Comments

1
Another thought-provoking Mudede home run of a post that makes up for his occasional strikeout.

I also can't help but think that the Bundy clan's acting out is borne of much the same frustration that motivates the older, whiter GOP base to flock to Trump and Cruz and finally rebel against the Republican elites that have been taking them for suckers for lo these many years. And I can't say I blame 'em, although if I were to imagine an alternative universe where I was a Republican, I could only imagine being a Kasich supporter.

Charles's historical perspective reminds me of a Salon story I came across recently about why Lincoln decided to fight the Civil War, We have Lincoln wrong: Our greatest Linc…. It also speaks to why white Northerners (like one of my ancestors in PA) were motivated to volunteer to defend the Union. The antebellum South's slave system was a structural force that devalued labor. And in that respect, it's not unlike the structural forces we're seeing devaluing labor today.
2
I wonder, if your average city-dweller had the perspective of a western rural person, if they would have a significantly more... nuanced point of view.

As it is, we have "they're terrorists!" facebook posts. The unsaid part is "and therefore they should be freely murdered".

3
And now, instead of raising crops on our land we raise houses.
4
Fantastic post, Charles.
5
nice history lesson, but people can hunt on public lands in america
6
This is who the Bundys are (from ST):
"PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The man behind the armed occupation of a federal wildlife refuge comes from a Mormon family that has been challenging government authority for at least two decades.

Ammon Bundy, like his father in previous confrontations, says he is following directions from God and invokes his family’s faith when explaining the anti-government movement he is attempting to lead."
7
Silly and pointless comparison. They are not akin to ISIS or other terror groups who actually kill people. The people who are making this comparison have no idea what it's like to actually work on a ranch or farm, or live in a rural area, and have never worked a day in their life.
8
ClarkG @7, I grew up in rural country. I grew up surrounded by farmers. And the key difference between the farmers I knew growing up and these clowns is that the farmers I knew growing up owned their own land and weren't trying to mooch off somebody else's land.

I have just as much right, sitting in my home here in Seattle (which I own by the way), to claim that federal land as my own personal property as the Bundys do. Unlike the Bundys, though, I have some shame.
9
How do you make terrain like that? I mean, geologically? Was this region part of those glacial ice-age floods, because it looks pretty fascinating. We need to protect some wild areas from grazing, agriculture and development... pretty please?

@7, I agree that they're not in the same league as ISIS. But come on. Ranching...where you don't pay rent on grazing lands and where you just go harvest a "crop" that essentially feeds itself, is pretty easy farm work. And I say this as a descendent of vegetable and dairy farmers who have to work their asses off and often have very slim profit margins.
10
@9: no, this is basin and range, on a base of flood basalts and more recent volcanic activity - fault scarp mountains, high desert.

the ice-age floods were in WA, but the waters backed up into the willamette.
11
@10 thanks so much.
12
The funny part is, liberals actually agree with what these guys are actually protesting: mandatory federal sentencing minimums, and prosecuting people under Orwellian terrorism laws for ordinary infractions.

They just do not share most political ideas with liberals, and are white guys, so you get the reality that #2 outlines.
13
@12 I think you're misreading this protest. It's not the sentencing - which even I, a lefty liberal commie pinko freak, find absurd: five years for a little brushfire arson, on the basis that it's "terrorism"? Come on - but the land management. These yahoos want to be able to fuck around with public land any goddam way they want without interference. That is, at least, what they're saying, not that the sentences are unfair (which they are) but that this isn't even an offense at all because "it's our land, goldurnit!" (which is idiotic).
14
As a rural-raised commie, I really really applaud this article. Most urban leftists assume that there's no nuance to the rural perspective, but you've absolutely hit the head of the nail with this piece. Thank you, and please write more along this vein.
15
There is ranching and land use, and the complex issues involved in that, but that is not the fundamental problem with the Malheur invasion.

When they are on the ranch doing what ranchers do, then it is fair to describe the Bundy group as “ranchers”, but when they are acting as hatred-motivated armed paramilitary groups then that is what they are.

One doesn't find many criminals who openly declare their willingness to gun down other Americans--that takes a special breed—and, here they are, people who are willing to kill other Americans utterly without remorse, respecting no authority other than that of their own manufacture.

