Who Killed Tim Bridger?

“You did. I did. We all did.”

I wrote and first posted the story below in early 2023. My Substack was small then, so few people saw it. It’s a decent story with a potent allegorical message, and thus worth a repost so more people can see it.

More importantly, it is pertinent to our recent discussions about revolution. (5.1 | 5.2 | 5.3 | 5.4 | 5.5)

Unfortunately, undoing tyranny isn’t always a simple matter of taking down a dictator and his cabal. As Czech dissident Vaclav Havel carefully described in 1978, totalitarian systems take on a kind of “automatism,” and nearly everyone is involved.

The situation becomes even more complicated in so-called democracies and republics. Who’s who? Who’s guilty? How do you undo a tyranny whose tentacles reach into every home and every aspect of life?

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All names, characters, and incidents portrayed in this story are fictitious. No identification with actual persons (living or deceased), places, buildings, events, entities, or products is intended or should be inferred.

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Tim Bridger had a dream. A simple, beautiful dream.

He wanted to live in the country, away from the noise, the pollution — the coffee shops filled with people who never looked up from their phones. He was tired of the rat race…tired of a job that paid the bills, but never quite felt like a calling.

Tim’s girlfriend, Sandy, was kind, with a quiet strength that Tim deeply admired. Her face had a simple beauty—the kind that didn’t strike right away, but became more beautiful the longer you looked at it.

One day—quietly, tentatively—Tim began sharing his dream with Sandy. To his delight, he found that she felt the same. It was just talk at first, of course, but after a while, the talks got more serious. Within a year, they were making plans. A year after that, they were married and closing on a little house on six acres in the country. Eleven months later, their first child, a little boy, was born.

They kept chickens on one of the acres. The rooster woke them up each morning with the sun, but there was so much to do each day that they didn’t mind.

They made a garden. It was just a few vegetables at first, but within a couple of years—right around the time their second child came—they had expanded it into quite the little farm. Plenty for their own needs, with a little left over to sell at the market down the hill.

The one problem they had was water. Rain was inconsistent—it wouldn’t fall for many days on end, and then it would pour so hard it would damage the plants. So they came up with an idea: they built a roofing system over their gardens—clear, corrugated panels that allowed the sun through but protected the plants from downpours.

Rainwater was diverted into four 55-gallon barrels and then fed into a clever irrigation system that Tim and Sandy developed together. It took a lot of their savings (which had already been depleted with medical bills for their second child, who was born a little premature), but they did it, and it worked.

Things were good. They were happy. Their children, their little homestead, and their love—for each other, and for the free life they’d carved out—all grew stronger.

Randy Filkas majored in environmental studies at a small college in the Pacific Northwest—a school with a reputation for producing left-wing activists (with a college education as a casual by-product). Randy wasn’t fat, but his lack of physical conditioning gave him a soft, doughy appearance. He had a round face, with a mustache that no one really liked, but that he refused to give up.

After college, he spent a couple of years living in a house with a rotating crop of housemates, smoking weed and absently strumming a guitar in a living room haphazardly decorated with dingy paisley wall-hangings.

Eventually, being broke and living on peanut-butter-and-tempeh smoothies got old, so Randy decided to get a job at an environmental lobbying group in the city. His college training, though more ideological than scientific, was enough to qualify him as an “expert” in environmental matters.

The organization made its money through a combination of donations and a special law that allowed it to sue the government at taxpayer expense. And they sued the government a lot.

This environmental group had recently been focusing on water issues and was preparing to recommend to the state legislature that rainwater collection be strictly regulated to prevent water from being diverted away from local creeks. Their recommendations, which Randy helped write, were based on a single questionable study conducted at a single creek in a unique area of the state. Still, they went ahead with the recommendations anyway, for all the reasons one has come to expect:

Because such regulations have to be made at the state level.

Because lobbying the government is their livelihood—the reason why they all have jobs.

Because everyone knows that only crazy rednecks collect rainwater anyway.

Phineas Marsh had just been elected to his tenth term in the state senate. The last eight of those elections were just formalities—everyone knew he would win every time, and no one ever seriously opposed him. He represented his district, but given his seniority, committee chairmanships, and the fact that he knew just about everyone in the state capital, his voice carried weight statewide. He had graying hair and a smile that conveyed neither sincerity nor malice. He was one of the last remaining politicians who still wore a bow tie.

Senator Marsh was not a brilliant man, but he was a skilled politician. When an environmental group approached him with recommendations for regulating rainwater collection, he didn’t really understand the intricacies of the issue. But he did know that this organization and others like it, and a particular type of voter, all sent him support and votes at election time. Getting the recommendations added to some piece of legislation in the next session would be a simple matter—a little horse trading, a little back-scratching…easy peasy.

Karen Schenker was a bureaucrat who told herself that her devotion to her job was the reason she had never gotten married and had children. Her face, which seemed like it might once have been pleasant enough, was now stretched out of proportion by a diet that included too many pastries. She was only roused from her sedentary routine by the occasional trips she had to take out “into the field” to check on homeowners’ compliance with various state regulations.

Phillip Runton was a sheriff’s deputy in Tim and Sandy’s county. Being a deputy was the only job he’d had, and the only job he wanted. He tried not to think too much about the laws he was told to enforce. He had a daughter who would soon be heading to college, and he needed another seven years to receive his pension. He was stolid and wasn’t corrupt, but he didn’t like troublemakers. “The law is the law,” he liked to say.

Susan Arnheim voted for Marsh, and for all the other politicians who passed laws that included provisions like those suggested by Randy Filkas’s organization. Those politicians, in turn, empowered unelected bureaucrats like Schenker to carry out the day-to-day work of implementing their legislation. It made Ms. Arnheim feel like she was doing something important by casting votes to “save the planet.” She also voted for Deputy Runton’s boss—a big-county sheriff who spent far more time shaking hands in the city than he did meeting folks out in the country.

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Karen Schenker disliked having to check on rural homes. She was one of those people who believed that cities are more “efficient,” and that that is where people ought to live. She didn’t like people like Tim and Sandy Bridger, and she took particular pleasure in asserting her authority when she informed them that their rainwater collection system was in violation of state law.

Her voice took on an air of importance as she read from pages on her clipboard:

“Rainwater collection is limited to two (2) 55-gallon barrels.”

“Rainwater may only be collected from the roof of a structure for which rainwater collection is not the primary purpose, such as a barn or primary dwelling.”

“Rainwater collection systems must be installed by a licensed plumber.”

“Rainwater collection systems require a permit.”

It took Tim and Sandy a few moments to grapple with what seemed pointlessly arbitrary, unnecessarily controlling, and rather absurd. Finally, Tim said, “But we need all four barrels for our irrigation system to work. What’s the difference between two and four?”

“Two is legal, four is not,” Schenker said, with huffy imperiousness.

“The roof of the house doesn’t have nearly enough surface area, and it’s too far away anyway.” Sandy waved her hand at their gardens. “We can’t afford to redo all this.”

“I’m just telling you what the law says,” Schenker hissed.

“Why would we need a plumber or a permit?” Tim complained. “We’re all the way out here. We’re not bothering anyone.”

“I’m just doing my job. You have 60 days to implement these changes.” Schenker’s tone betrayed the fact that saying those two sentences was her favorite part of the job.

There was no good reason for any of this, and Tim and Sandy knew it. They stood in silence as Schenker drove off in the small pickup truck with the state seal on the side.

Even if they wanted to, there was no way they could afford to make these changes. They had made the mistake of settling in a rural part of a county that included a large city, with large suburbs, and the kinds of voters who typically accompany both. As a result, their property taxes were among the highest in the state. They were forced to pay high taxes for the local public school as well, even though they had chosen to homeschool their children.

Despite this, they were still able to make ends meet, with a little left over to pay the doctor bills for their second child, who was okay, but needed some special care. But there was simply no budget for redoing their entire irrigation system, paying a licensed plumber, and getting a permit.

They did the only thing they could think of: they contacted their state representative to ask for help. Unfortunately, the representative for their district did not particularly care for rural people, nor did she need their votes. So they tried more sympathetic members of the legislature, but they were in the minority, and there wasn’t much they could do.

One sympathetic legislator did take an interest and suggested that they inform the media—graciously offering to appear with them to bring further publicity to the story. They agreed to time the story with Karen Schenker’s next visit, scheduled for a few days after the 60-day deadline.

The event made for great TV. Schenker was blindsided by the media questions and ended up looking silly on the evening news. The event worked out well for the politician, who received some positive publicity for herself. Naturally, the media framed their coverage in such a way as to make the Bridgers look a bit like rural hick weirdos, but the story still had enough of a “little guy takes on city hall” flair to cast them in a mostly sympathetic light.

In fact, the story was a success from every standpoint except one: nothing was actually done to change the law or remove the threat facing the Bridgers if they failed to submit to it.

Worse still, the added notoriety from the media story produced an unexpected side effect: The broadcast had made it easy enough for viewers to figure out where the Bridgers lived, and soon enough, they were doxxed—their address and contact information posted in social media along with the tacit suggestion that maybe people should harass them…or even harm them.

