Submitted by Elaine Magliaro, Weekend Contributor
Cliven Bundy, the Nevada rancher and scofflaw, was hailed by some people as a folk hero and patriot recently when he—and his followers–engaged in a standoff with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM). Caty Enders (Esquire) described the scene in Bunkerville, Nevada, as pundits and politicians descended on the Bundy camp last week “to throw in their American flag hats with the BLM protestors.” She said that a FOX News van had been parked by the side of the road for days—and that “militia snipers kept a trained watch” up on a ridge “as Bundy held court.” She added that disciples of Bundy came from far and wide “to share their personal theories as to why the government was enforcing a court order.”
Bundy has had a number of advocates who have spoken in support of his militant stance against the BLM. Those advocates included some prominent politicians and members of the media. Sean Hannity was one of Bundy’s biggest boosters and helped to make him into a folk hero. Hannity talked with Bundy on a number of occasions on his Fox News show. Joan Walsh (Salon) asked a pertinent question about Bundy on Friday: “How does a guy who declared early on ‘I don’t recognize the United States government as even existing’ become a folk hero in the first place?” She said that both Hannity and Fox News should have realized that the Nevada rancher was “too toxic” prior to his “ongoing self-exposure as a racist.” She added that the extremism of Bundy’s statement about the US government “should have been warning enough that Bundy was not only crazy but dangerous…”
Enders posed a question that was in the same vein as Walsh’s: “Exactly how difficult was it, though, to determine pretty early on that Bundy and his followers were using the threat of force to back up some terrifyingly misguided beliefs?” Enders provided some insight into the thinking and beliefs of Bundy and disciples of his with whom she talked.
Members of the Bundy Brigade Speak Out
Enders spoke to a militia member named Mark who was affiliated with the Oath Keepers group. Mark explained to her “the truth behind public land management.” He said, “The assumption is that the BLM is part of the federal government. But we need to check the facts on that one. The BLM doesn’t work for the government: they work for the United Nations. They might as well be wearing blue helmets. If we find out there’s money being exchanged between Harry Reid and the Chinese government, no one should be surprised.”
Another Bundy disciple told Enders that “Bar-certified lawyers, like the ones who prosecuted Bundy, have sworn loyalty to the British government, whose statutes encourage sex with clients. ‘That’s what they do with all their clients.’”
Enders spent time talking to a former cop who chuckled as he related a story about one of his buddies who once worked as a sheriff in New Mexico. He said his buddy got into some trouble after he pulled over a group of illegals one night. He said his pal “didn’t have room to haul ‘em all, so he put a chain around their neck and put a padlock through it, went to the next one, then he chained ‘em to a tree!” Enders said that the former cop then buckled with laughter as he told her how his friend “left ‘em and went to town to get his pickup to haul ‘em all back in. So, you might imagine, that didn’t play well — ha! You’re a young’un, but everything wasn’t against the law, way back when.” The former cop also told Enders that it was now being proved that the Bureau of Land management was acting on orders “from Troy and Harry Reid, who want to build a solar farm on the land — or a wind farm.”
One of Bundy’s disciples drove a beige sedan covered with the following message:
IF YOU WERE BORN IN 1980 AND AFTER. YOU MAY BE IMPLANTED WITH A GOVERNMENT MICROCHIP WITHOUT YOUR KNOWLEDGE: GOOGLE DOCTORS THAT REMOVE MICROCHIPS.
Cliven Bundy, God’s Messenger
During the time that Enders spent at the Bundy camp, she witnessed one of the public addresses the Nevada rancher made to his followers. She said that as Bundy—who had just been given a standing ovation—took the stage, he didn’t seem pleased. She said that Bundy reproached the crowd “for failing to follow the word of God – to the letter …”— which he claimed was being “delivered through him.” He wasn’t happy that his supporters failed “to follow his instructions to tear down the toll booths at Lake Mead and disarm the Park Service.” Bundy added, “The message I gave to you all was a revelation that I received. And yet not one of you can seem to even quote it.” He continued, “The records of our bible — how long have they been kept? Thousands of years. They’ve been turned over generation after generation, buried, and all kinds of things happen to ‘em. And yet, here, something I felt was inspired [by God] and yet we haven’t even carried it forth for even a couple of days. Shame on us.”
