I think the story was that bunch of systems used the centre of the country as a default location if they were given incomplete address information.

I never saw a Moor.
I'm holding here my key.
Yet now I cannot undo the locks,
Because of sovereignty.

Like the current congressional sand in gears situation, systems fall apart pretty quickly if enough people decide they're not going to follow generally accepted norms and challenge every single technicality (or claim they're outside the system entirely.) If the response to anything you don't like about the way the world has generally agreed to interact is "what are you gonna do about it?" you can cause a lot of problems. Especially if you don't care about repercussions- if you don't own much, don't care about eventually going to jail, or are in a heavily gerrymandered district.

I finally read the piece. I see they invoke "maritime law."

I see that the guy was a formerly successful man whose fortune somehow went pffff. The sovereign people who sued my dad for $10 million dollars (payable only in silver coins) were all farmers and ranchers who went broke. I think failing hard enough can break your brain.

Particularly if you equate success with moral superiority and poverty with being weak/immoral/whatever.

Pride kicks in a dictates you do something. Like the watch scene in Pulp Fiction with "win a boxing match" replaced with "steal a house."

One of the Capitol rioters, charged with misdemeanors, submitted 114 pages of sovereign citizen meandering, which was summarily denied.

One of the things she said, I think in court rather than in writing: "I do not agree to any tacit agreement that puts me back in the water. I am on the land."

Which was probably true as federal court houses tend to be on land.

6. "The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. "

What else did William James say that anybody remembers?

"Look at the wings on that dove, Henry"

"I know kung fu." --William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience

"Fuck around and find out." Essays in Radical Empiricism.

"Jesse was always mother's favorite!"

"The devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car. Nothing quite like the feel of something new."

William James, "The Varieties of Religious Experience".