Once again it's “Deja vu
all over again.” Never ending white entitlement, delusional
history and the usual threats of violence are now playing out at the
Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Eastern Oregon, one of the more
important bird and wildlife sanctuaries in the country and located in
an isolated corner of Oregon.
Malheur is being occupied by
a handful of white (Christian?) terrorists with the apparent and
enthusiastic support of ISIS no less. The Refuge, however, happens to
belong to all the people of the United States.
But like a shopworn morality
play our wild-wild-West has a familiar ring to it, going back to when
the Europeans claimed ownership of those “empty” spaces
following the American Civil War. The through-line or theme,
nevertheless, has remained the same right up to the present time.
As early as 1805 two
different creation stories appeared in an attempt to explain the
founding of the United States. One was, later to be called the
“Jeffersonian interpretation,” and the other known as the
“natural” outcome of the Revolution of 1776. These versions of
America's creation have been swirling around, re-imagined, and
debated and argued about for more than 200 years.
It's all ours
At the end of the Civil War
European-American turned their gaze toward our western frontier. It
was now time for our pent up ambitions to be fulfilled—our (white)
Manifest Destiny.
Coincidentally, the
philosophy of Social Darwinism first appeared in Great Britain in the
1870s, which had little to do with evolution or Darwin, but did
provide a justification and underpinning for white supremacy across
the globe. It was adopted enthusiastically by America's elite, but
for the average white American it merely confirmed what had been
felt, culturally and socially, from the very start of the Republic.
The final piece in the
“occupation” of the West was the railroad, the cutting edge
technology of the 19th century. By the end of the century
the railroad had helped make America a global trading partner, and by
the end of World War I in 1918 the United States had become the
premier economic power in the world. The start, however, was quite
different from the fairy tales found in the average history book or
the backs of cereal boxes.
“....the triumph of the
unfit...”
For a fascinating and
detailed history of the transcontinental railroad it's worth reading
Richard White's book Railroaded. You'd recognize the Bernie Madoffs
of the 19th century, the assorted speculators and those
that created the 19th century equivalent of sub-prime
loans and credit default swaps.
But the making of the West
had little to do with the fanciful rugged individual or some 19th
century libertarian John Gault wearing chaps and armed to the teeth.
It had much more to do with large corporation colluding with the
government, for private gains at public expense. It is a remarkable
story of greed, incompetence and welfare capitalism at its supreme
worst. Abraham Lincoln in 1864 said that, “Corporations have been
enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow.” He
was most certainly right.
Unfortunately, along with
the laughable business “tycoon” and corrupt government official
and politician, there was a very dark side. It is a dismal story of
genocide, racism, environmental destruction and overall depravity,
which even by 19th century standards was simply barbaric.
Last but certainly not least
is the iconic oil painting of cattle and cowboys adorning the
boardroom walls of cattlemen associations, offices of western
politicians—and the pages of comic strips.
Like the railroads, large
cattle corporations were created, frequently by people that knew
absolutely nothing about cows, cowboys and ranching. It was a kind of
learning by doing, the ends of course justifying any means. Cattle
corporations just like the railroads were often accused of violating
anti-monopoly laws. There were numerous examples of unlawful
enclosure of public lands, fraudulent attempts at controlling water
resources, overgrazing and the cruelty of mass starvation of cattle.
Very much like the railroad
corporations the cattle industry lived by financial illusion, where
the numbers had virtually nothing to do with reality. As Richard
White has said, in reference to the cattle business, “These land
grabs were attempts by a classic nineteenth-century monopoly to claim
a public resource for a privileged few.”
The cowboy himself was
largely a myth even after the short-lived cattle drives ended. More
often than not the average cowboy was underpaid, exploited,
illiterate and old or dead by the time he was thirty-five.
Land belongs to (some of) us
because we're the people
The short version is that
the land around the current Malheur National Wildlife Refuge had
originally belonged to the Northern Paiute Indian tribe, who had
probably lived in the area for hundreds of years. They of course were
eventually “removed” from the land by European-Americans in the
1870s.
President Theodore Roosevelt
( himself part of white American mythology) in 1908 created the
Malheur refuge, one of the first sanctuaries in the United States,
which was at that time unclaimed government lands, which consists
today of more than 187,700 acres, including 120,000 acres of
wetlands. The reason Roosevelt created this national wildlife refuge
is because photographers in the 1880s discovered that plume hunters
had decimated many North American birds. Feathers for ladies hats
were popular at the time. Just your average American entrepreneur
meeting a demand.
Not to worry, plenty of
everything
B.J. Soper, a resident of
the county where the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge is located,
while not a supporter of the illegal occupation of the refuge,
nevertheless probably expressed the view of many westerners when he
said to a journalist that, “What people in Western States are
dealing with is the destruction of their way of life.” Fair enough,
but whose way of life? Should we go back to the 1950s, the 1890s or
possibly before any white person had set foot on what is now called
the United States?
It must have seemed
bountiful beyond belief when the first white people started moving
west, All this “free” stuff as far as the eye could see and all
for the taking. Capitalism globally since the beginning of the
industrial revolution, the past 220 years or so, never really took
into account what actual costs were. Such things as grass, water, the
degradation of grasslands, pollution of the air, the overuse of toxic
chemicals, the slaughter of wildlife never entered any balance sheet.
It's still resisted today, even though the rhetoric has been updated.
The Bundy crowd and their
camp followers are nothing new. