Waiting out the whiners

So now the members of Yokel Haram currently occupying the headquarters building of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Burns, Oregon have decided to further erode any support they may have had by rifling through 4,000 irreplaceable artifacts of the Paiute Tribe, and bulldozing a line around the refuge building's property without any consideration of archaeologically sensitive sites.

"I’ve gotten calls from ranching families who support the tribe," tribe chairperson Charlotte Roderique said.  "They’ve seen the [Paiute] campsites out there.  They’ve been in that area and they know where things are.  You can’t go and bulldoze things.  I don’t know what these people are doing, if they are doing things to just get a rise or to be martyr—all they are doing is making enemies out of the people they professed to support."

One of the occupiers, LaVoy Finicum, posted a video of himself pawing through the artifacts, and tried to cast it as concern over how the artifacts were being stored.  "We want to make sure these things are returned to their rightful owners and that they’re taken care of,” Finicum said.  "This is how Native Americans’ heritage is being treated.  To me, I don’t think it’s acceptable."

The Natives themselves don't seem to have that attitude.  "I got a question for the world," said Jarvis Kennedy, Burns Paiute Tribal Council member.  "What would happen if it was Natives out there taking over the building?  Or any federal land?  What would the outcome be?  Think about it.  What would happen?  Would they let us come into town to get supplies?  We as Harney County residents can stand on our own feet.  We don’t need some clown to come in here and stand up for us.  We survived without them before, we'll survive without them when they're gone.  So they just need to get the hell out.  We didn't ask for them here, we don't want them here.  They say they don't want to bother the community, but our kids are sitting at home right now when they should be at school.  They're scaring our people.  They need to go home.  We don't need them."

Ammon Bundy [image courtesy of photographer Gage Skidmore and the Wikimedia Commons]

Kind of unequivocal, isn't it?  Of course, statements from Paiute leaders are likely to have no effect, given the fact that Ammon Bundy and his crew seem to have the idea that laws are more like strongly-worded suggestions, and any time someone says "You can't do that," it directly contravenes the Constitution, and probably the Word of God as well.  

The thing is, their whole stance is a sham right from the outset.  Their claims that they're doing what they do because they're concerned about the rights of citizens to their own property are shown as the lies they are by their actions.  Jacqueline Keeler, over at Indian Country Today Media Network, told us how much concern these people have for others' property:

Carla Burnside, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's archaeologist at the refuge, has told the tribe that she has seen pictures in news reports of militants sitting in her office, even at her desk with files open that contain sensitive information about archaeological sites belonging to the tribe.

And as far as their claims of respecting Native lands and artifacts, that's bullshit, too.  Keeler writes:

Bundy supporters have damaged Native American archaeological sites before, most notably, when they drove ATVs through a canyon trail in Utah in protest of protected federal lands trampling the ruins of homes belonging to the ancient Puebloans.  Also, the Southern Paiute tribes in Nevada have accused the Bundy family of defacing ancient Paiute petroglyphs in Gold Butte.

These are the kind of people who should have access to archaeological sites and a vital wildlife refuge in the name of protecting private interests?

And another thing: we need to stop calling these scofflaws a "militia."  Their favorite Constitutional Amendment, the Second, talks about a "well-regulated militia."  But regulated by whom?  Article One, Section 8 of the Constitution says the following about militias:

The Congress shall have Power To... provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;  [and]

To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress.

Did you catch that bit about a true militia being overseen by Congress?  That's a pretty important bit.

These aren't militiamen.  These are butthurt whiners who resent any legal incursion into their being able graze their cattle wherever they want to for free.  They don't want justice; they want carte blanche to flout whatever laws they find inconvenient, and no costs or consequences.  Furthermore, they're hypocrites.  They rail against the welfare state and "government handouts" while accepting government loan money to the tune of $530,000, and still want to appear to be the wronged party.

