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Occupy Wildlife Preserve

Published by marco on

Updated by marco on

I haven’t read much about Ammon Bundy and his gang’s standoff in Oregon. I’ve read so little about it that I had to look up where it was actually happening (other than knowing it was “somewhere in the U.S.”). So it’s some Arizona ranchers occupying a federal building in Oregon. This is definitely a step up from the domestic terrorism of the Unabomber or Timothy McVeigh because at least fewer people are being killed. Still, armed men have occupied federal property and are demanding the release of two of their family members from prison—any non-biased and halfway-objective definition of terrorism would have to include this act.

I admit I haven’t put much effort into reading about it because it sounds so overtly ridiculous, much like the peaceful protest/armed standoff against federal officers by Cliven Bundy[1] and co. a few years ago. It honestly sounds like people feeling oppressed but utterly unaware of the privileges that allow them to even feel oppressed in this way and to protest it without getting killed. Even if the grievance were to be legitimate—which Clive Bundy’s objectively was not and a cursory examination of Ammon Bundy’s leads one to the same conclusion there—armed resistance is not the way to solve problems in a civilized country.

And, even if we were to consider allowing it in cases where revolution truly seems to be the only answer, these guys are definitely not first in line. Last year, during the protests triggered by police violence, there were those quick to opine that blacks should stop complaining and work harder instead of abandoning their families in droves to go do drugs. Those same people now listen carefully with looks of concern to every word that drips from Bundy’s lips about the nearly unutterable obscenities that the oppressive government has visited on them when it’s not otherwise bestowing its largesse on them from its public coffers in the form of ranching subsidies.

Where the grievances of the Occupy Movement were founded in real problems that affect many, many Americans and were based on deep inequalities and injustices in the American system of governance, these grievances don’t seem like injustices at all.

Where Occupy asked how people were supposed to live in a system that imposes such crushing debt for so many simply in order to take part in society, these ranchers simply don’t want to pay taxes, or to pay to use public land or to be told when and how much they’re allowed to set it on fire.

Where Occupy addressed the underlying issues of an economic system that caused global economic collapse and instability, these ranchers are growing what are very personal issues into national grievances with very careful manipulation of people’s heartstrings and miseducation on issues of governance.

Where addressing Occupy’s grievances would lead to a more equitable and viable society for many more than just the 1%, the solutions stemming from these ranchers are utterly unviable. That is, “not paying taxes” doesn’t scale to everybody, else how would you pay anyone to maintain public grazing land?

Though Occupy didn’t offer concrete solutions, the implication that the richest should be reined in by getting a smaller slice of the pie or at least giving up more of it should they unfairly get it doesn’t seem so outrageous, unless you’ve been heavily indoctrinated in so-called “free market” religion. Extending the mantra of “stop taxing us” and “let us use public land for free” doesn’t scale. At all. All it is is “I’ve got mine, Jack” and, once I’ve got it, no-one else gets it, ‘cause that wouldn’t be fair.

Just because it’s a mentality that might just win out in the short term doesn’t make it any less stupid or any more long-term viable.

There might be more to it, I know, but that’s really what it looks like so far. And, even if there were deeper subtleties, I don’t believe that most of the people who are so quick to throw their support behind these ranchers are doing it for those subtle reasons. Americans are trained from birth to simultaneously hate their own government and to unwittingly live off its largesse. The ignorance is often deliberate. This cognitive dissonance goes a long way to ensuring that they shut discussion down immediately lest uncomfortable reality intrude.

What the ranchers are doing sounds for all the world like a reality show, though, and will likely be picked up as a new Netflix-only series by 2017.

The article The Dumb and the Restless by Matt Taibbi (Rolling Stone) (sub-titled, “Ammon Bundy and his band of weeping, self-pitying, gun-toting, wannabe-terrorist metrosexuals are America’s most ridiculous people”) closes with the following,

“There’s no doubt that these people are dangerous, but their ridiculousness is a huge part of who they are. Incidentally, this is true of groups like the actual al-Qaeda, too, led as they are by men in beards and Rick-Perry-style “smart glasses” who play at being religious scholars and intellectuals when in fact they are the kind of people who are afraid of cartoons and lie awake at night wondering if it’s permissible to play chess with a menstruating woman. Just because a person is dangerous does not mean he’s not also absurd.

“The Bundy militiamen are an extreme example of a type that’s become common in America. Like the Tea Partiers, they seem to not only believe that they’re the only people in history who’ve ever paid taxes, but that they’re the only people who were ever sad about it. What they call tyranny on the part of the federal government just means putting up with the same irritating bills and regulations and other crap that we all put up with, only the rest of us don’t whine about it in the front seats of our cars while posing in front of tripods.

“Again, these people may be dangerous, but their boundless self-pity, their outrageous sense of entitlement and their slapstick incompetence as rebels and terrorists are absolutely ridiculous. Sure, it may not help, but how can we not laugh?”

The opposite postulate holds as well: just because a person is absurd, that does not mean he’s not also dangerous. While I agree with Taibbi that we should laugh at them to dispel their power, we should still keep a careful eye on who’s not laughing. If there are enough people not laughing, they could react in ways that we don’t foresee because we aren’t taking them seriously.

Otherwise, we’re all self-satisfied and oblivious fools, judging “those idiots” who don’t know anything about anything and then utterly shocked to discover that those idiots are now, for all intents and purposes, in charge.[2]

This advice applies to all interest groups that use numbers—even seemingly small numbers—to exert control over the powerful on behalf of the weak. Sometimes this pressure achieves ostensibly “good” results—a union negotiates living wages or better benefits for its workers and the company for which they work is still profitable—and sometimes it’s bad—groups exert P.C. pressure to force companies and individuals to submit to ridiculous demands.

If we dismiss those who automatically lend credence to such special-interest groups out of hand, we run the risk of being extremely surprised when those groups end up exerting no small amount of control over our own lives.[3]


[1] No relation?
[2]

Here is where we often confuse who’s winning and losing. It’s very possible to lose reputation while winning everything else. That is, you think you’ve won against someone because you’ve made them ridiculous, but you’ve only beaten them on an inconsequential battleground while losing everywhere important.

Witness “bankers” (or the financial community) since 2008. Once again, in the wake of the global crash, everyone hates them and their reputation is terrible. On the other hand, almost all economic gains in the last seven years have gone to them. So what do they care if we think they’re losers, when by the only measure that matters in our society—money, in case you haven’t been paying attention—they are very definitely winning?

While we smugly consider ourselves better than “those people”, we continue our lives of quiet desperation while “those people” live lives of luxury unparalleled in history and financed purely by a largesse born of ignorance, self-satisfaction and an utter misunderstanding of power structures.

[3] A good example would be the “whackos” who are against abortion. The really extreme ones are a relatively small minority, but they are constantly winning their war on abortion in the States because only legislators really take them seriously—but that’s all that matters in a republic. The fact about abortion in the States is that, while it is legal everywhere, it is—for exactly those people who would need them—extremely difficult and time-consuming to get one.