This storm was fueled by a variety of beliefs: That the Bridgers’ lifestyle was weird and “wrong.” That they were “harming the environment.” That the notion of “the public good” gave everyone else a say over how the Bridgers lived.

The bile poured forth on social media. Some called them rednecks or “religious freaks.” Some suggested that the wife and kids were brainwashed. Some wrote things that people should not even think, let alone put in print or say aloud.

A few took the game even further, and soon, the Bridgers’ voicemail included a number of threatening messages. Suddenly, the city that was so far away seemed right at their doorstep. And its people—from whom the Bridgers had asked nothing, and taken nothing—were right there too.

Most of the calls sounded silly enough—tough talk that conveyed no actual sense of menace. But a couple of them had that quality that makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up—sparking that instinctual sense that says, This person might just be serious. Tim added locks to the screen door and moved the shotgun from the gun cabinet to the side of the bed.

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Most cops naturally feel an extra measure of mistrust—a natural and unsurprising consequence of dealing with criminals and liars all day. Deputy Runton had seen the Bridgers’ broadcast. He didn’t care much about the issue one way or the other, but he did know that the Bridgers were not complying with the law, and that got his hackles up. So on the day when he set off to serve the Bridgers with a notice to appear in court, he was ready for anything.

It was a Monday morning, early, when Sandy and the kids left for town. They waved to Tim, who was already hard at work tending to the chickens on the other side of the property. No need to walk across several acres just to say goodbye—they would see him later that night.

Tim worked all day—fixing a broken fence, collecting and cleaning eggs, and starting work on an enclosure for the goat they were planning to get. He’d been working since first light, and by 3:00 PM, he was exhausted. A short nap, he thought, would refresh him so that he could get back at it and then have some dinner waiting for his family when they returned.

It was one of those afternoon naps that hit hard. The kind that lasts too long. The kind that leave you so bleary, it takes a few moments to realize where you are when you wake.

As Tim forced his eyes open, it began to seep into his consciousness that someone was pounding on the metal frame of their screen door. Hard. Insistently. Almost angrily. Just in case, he grabbed his shotgun and headed for the door. He did not have it raised, but in the fading light of day, it was hard to tell, and the sight of it was enough.

“Gun!” shouted Runton’s partner. Runton reacted and fired through the screen door. He did not miss.

Tim Bridger lay dead.

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Who Killed Tim Bridger?

Was it Deputy Runton—trained to uphold the law, follow orders, and respect the hierarchy…and incentivized not to question the law and risk his job and pension?

Was it Phineas Marsh, who rams through pointless laws and cashes in on the support of those who want them?

Was it Randy Filkas and his organization—using the system to create a livelihood for themselves, fed by the same taxpayers whose lives they impact with their lobbying and legal activities?

Was it Karen Schenker, an unelected career bureaucrat—paid by the taxpayers whom she abuses, but beyond their reach?

Was it Susan Arnheim and every voter like her—perpetuating a system in which we all must use the ballot to control others and stop them from using the ballot to control us?

Or was it perhaps all of them, all of us, and a system we have allowed to tyrannize us for too long?

In truth, in the case of individuals, their actual voting is not to be taken as proof of consent, even for the time being. On the contrary, it is to be considered that, without his consent having even been asked a man finds himself environed by a government that he cannot resist; a government that forces him to pay money, render service, and forego the exercise of many of his natural rights under peril of weighty punishments. He sees, too, that other men practice this tyranny over him by the use of the ballot. He sees further, that, if he will but use the ballot himself, he has some chance of relieving himself from this tyranny of others, by subjecting them to his own. In short, he finds himself, without his consent, so situated that, if he uses the ballot, he may become a master; if he does not use it, he must become a slave. And he has no other alternative than these two. In self-defence, he attempts the former. His case is analogous to that of a man who has been forced into battle, where he must either kill others, or be killed himself. Because, to save his own life in battle, a man attempts to take the lives of his opponents, it is not to be inferred that the battle is one of his own choosing. Neither in contests with the ballot– which is a mere substitute for a bullet–because, as his only chance of self-preservation, a man uses a ballot, is it to be inferred that the contest is one into which he voluntarily entered; that he voluntarily set up all his own natural rights, as a stake against those of others, to be lost or won by the mere power of numbers. On the contrary, it is to be considered that in an exigency into which he had been forced by others, and in which no other means of self-defence offered, he, as a matter of necessity, used the only one that was left to him.

—Lysander Spooner, No Treason