Bundy expressed frustration because his followers hadn’t been able to deter the BLM “within an hour”—“as the revelation had prophesied.” When an hour had passed, Bundy reportedly got into his bulldozer and decided to march on the BLM himself. His dozer got stuck in the mud—and that led to Bundy’s receiving yet another revelation: “It come to my mind real plain — the good Lord said, ‘Bundy, it’s not your job, it’s THEIR job.’” Bundy reiterated that revelation a little differently in an effort to ensure that his followers understood what he had just told them, “This is not my job, it’s YOUR job.”
Bundy said that he received a message that morning after he prayed. He claimed that he heard a voice say, “Sheriff Gillespie, your work is not done. Every sheriff across the United States, take the guns away from the United States bureaucrats.”
Uncivil Disobedience
Even The Weekly Standard–as well as Glenn Beck–has been critical of Cliven Bundy. The magazine’s Scrapbook explained the whole Bundy situation with regard to grazing fees and court rulings. The Scrapbook said that what had transpired over the years didn’t sound “like the dread hand of tyranny, in Nevada or Washington, oppressing an innocent farmer, or pushing some law-abiding citizen around.” It said it sounded, instead, “like a rancher gaming the system to his own financial advantage, and disguising his scheme in populist rhetoric: refusing to pay a tax which others must pay, and ‘tying up the courts’—for two decades!—as he continues to ignore the law.”
The Weekly Standard:
Far from acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner, the federal government has shown patience and forbearance in the face of lawlessness that customarily lands people in jail. It is worth noting that Bundy’s rancher-neighbors and the Nevada Cattlemen’s Association, who contend with the same federal policies, offer him little support.
Apocalypse Cow – Welfare Rancher, Part 1 (The Daily Show)
Apocalypse Cow – Welfare Rancher, Part 2 (The Daily Show)
SOURCES
Fox News’ new laughingstock: Cliven Bundy — and Stephen Colbert — will destroy Sean Hannity (Salon)
Uncivil Disobedience (The Weekly Standard)
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Annie, I fear he saw the handwriting on the wall. WI has gone crazy. I hope the Northwoods will survive.
Do you read Charlie Pierce’s blog at Esquire. I think you would enjoy it. Be sure to read the comments. Priceless!
I have learned in his brief but bombastic tenure here not to engage Scott on hot button topics. However, being a PI I am able to pick up on subtle things people say. My expertise was insurance fraud. That is not to say I did not work cases for plaintiff’s attorneys, w/o question some of the most satisfying. When you work for a truly injured person being jerked around by Godless b@stards insurance companies, it is quite satisfying to pound sand up their asses. However, my expertise became insurance fraud because it is a BOOMING business. So, for over 30 years, and right now, I work and have worked thousands of fraud cases. It is epidemic. So, I wonder how someone who’s expertise is being a stagehand can impugn my expertise. I would NEVER impugn his expertise on being a stagehand. So, what makes Scott Supak an expert on insurance fraud?
Infrastructure… Yeah, the stuff we can see is crumbling, so we can all imagine how bad the stuff we can’t see is. The deadly gas main explosion in Harlem was a 127 year old main. But, you know, Harlem. When a chunk of Beverly Hills or Westchester gets vaporized, maybe they’ll do something about it (to be fair, they are fixing gas mains in NY, but that’s a lot of pipe, and they just don’t have the money to do it as fast as they should).
The grid is a joke. Talk about vulnerability to a super-empowered terrorist.
And Dredd, the cost-shifting of negative externalities like nuke waste onto the tax payer is yet another example of the rest of us paying for these supposed free markets. Nukes have never been profitable without huge subsidies. Meanwhile, solar power has almost reached grid parity without subsidies, and the right still ridicules it.
You know, because only hippies use the sun for power.
So many of us Progressives in Wisconsin were disappointed when Feingold declined to run for Governor, but I guess he had other projects.
Scott Supak (@ssupak)
If you guys like Feingold, you should support other progressive Democrats. There are a lot more now. As I said, 70% of Democrats voted against renewing the Patriot Act. TODAY’s Democrats.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is now the largest on the hill. Bigger than the Tea Party Caucus. If libertarians actually cared about things like the 4th amendment and ending the drug war, you’d keep voting for progressives.
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Indeed.
