(4 of 5)
The antitax movement's initial impact may have been modest, but it illuminates very well a new and testier relationship between the citizen and his government. Says Jarvis: "Bureaucrats are going to use every method known to man to keep from cutting back. But this movement is going to restructure the tax system of the Federal Government, of the states and of a lot of foreign countries." At the very least, American politicians will long be feeling the reverberations of what Proposition 13 stands for. Few will want to be associated with that old New Deal maxim coined 40 years ago by Harry Hopkins: "We will spend and spend, and tax and tax, and elect and elect."
In a Far Jungle, a "White Night" of Death
There was little in his Indiana background, except perhaps his bizarre habit of conducting ritualistic funerals for neighborhood pets, that prefigured Jim Jones' horrifying moment on history's stage. In retrospect, those who knew him after he left his home town of Lynn (pop. 1,360; principal industry: casket making) to start a church in Indianapolis recall a certain cynicism and self-absorption, an inclination to use religion as a means of acquiring personal power over others. "Too many people are looking at this instead of looking at me!" he once yelled, slamming his Bible to the floor. But even after he moved his flock to California and began demanding fanatic devotion from his followers, politicians courted him and social agencies sent children to be wards of his Peoples Temple.
His transformation into a megalomaniacal Emperor Jones was gradual but inexorable. He began fancying himself the new Jesus, then the reincarnation of Lenin, and finally God himself. When he sensed that the world outside his self-made universe was growing hostile, he and more than 1,000 of his followers fled from San Francisco to an isolated Guyanese jungle. But the world threatened to close in on him even in that remote spot. There was a court order demanding custody of a child he claimed, an inquiring Congressman, some newsmen, photographers. He plunged finally from self-delusion into murderous madness.
On one mind-numbing Saturday in November, Congressman Leo Ryan, a woman hoping to leave Jonestown with him, and three journalists were slain. Jones, who demanded celibacy of others, had sex with at least four women and two boys on his manic last day, and then ordered a "white night" of suicide. Some temple members lined up like zombies to drink cyanide-laced Kool-Aid, and feed it to their screaming children. Many more had poison forcibly squirted down their throats or injected into their arms. Gun-toting guards barred escape. Before most of the world had even heard of him, James Warren Jones, 47, lay dead amid the bodies of 912 people who had believed in him.