Thom Hartman
If you want to understand
the modern American right, just head on out to Bunkerville, Nevada and visit
the Bundy Ranch. The mainstream media may
have backed off talking about them ever since The New York Times published
Cliven Bundy’s racist rant, but, believe it or not, militia groups are still
hanging around the Bundy Ranch and they’re really starting to annoy everyone
else who lives in the area. It’s gotten so bad that Congressman Steven
Horsford, who represents the area around the Bundy Ranch, actually wrote a
letter to Clark County’s sheriff complaining that militia members have set up
roadblocks and checkpoints on local highways.
For most Americans, the
idea of armed gunmen checking drivers’ licenses and blocking off highways
conjures up some pretty scary images. After all, this is America, not Somalia,
and there’s no reason in a supposedly developed country like ours that anyone
should be acting like a warlord. But there’s more to this situation than
meets the eye, and if you actually take the time to listen to what militia
members are saying about why they’ve decided to take a stand at the Bundy
Ranch, you’d be surprised at how similar it sounds to some of the things we
talk about on this program.
A few weeks ago, for
example, right when this whole controversy started, I had Sheriff Richard Mack
of the Oath Keepers on my radio show to talk about why he and his group
supported Cliven Bundy. Sheriff Mack believes in some pretty non-mainstream
stuff and there are a lot of areas where I disagree with him, but we both agree
that corporate interests have taken over our government and that the American
people have been sold down the river.
Like so many other
Americans these days, Mack and his friends in the militia movement are
frustrated, scared, and angry. They’re frustrated that their government cares
more about helping big business than everyday people, they’re scared that they
have no power, and they’re angry that the economic cards are stacked against
them. The fear that drives the militia movement is a very real fear. It’s a
fear that anyone who’s been screwed over by 30-plus years of Reaganomics can
identify with.
I know this from my own
personal experience. I grew up with guys like Sheriff Mack in Michigan, and I
still run into guys like him when I go back there to visit my brothers and we
go to the shooting range. The Michigan Militia guys are misinformed about a lot
of things and have some ugly views, and they can usually repeat the previous
days' Fox programming verbatim, but their anger and frustration with the status
quo is real. Tragically, what they don't realize is that people like the Koch
Brothers and Karl Rove and Roger Ailes are just exploiting them.
That’s the ironic thing
about the militia movement. Despite all its rage against corrupt government,
American decline, and the elites, in the end, the only people who benefit from
its fight against “big government” are the same people who are already destroying
our country - the billionaires and the oligarchs. To put it bluntly, the
militias are the useful idiots of the one percent. The Bundy Ranch
standoff is a great example of this. Militia groups think they’re protecting a
humble rancher from a government land grab, but they’re actually helping a few
robber barons make a land grab of their own.
The Koch Brothers have
been trying for years to get their hands on publicly-owned land in the American
West, and with the help of ALEC, have pushed for legislation in states like
Utah to help them do so. When Cliven Bundy’s tussle with the Feds started
to make news, they saw their chance to make their own land grab and started
promoting his standoff as an epic fight against tyranny. The Nevada chapter of
the Koch-backed group Americans for Prosperity, for example, sent out photos
mocking the Bureau of Land Management for trying to round up Bundy’s cows, and
pushed the hashtag “Bundy Battle” on Twitter. The Kochs hoped that by
turning Bundy into a folk hero, they could shore up enough popular support for
their land grab.
This isn’t to say, of
course, that the militia groups who are still hanging around the Bundy Ranch
don’t believe in their cause - they do. Anyone who has even a casual
conversation with them can see that. But it’s important to remember that their
fear and hatred of the federal government is a "useful" anger - an
anger that's there for the taking by any oligarch who wants to manipulate it.
And manipulate it they are doing. In the big scheme of things, the
rage of Bundy’s militia supporters isn’t all that different from the rage of
all the working and middle class Americans who vote Republican in election
after election.
Like those millions of
Republican supporters, the militia groups occupying the land around the Bundy
Ranch want real change in this country and are frustrated with an economy that
doesn’t work for them and a government that seems like it only cares about
making things easier for the one percent. They’ve just been duped by the
wealthy right-wing media and the billionaires into believing that real change
will only come about by destroying the federal government and handing federal
lands - and pretty much everything else - over to the oligarchs.
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- See more at:
http://www.thomhartmann.com/blog/2014/04/bundy%E2%80%99s-friends-have-become-kochs%E2%80%99-useful-idiots#sthash.MHgq7oup.dpuf
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