There are no TODAY’s republicans.
They have mutated into libertarbaggers.
Ahhhhh, yes, Dredd. The list is very long on worries.
Nick Spinelli
…Mr. Spinelli and this entire forum are fed up w/ this infantile display.
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Translation: “How could Rush have been so wrong to tell me ‘we will kick they butt’ on that issue when we got so trounced on it?”
Scott, I’m not sure, because randyjet is something of a maverick (nothing wrong with that) but I thought his story may have been setting us up for a sarcastic punchline about the “oppressive government” we have.
But maybe that’s just the way I wanted it to read.
If you guys like Feingold, you should support other progressive Democrats. There are a lot more now. As I said, 70% of Democrats voted against renewing the Patriot Act. TODAY’s Democrats.
The Congressional Progressive Caucus is now the largest on the hill. Bigger than the Tea Party Caucus. If libertarians actually cared about things like the 4th amendment and ending the drug war, you’d keep voting for progressives.
Annie
Randyjet, the people who voted Feingold out are the same stupid people who voted Scott Walker in.
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Indeed.
And the same ones camping out on gods free land in Bundyville.
feynman
Re: Infrastructure:
We can see crumbling roads and bridges. It’s about the stuff we can’t see – like sewers that most worries me.
When I get really depressed about where this Congress is taking us, I think cholera. I expect my children and grandchildren will have to worry about that. I also expect some in Congress also know that. But they know it won’t hit until they are gone and BENGHAAAAZI is much more important.
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Right on.
And not that I want you to experience more depression, I just want to also point out that our national grid is suffering the same neglect.
We have enough radioactive material attached to it (nuclear power plants) that when it fails it might as well be WW III because nuclear winter is Fukushima sure.
Whether the symbolic racist Clive “the hive master” Bundy gets to freeload his cattle or not.
Randyjet, the people who voted Feingold out are the same stupid people who voted Scott Walker in.
Scott Supak (@ssupak),
Dredd, I think feynman saw you quoting my translation of Nick and thought it was you…
“Translation: We’re losing this ridiculous argument to a couple of Shiite Liberals, so bail out and come back to punch hippies some other day, when you can act like none of this ever happened.”
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feynman
Dredd – Scott’s right. Sorry for the mix-up, Scott.
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We have a consensus.
As Nick would say, “That matters around here” (except when scientists have a consensus).
Hope you did not hurt anything beating your fist on the table feynman.
Scott: “BTW, I have linked to your blog now, Dredd. Thanks again.”
Way cool. HGT (horizontal gene transfer) is a proven winner.
Re: Infrastructure:
We can see crumbling roads and bridges. It’s about the stuff we can’t see – like sewers that most worries me.
When I get really depressed about where this Congress is taking us, I think cholera. I expect my children and grandchildren will have to worry about that. I also expect some in Congress also know that. But they know it won’t hit until they are gone and BENGHAAAAZI is much more important.
Well, it’s my turn to say Wow.
But in my case, it is not code for “filing a complaint”.
Dredd – Scott’s right. Sorry for the mix-up, Scott.
feynman: “But seriously, Scott. I don’t think Nick would do that.”
I’m not so sure. Someone was turning me in for violating the civility rule the last time I was here and they were all defending the display of the confederate flag as a celebration of southern heritage. As if southern heritage wasn’t code for terrorizing black people.
Yeah, I’ve seen that Elaine. Good stuff.
I hear that some of the soldiers in Iraq named a crater in Baghdad after GW.
I’m thinking that when some piece of our infrastructure that could have been fixed with the trillions we spent in Iraq collapses or explodes, we should name it after Bush.
So, the GW Bush Sinkhole. Or the GW Bush rubble pile left from a 127 year-old gas main exploding. Or, the GW Bush bridge, now a pile of twisted steel… We have a very large pot hole near hear that keeps getting patched, and then gets worse… I call it the GW Bush pothole.
What’s to report? The guy who is a killer debater?
But seriously, Scott. I don’t think Nick would do that.
Dredd, I think feynman saw you quoting my translation of Nick and thought it was you…
“Translation: We’re losing this ridiculous argument to a couple of Shiite Liberals, so bail out and come back to punch hippies some other day, when you can act like none of this ever happened.”
BTW, I have linked to your blog now, Dredd. Thanks again.