But given that they are heavily armed butthurt whiners, the government has (understandably) not been eager to step in and create a bunch of Waco-style martyrs for the cause.  No one doubts that these people would fire if they felt threatened, and more than one of them has stated his willingness to die rather than surrender.  So the authorities are playing a waiting game, while the costs for the extra security and monitoring of the standoff are running into the tens of thousands of dollars a day -- a cost that Harney County judge Steve Grasty has stated is going to be billed to the Bundy family.

So I understand why the feds aren't storming the castle.  But man, it just pisses me off that a bunch of petulant children with big guns can simply waltz in and take over public land (public, you know?  Meaning owned in trust for all of us?), and everyone simply stands around waiting.

My solution would be to block the (government-maintained) roads so they can't get out, stop the (government-provided) mail service, and cut the (government-managed) electricity and water to the refuge headquarters.  See how long they last in an eastern Oregon January with no help from the people they claim are the pinnacles of evil in our society.

Battle of the wingnuts

Today, in the "More the Merrier" department, we have a story that involves Alex Jones, Glenn Beck, Cliven Bundy, Gandhi, Jesse Ventura, President Obama, and tangentially, Natural News.  How can we go wrong?

The whole thing started a year ago, when Beck called Jones out on his media outlet The Blaze for acting like he was batshit crazy, and yet calling himself a "sane conservative."  Beck was especially incensed by liberal commentator Piers Morgan's interviewing Jones on the topic of gun control, and thereby making it look like Jones was the face of conservatism.  "Unsurprisingly, Jones made a fool of himself," Beck wrote, "giving the left the poster boy for their attempts to paint every logical conservative as an extremist nut job."

Well, Jones wasn't going to stand for that kind of talk, and this started a game of loony one-upmanship to see who could launch the wildest attack against the other.  Things really took off with the Cliven Bundy standoff this spring, in which Beck (surprisingly) took a stand against Bundy and his "sovereign citizen" wackos, and Jones blew up.  He called Beck a "Judas goat" (whatever the fuck that is) for not supporting Bundy's fight against the United States government, and later, referred to Beck as a "Benedict Arnold."

This led Beck to state, "I'm not going to respond to Alex Jones any more... he has his platform, and people who listen to him, and that's fine."

But the battle was far from over.  With Jones, the battle is never over.  So dear readers, pop yourself some popcorn, and sit back, cause shit's about to get real.

This week, Jones released what he calls a "huge story."  Not only is Beck a "Judas goat" and a "Benedict Arnold," he's... get ready...

... working for President Obama.

*gasp of horror*

Here's the introduction to the video:

David Knight joins Alex to discuss the accusation Glenn Beck recently made claiming that Alex is dangerous.  Beck claims Alex knowingly edited Cliven Bundy’s statements and wants a violent revolution to occur.  Any occasional listener to the show can testify to, Alex is neither about a violent revolution nor was he covering up Bundy’s remarks. 

After all the attacks that Beck launches towards Alex and Infowars.com its [sic] becoming very obvious that Beck isn’t taking the queues [sic] from the SPLC or other groups like that, He’s writing the talking points.  Evidence thus far is suggesting that Glenn Beck IS a white house [sic] operative!

Right.  Glenn Beck is a White House operative.  The man who, just this summer, said that President Obama was "about to snap and start rounding up conservatives and putting them into death camps."

But the real fun starts in the video itself, which I strongly recommend all of you watch (it's on the link above).  I will warn you against drinking anything while watching it, though, and be forewarned that I will not be held responsible for any damage to your computer that might occur if you fail to heed these words.

In case you don't have the time or inclination to watch what amounts to sixteen minutes of an insane man going "Woogie woogie woogie woogie pfthththptptptptptpt," I present to you some highlights:

"This isn't about Beck, this is about what's going to happen when the globalists blow up another Oklahoma City building and try to start a new war...  I do not want to hear that I want a violent revolution so that when the feds blow up another Oklahoma City, I get the blame." 

"I don't attack Glenn Beck when he says horrible things about me.  I mean, he said I have sex with Charlie Sheen in showers, folks." 

"What'll happen?  Well, Alex Jones has been arrested, and Ron Paul just died of a stroke, wink wink, and I think it's normal that he died of a stroke, he was old, and Rand Paul just was in a car wreck, his back's broken, and Alex Jones was in a shootout with cops, and they took him out." 

"This guy, this guy probably meets with Obama!" 

"We wouldn't cover this if it was just Glenn Beck saying this, but he's saying White House talking points, Media Matters talking points that he originated.  So for anyone who's trained in tracking PsyOps and stuff, now it all clicked for me.  Why he says I want him arrested and put in a camp.  He said that a week and a half ago, we played the bizarre clip.  Why he says I want violence, why he says InfoWars wants violence.  Why we were covering up the racism of Cliven Bundy.  We were there in hours and uncovered it, the way it was spun is terrible.  We're all about fighting racism, here."

But if you like inadvertent humor, the best moment came about twelve minutes in, when Jones and his pal David Knight were discussing a quote that Knight had used:  "First they assassinate your character, and then they assassinate you."  Knight said he thought the quote originated with Jesse Ventura.

"No," Jones said.  "Actually, I think it was Gandhi."

Yup.  Easy to see how you could get Jesse "The Body" Ventura confused with Mohandas Gandhi.  Understandable mistake.

Oh, and for the record, neither Ventura nor Gandhi ever said any such thing, as far as I can find.

So that's the latest salvo between Beck and Jones, each one seeing who can out-wacko whom.

But I haven't shown you the Natural News tie-in, yet!  Just this week, as if on cue, we had a repost over at the wonderful subreddit r/conspiratard of a "Sheeple Quiz" written by Mike Adams, who may be in hot contention with Beck and Jones for who is the biggest nutjob.  You must take a look at it.  (Important warning: every time you answer "B," your name gets boosted higher on the list of people who are being considered for FEMA death camps.)

So there you have it.  Today's dip in the deep end.  Myself, I'm waiting for Beck's rebuttal, which should be epic.  However he says that he's not going to talk about Alex Jones any more, I can't imagine him taking this lying down.  I mean, having sex in the shower with Charlie Sheen is one thing, but insinuations of meeting with President Obama are just crossing the line.

Half-baked lunacy

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the fact that Cliven Bundy and his Gang o' Morons out in Nevada were a gauge of something more than just stupidity -- that it was a symptom of the galloping paranoia that has been fostered by alarmist pundits on the extreme right fringe shrieking about how America As We Know It is threatened.  Bundy, and the abortive "ten million strong protest" that conspicuously failed to materialize in Washington D. C. last week, are the leading edge of a worldview that is based in fear.

I had hoped that the collapse of Operation American Spring Epic Fail was due to the fact that most people are sensible, and realized that the self-styled "Patriots" who were organizing the thing are insane.  That, and the fact that the leaders were overestimating their support by 9,999,900 or so, an error that would be analogous to my telling a student that he had a perfect 100 in my class when in fact he had an overall average of 0.0001 percent.

You can see how that kind of glitch could happen.

But it appears that my Panglossian optimism might have been premature.  Chez Pazienza, over at The Daily Banter, has done a little digging on conspiracy websites, and has found that there's another reason that pretty much no one showed up, and it can be summed up in a famous line from The Return of the Jedi:

Yup, that's right; these people think that they're so important, so absolutely Public Enemy Number One, that they were walking into a trap -- that in Pazienza's words (which I could not possibly improve on) the powers-that be were planning on "unleashing Obama's jackbooted thugs" who were going to sweep down and arrest all ten million of them while they were together in one place.

Then, it got even weirder.  David Chase Taylor, who's so fucking crazy that even Alex Jones thinks he's nuts, stated that he had word that there'd been a security lockdown because a car was trailing a motorcade carrying President Obama's daughters.  Seems reasonable enough, right?  Well, let's see if you can do a little multiple-choice to guess why Taylor said they ramped up security when that happened:

1. Because it is important to protect the president's family, and anything unusual has to be taken seriously.
2. Because any kind of a security threat could have wider implications to the stability of the government.
3. Because during the lockdown, no one would see that the CIA was planting explosives in the White House so that it could be blown up on May 16, so that President Obama could implicate the "Patriots" in the attack.

