William Rivers Pitt — Cliven Bundy: Clown Car or Trojan Horse?

... there's some very serious and troubling stuff here, and it cannot be ignored or buried beneath the eruption of stupid we've witnessed to date. First of all, these armed yahoos actually managed to successfully fend off federal agents who were attempting to uphold and execute the law. That sets a terrible precedent, one that will almost certainly inspire more armed yahoos to point rifles at people somewhere down the line. They're still on the Bundy ranch, they've started setting up "checkpoints" along the roads around the ranch, and the feds still have to execute those orders, so this thing is not over yet...

...and note you well: here in America, you can point a high-powered rifle at federal officers and get off scot-free with your gun still in your hand. Sit down at a peaceful Occupy protest on the campus of UC Davis in California, however, and you get a gushing face full of Mace for your trouble...while the cop who sprayed you gets $38,000 in compensation for "anxiety and depression."

Far more insidious is the fact that, until he pulled his little "What, Me Racist?" number for all the world to see, Mr. Bundy's most dedicated supporters were a couple of billionaire brothers named Charles and David Koch. The Koch Brothers, if truth be told, could not give less of a damn about Cliven Bundy and his band of merry men, but until Bundy blew out like an old, racist tire, they were intensely interested in using him as the avatar for a fight they've been waging for twenty years: placing control of publicly-owned federal lands back into the hands of the states, so the states can lease or sell those lands to companies like Koch Industries for cattle grazing, mining, drilling, fracking, and lumbering.

Right now, those lands are protected from such activities, but the Koch Brothers were hoping to ride Cliven Bundy's cause to a massive land grab.... They want to drill, to mine, to frack, and to profit off those lands that belong to us...

Truthout
William Rivers Pitt | Cliven Bundy: Clown Car or Trojan Horse?