subject that depends upon micronationalist first understanding each other, policing each other, helping each other and letting our actions serve as that example of what a micronation truly stands for and is. It encompasses not only those in micronationalism but those who have no concept of what a micronation is. An ever evolving, continual process without end is Micronational Understanding.