The answer is (3), of course.  Taylor, who apparently has a single Froot Loop where most of us have a brain, is convinced that True Patriots should protest the fact that it's too dangerous to protest because the government was going to blow itself up to prove how ultra-sneaky and powerful they are, and blame the explosion on people who weren't technically there.

Or something like that.  It's hard to tell, actually.  I read enough of this stuff that I live in fear of the day when eventually some of it starts making sense.  At that point, I should probably just pack it in.  But the upshot of it is, the government is run by brilliant evil Illuminati geniuses who are simultaneously bumbling lunatics who are so stupid that a wingnut like Taylor could see right through them, post about it on the internet, and get away with it.  "Dammit," I can hear President Obama saying.  "Foiled again!  I'd have succeeded this time, if it hadn't been for YouTube!"

It's like a giant layer cake of crazy, sprinkled with nuts.  And only half-baked.

As I mentioned in Monday's post, I'm still uncertain about what the government should do in response to all of this.  On the one hand, we have armed wackos threatening violent revolution, who will admit up front that they're not afraid to shed innocent blood to accomplish their goals.  But on the other hand, to round them up just because they are blustering on YouTube and the r/conspiracy subreddit would probably be challenged on the grounds of free speech.  In the US, it's not a crime to be crazy, fortunately for David Chase Taylor and Alex Jones.  Jones himself has predicted more than once that he'd be arrested or secretly done away with, and yet there he is, still yammering on, week after week -- a better counterargument for his screeching paranoia than any I could come up with.

Anyhow, it'll be interesting to see how all of this unfolds.  My guess is that the "Patriots" who have made actual threats, including the moron who allowed himself to be photographed aiming a gun through two barriers on a highway, will very likely find law enforcement knocking on their doors sooner or later.  As for the rest, they'll probably still keep bleating about Obama and his thugs trying to take away their guns, despite that Obama has been in office for six years now and has yet to try to repeal the Second Amendment.

All I can say is, Mr. President, if you're planning on some kind of Nazi-style socialist power grab, you'd better get a move-on.  Time's a-wastin'.

(Hat tip to Chez Pazienza for today's story -- here's the link again to his piece, which you should all read, because it's awesome.)

Cliven Bundy and the rule of law

A couple of days ago, we considered the conspiracy theorists phenomenon as a gauge of the "dumbing down" of America.  So many of the things they believe -- from chemtrails to the various anti-vaxx claims to FEMA stockpiling guillotines for use on American citizens -- require a dazzling array of ignorance and specious thinking.  To buy what the conspiracy theorists are peddling, not only do you have to ignore what we know about science, you pretty much have to jettison hard evidence and inductive reasoning as a means for understanding.

Today I want to consider a darker side to the whole thing -- that conspiracy theories are an indicator of something far deeper, and far worse, than simple stupidity.  Conspiracy theories come about not only from ignorance, but from fear, paranoia, and a deep-seated rage.

Consider Cliven Bundy.

Bundy, as most you probably already know, is the Nevada cattle rancher who fell afoul of the Bureau of Land Management when it came out that he'd been grazing his cattle on public land for decades without paying the requisite lease fees.  When the BLM came after him, Bundy turned it into a David-vs.-Goliath struggle, with the BLM and the federal government cast as the giant who was gonna end up with a rock to the head if they didn't watch their step.  Right wingers, especially the Tea Party, took up his anti-government cry -- despite the fact that these same politicians shriek on nearly a daily basis about "welfare cheats," who (like Bundy) are stealing from the federal coffers.

Oh, wait.  Bundy is old, white, male, wears a cowboy hat, and votes Republican.  There's your difference, then.

Be that as it may, Bundy proceeded to assemble a ragtag band of defenders, including the far-right nutjobs who call themselves the "Oath Keepers," some members of the Sovereign Citizens Movement, and various other self-styled "Patriots."  The whole thing began to shake itself apart when internal dissent in the ranks nearly had Bundy's defenders at each other's throats, not to mention when Bundy revealed himself as a racist (in an interview, he said outright that African Americans had been better off as slaves) and a liar (he claimed to have "ancestral rights" to the land dating back to the 1870s, and it turned out that land records proved that his family bought the ranch he lives on in 1948).

