The invasion of the Malheur
Wildlife Refuge in Oregon, led by two sons of rogue Nevada rancher Cliven
Bundy, seems to be fulfilling some of the rhetoric advanced by conservatives in
recent years about government being the enemy. While it is not clear if Ronald
Reagan really believed in a nation without government (surely many of his corporate
friends and allies got rich off the government welfare known as military
contracts), he certainly made it sound as if he did. It is not clear, either,
if he was really urging Americans to rebel against government intrusion into
their lives, nor if the general Republican support for the NRA means to
encourage flag-waving militia types to take up arms in that fight, but that is
what the rhetoric has now led to. The handful of “patriots” waving flags and
insisting that they are upholding the Constitution are, in fact, heavily armed.
And the fact that they are indeed armed is no doubt the major factor prompting
government agencies to use extraordinary caution in confronting them. Just
imagine, for a second, that the group that took over the Wildlife Refuge had
been peaceful, nonviolent protestors urging more
protection for wildlife. The media would have been full of diatribes against
left-wingers violating the law, endangering the public peace, and full of dire
warnings that the government should deal with such ruffians severely or risk
open rebellion. We saw what happened, in fact, to most of the Occupy Movement’s
nonviolent participants: many were beaten, most were arrested and harassed and
their possessions seized. The government was clear that such interference in
the daily life of commerce (on Wall Street first, then elsewhere) could not be
tolerated. But in Oregon, in a clear insurrection that has illegally taken over
federal government buildings with the threat of force, the feds have declined
to act, saying they prefer not to interfere in a local matter. And the local
sheriff has urged—verbally only; there has not been even a hint of a police
force coming to mount an attack to remove them, or even observe them—has
pleaded with the protestors to remove themselves and just go home peacefully. It is as if law
enforcement is simply too frightened or wary or reluctant to engage with white
guys with guns. Someone nice (white), after all, might get hurt.
And
that is what I think we have to take from this episode, however it turns out.
The forces of the law seem perfectly willing and capable of understanding why
white ranchers who graze their cattle on public lands might be frustrated. Why
they might have some ‘beef’ with the federal government. Why they might keep
insisting that the federal government has no right to the millions of acres of
land they have set aside for national parks or national forests or any other
national purpose—the main objective of which, since Teddy Roosevelt, has been
to preserve the rich natural heritage of the United States for the use of ALL
of its citizens. That is, rather than allow every available inch of mountain
and valley and river to be occupied and exploited and ruined by commercial
interests bent on extracting every bit of mineral or timber or grassland wealth
from it as soon as possible, the federal government chose to set aside some of
the most pristine and spectacular landscapes so that all its citizens—not just the rich or powerful or
exploitative—could use and enjoy them. So that some species, threatened by the
very industrial uses of the corporate powers at issue, might survive a bit
longer. All of which infuriates those (mostly white) ranchers and miners and
timber moguls who now have to be careful about how they use those lands, mainly
through leases, and must be subject to the rules and regulations of the federal
government intent on preserving them. Ah no, they say. The feds have no right
to these lands in the first place. We who came to the West (most of these militants
are from western states like Idaho and Montana and even Oregon, which were
viewed by white settlers as the last places they could enjoy free from the
encroachment of the darker races overrunning the cities) and were given huge
land grants, mostly for a pittance, have an inalienable right to even those
lands we weren’t given outright. An inalienable right to spread out and extract
from those free lands all the wealth we have earned by the sweat of our white
brows (i.e. by getting the lands free, and now by being able to use all of
nature’s bounty that god has given free, white America without any cost
whatsoever). The invaders in Oregon (they call themselves Citizens for
Constitutional Freedom) have posted a sign summing up their position: “BLM
[Bureau of Land Management]: Another
Intrusive Tyrannical Government Entity Doing What They Do Best—Abusing Power
& Oppressing the Backbone of America.”
And
so we have frauds like Cliven Bundy, who signed up with the federal government
to lease, for a yearly fee, the lands he can use to graze (i.e. fatten) his
cattle on, and then decided that paying the back lease fees he owes to the
Federal Government —amounting to more than a million dollars—was an intolerable
intrusion on his rights. In other words, though paying lease fees is an
accepted part of the cost of doing business, Bundy simply decided he didn’t
want to pay those costs at all, and so reneged on his agreement, and then took
up arms to protect his ‘free’ lands from government agents who came to collect.
This is basically equivalent to a company deciding to not pay its rent to the
property owner. Or a regular citizen refusing to pay taxes to a local
government. But these militia types
frame it as one of the freedoms they have (and the government doesn’t have)
under the Constitution. It is no such thing. It’s fraud, pure and simple, and
they should all be arrested and locked up for fraudulent, criminal behavior.
But
as of this writing, the government has still refused to eject these white guys
from their illegal occupation of government property—an occupation that is,
according to a local judge, costing the government (i.e. you and me) some
$75,000 a day. Nice work, if you can get it. If you’re white, that is. And
armed. And taking a last stand on your whiteness before the dark hordes take
over majority status—as all population projections say they will in a few
years. This is really the issue here. White Americans, and especially white
southern and western Americans, see the writing on the wall, see that they will
soon become a minority in what they consider ‘their own country,’ and are
foaming at the mouth contemplating that awful eventuality, that overturning of
the “natural order of things.” And this is also why they are flocking to
support racist demagogues like Donald Trump—that pasty-faced sandy-haired
epitome of whiteness who best expresses the barely-suppressed violence they
wish to inflict on the ‘politically-correct’ world that seems ready to deprive
them of the white privilege they’ve come to expect as their due.
And
so we have Ammon Bundy, trying his best to act peaceful and reasonable even as
he violates the law. And so we have Donald Trump, trying his best to frame
himself as the rough-and-ready (but peaceful!) standard-bearer of embittered
white men like Ammon Bundy. And so we have a timorous government trying its
best to avoid a confrontation with an entire population that it no doubt sees
as ready to explode, choosing instead to direct its wrath at its darker charges
who might be harboring a similar wrath, but who are still less numerous, less
armed, less organized, and because they have been beaten down for so long, feeling less
entitled and thereby less dangerous.
It
is a nauseating spectacle that only confirms what progressives have been saying
for years: the deck is stacked, the game is fixed, but the cracks are beginning
to show and will soon prove too obvious and catastrophic for even the card
sharps to disguise. And when that happens, this ‘standoff’ may well prove to
have been the start of Whitey’s last stand.
Lawrence DiStasi
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