The Bundy Bunch Thing Continues Its Dreary Way...

What these entitled rich white fools are up to is anybody's guess, but they're certainly getting away with it. Wow.

There are elements and echoes of the Occupy movement in their tactics, and I'm sure the Bundy Bunch learned plenty from the failure of Occupy to hold territory they had seized. The lesson the Bundy Bunch learned -- we all did -- was that unarmed protesters cannot ultimately claim territory or hold positions against the state, whereas armed insurgents (sometimes) can.

The Bundy Bunch are being allowed to get away with an insurrection that borders on domestic terrorism, and they've been allowed to get away with it before. They have a lot of sympathy in the media. Much more than Occupy ever did, but then these privileged white fools are much more like the men and women of the media than the anarchists and rebellious youth of the Occupy movement.

The New York Times had an article the other day about the rural poverty that afflicts the West, Harney County in particular, and stated this poverty is the backdrop and implied it is somehow the reason for the Bundy Bunch's seizure of the wildlife refuge.

Utter nonsense.

The insurgents are not poor. Most are very well off, and some like the Bundys are objectively wealthy. Their prosperity and/or wealth is partly the result of federal subsidies  for their ranching operations. They have little or no concern for the rural poor who are suffering economic hardship. It's simply not how things are done in the West. The Bundy Bunch is not in Harney County to ameliorate the economic condition of the struggling masses. To suggest that the standoff at Malheur has anything to do with that is deeply dishonest and bizarre.

But it seems to be where the media is headed as they try to "make sense of" the situation.

No.

There is most definitely rural poverty in the West. Ms Ché and I live in a rural county in New Mexico with a high poverty rate. But in addition there are also rich ranchers and farm operators in the county, running cattle and growing crops, making money, often with the assistance of federal and state subsidies. Los Ricos do not much fret over the poor. Most don't give a good gott-damn about "rural poverty." And the other side of that is that most of the rural poor in this area make do as best they can, helped out by relatives, neighbors, and one another and a tenaciousness that is quite remarkable given the harshness of so much of the reality here.

There is also a tendency to skirt -- or flout -- the law.

The idea that the poor of this or any other rural county of the West would be better off if the federal government did not control so much land is nonsense, something the people of Harney County seem to understand quite well. They want the Bundy Bunch gone.

The media has a hard time with that concept, however, thinking the Bundy Bunch are romantic heroes of some Western novelist's dream.

It's sad.

But here we are. The government continues to allow the rich white fools at Malheur to get away with it. The rest of us have to put up with it for the duration.