Bundy's reach was more pervasive than the battle over grazing rights, however.  His defiance seems to have given some inspiration to like-minded types, to judge by "Operation American Spring," a group of Bundy-clones who planned to descend upon Washington D.C. "ten million strong," intending to stay there until President Obama resigns or is overthrown.  The problem is, the estimate turned out to be off by 9,999,850 or so, because the Mall (where they had intended to stage their massive protest) was empty except for a few placard-carrying protestors who were mostly ignored by passersby.

It's easy to laugh at this -- one wag on Twitter quipped, "Drone hustling, shape-shifting Socialist/Kenyan dictators don't scare me...but that clammy drizzle was too much!"  The hashtag #AmericanSpringExcuses quickly trended, generating tweets like, "Put hood on backwards, ran into a tree which was put there by liberal fascist socialist dictators. #AmericanSpringExcuses."   And I certainly was laughing along with them.

But to laugh and then dismiss the more serious aspect of this is, I think, a terrible mistake.  Take what was said by one of the nutcases who showed up in D. C. for what turned into Operation Epic Fail: "This is the America that you all live in today, and it has to end.  I’m telling you right now, it’s going to take — in my view — a little blood, it’s going to happen, this day is coming and you better be willing to pay for it."

How is it that our leaders don't see people like Bundy and the nameless protestor in Washington for what they are -- domestic terrorists?  Look, it's not that I think the government is perfect; it can be inept, wasteful, bumbling, and occasionally cross the line into evil.  But do you really want to jettison it entirely?  Anarchy isn't pretty; ask anyone who has lived in Sudan, Ethiopia, or Somalia.  When people become "sovereign citizens" they usually respond by victimizing each other, and the strongest victimizer becomes the leader -- and you're right back to having a government, although one I doubt any of us would want to live in.  Notwithstanding its faults, our federal and state governments provide us with education, infrastructure, commerce, and security.

Could the government be better?  Of course.  Do I think things would improve in the United States if the government collapsed?

Not just no, but hell no.

By ignoring Bundy and his ilk, or just considering them inept clowns who can't even run a demonstration right, we are potentially overlooking the next David Koresh or Timothy McVeigh.  I know that officials have to act carefully, because these people don't mind spilling blood; their attitude is that if innocent people die in their attempt to achieve their goals, that is simply too bad.  And the likelihood of any misstep turning into further fuel for the fire (and any deaths amongst the militiamen being seen as martyrdom) is high.

But why is law enforcement in Nevada turning a blind eye to what these folks are doing -- acts that now include armed militia members setting up checkpoints along roads in Clark County and demanding identification from drivers proving that they live in the area?  Hotel owners in the nearby town of Mesquite received credible bomb threats when it was discovered that they had rented rooms to BLM employees during the standoff.  A federal livestock wrangler was menaced on Interstate 15, in broad daylight, by men wearing hoods and brandishing a Glock -- along with a handwritten sign saying, "You need to die."

I recognize the danger, here.  Officials in Nevada and Utah are dealing with violent lunatics who are heavily armed and unafraid to use deadly force.  They are also propelled by an ideology that is, at its basis, steeped in counterfactual paranoia, in part fostered by the divisive "America is being murdered!" rhetoric you hear from pundits on the far right.

But you reap what you sow, a lesson that the Rush Limbaughs and Glenn Becks and Sean Hannitys and Pat Buchanans have yet to learn.  If you create a climate in which patriotic Americans feel threatened and besieged, some of them will respond with a preemptive strike.  If you continually portray the government as evil and dangerous, you will spawn individuals who consider it virtuous to overthrow it.

Order, justice, democracy, and the rule of law may not always work.  They fail, they falter, just like any other human-made institution.  But they're the best thing we have for protecting us against the baser instincts of our neighbors.  And I'll take that over the morals and ethics of the likes of Cliven Bundy any day.