Arizona Tea Party Lady Shocked By Parallels Between Bundy Ranch, Tiananmen Square
Today's winner of the "At Least You Didn't Say Hitler" award goes to Arizona state Rep. Kelly Townsend, who said she was shocked to see video of police using a stun gun on one of the sons of Hero Nevada Scofflaw Cliven Bundy. How upsetting was the video, exactly?
“Watching that video last night created a visceral reaction in me,” Townsend told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It sounds dramatic, but it reminded me of Tiananmen Square. I don’t recognize my country at this point.”
She apparently doesn't recognize China, either, where in 1989 People's Liberation Army troops killed hundreds of peaceful protestors, possibly upwards of 1,000, depending on whose estimates you use. But apart from that, yes, the stunning of one guy and the seizure of a couple hundred cattle is almost exactly the same. Once again, however, we do wish to congratulate Ms. Townsend on not comparing the action to the Nazis.
Police stunned Ammon Bundy as he tried to climb "onto a dump truck that he believed might contain cattle killed during the roundup of his father’s herd," which in the heat of the moment probably seemed reasonable to do; there have been lots of dubiously sourced stories claiming that instead of taking the cattle to be auctioned to pay some of Bundy's over $1 million in unpaid grazing fees, the Feds simply slaughtered the entire herd because that's what jackbooted federal thugs do. The Bureau of Land Management announced over the weekend that the cattle would be released back onto the federal land they'd been grazing, but that Bundy was still liable for grazing fees and to comply with a court order that he remove cattle from endangered tortoise habitat.
A group of Arizona legislators are planning to send a very strongly worded letter to federal and Nevada officials about the Bundy case; they don't dispute whether Bundy was in violation of the law, but are worried that the federal government went too far in seizing his illegally grazing cattle, because Freedom and Liberty and Private Property, even when it's federal land and not your actual property. It's all about the principle of the thing, said Ms. Townsend, who acknowledged that Bundy "may be wrong as far as the law is concerned,” but was very worried about the "un-American" way the cattle were being rounded up. We're not sure if she saw someone using a French rope or an English saddle, or what. Or maybe the Truly American thing to do is to allow people to not pay required fees for 20 years, then hail them as heroes of resistance to tyranny when they proudly talk about their guns and "doing whatever is necessary" to make sure that the law isn't enforced.
Just to be on the safe side, we do not recommend that strategy to anyone who is not a telegenic rancher with a sympathetic ear among rightwing media and politicians. Normally those folks are all about Law And Order. On the other hand, illegal aliens need to be shot on sight, because what part of "illegal" don't those people understand?
[ Las Vegas Review-Journal via Rawstory ]
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1. Despite being a bit drunk, I think the BLM did the sensible thing. This is not a dispute that warrants bloodshed. They can come back in a month and round up some cattle. And a month later, etc. The BLM isn't going to cease to exist. The enthusiasm of the guntriots will, however, wear off with repetition. Especially so, if the BLM takes pictures, and then has assholes arrested away from the scene.
2. On some linked comment stream, I ran across an excellent point of view, which is "Why are you getting so upset over this millionaire-ante asshole, when the US justice system has completely ignored the hundreds of billions of dollars ripped off by the banksters?"
Don't mistake me, I don't think Bundy's relative triviality should give him a pass. It's also disturbing to see that a bunch of white lawbreakers waving guns around gets treated far more deferentially than bunches of diverse, unarmed lawbreakers.
But it still helps my blood pressure a little to remember that this schmuck is a thousandth of a percent of the problem with US "capitalism".
I almost can't wait until there's a Repubican in the White House so the government can go back to doing whatever it wants without there being a mountain of wingnut outrage over it. Almost.