The Web is full of sympathizers expressing their core beliefs that the Bundys and the other crazies they are drawing have the “authority” to kill any (Oregon) American--whether in or out of his or her working-class uniform, whether doing his or her working-class (Oregon) American job supporting their own working class (Oregon) American family--who makes the "wrong move", and thus they have expressly and purposefully crossed the line into active terrorism.

As long as the Bundys and the other paramilitaries they are drawing are out in public carrying weapons they are a continuing threat to public safety, the same as any other terrorist organization or similar clot of Fever Dream religious sociopaths.

These people have already declared war on America, and they are able to operate openly only because they are all white, exercising full-on white privilege, which comes with built-in excuses for just about anything, including homicide.

I hope that this incident leads to an examination of the role that white terrorist supply houses like tacticalshit dot com play in these events and in sustaining the paramilitaries.

This site operates like a Snipers R Us Outfitters, offering weapons, gear, sniper and other "tactical" training videos, links to chat rooms where these crazies discuss the C-4 and other bomb-making materials they have cached, and 3% and 2A uniform insignia, you-name-it, they can hook you up....

16
So in all the name calling the jokes and the misinformation because of the messenger the message is being lost. What Americans need to understand what the message really is that message is that agricultural is on a very steep decline in America. There are a lot of forces that are putting the American farmer and rancher out of business. Bureaucrats being led by the nose by the hard left environmentalist is just one. Regulations, drought, little return on products, expenses all contribute to the siege. In 50 years ag as gone from feeding 25 to 114 people per acre while few Farmer's are working in ag also add the decrease in acre contributed to ag it is not having d to see the direction of ag in the US. Many think they can live with this but the reality is that probably not. How many recalls have occurred this year? Most of those recalls come from Mexico, China, South America. Are you ready to play Russian roulette with your food? I doubt it. But another fact that should make you sit down and think is this fact by 2016 the population will triple while arable land diminishes. These to fact contribute to the expected starvation of over 1/3 of the population. The estimate is that every country in the world will be as many third world populations are today. Imagine America looking like India or an African nation. There will be no hand to mouth existence there will be waiting to die. Food for thought. My advice is forget the messenger and pay attention to the message
17
I appreciate many things about this article. It's a good idea to connect what's going on here in Oregon to the history of what marxists for a long time have called "primitive accumulation", but it's kind of silly to compare these 21st century ranchers to subsistence peasants as such.

For one thing, they're deeply implicated in the capitalist system and still would be even if they got that land. They are not aboriginal peoples and I feel confident saying they have never lived off "their own" products alone or mostly. Instead, to get their livelihood they mix their labor with raw (if living) materials to "produce" a commodity to sell on a market, either directly to folks and/or to other kinds of food-chain middlemen. They may be ranchers, but they aspire to do this in a way that leads to money-wealth for all the other things they like (and need) to spend money on. Unlike those westward bound yeoman and settlers, or medieval European peasants, these guys do not seem interested in getting away from the market and having to work to make money (well, maybe the latter part, but not the former, which in this universe also means the wage-system). Ammon Bundy's wikipedia page even describes him as a "company owner" and resides in Phoenix, Arizona -- the biggest water-guzzling city slicker butthole to grace the SW desert -- which just goes to show you Star Trek Deep Space Nine was right: "Ferengi workers don't want to escape the exploitation; they want to find a way to become the exploiters".

It would have been more interesting if we got to learn more about that original dispossession that happened when the US empire, in agreement with its other imperial buddies, decided it "owned" the so-called Oregon Territory. To me that is much more connected to the Malheur situation than that of late medieval European peasents. There is a presumption of extraction at play in Malheur that's antagonistic to the communitarian tendencies of medieval European peasant rebellions. When white people invaded and re-settled this land, a common justification was the need and thereby the right to use the land (as the natives who weren't killed off were thought to be wasting the land with their non-intensive subsistence ways). We hear that again at the Malheur Wildlife Refuge, except the wasters in this case are the scientists who study and aim to protect other forms of life in the area. While anti-intellectualism is American as apple pie, there's something to be said about the connection between conservation science and the State, but in a land that white people conquered and exploited to hell already, it seems like Bundy and this kit militia are not taking a stand against capitalism so much as groping for white privilege like was suggested. And Here's another book to consider too: "Caliban and the Witch: woment, the body, and primative accumulation", by Silvia Federici.

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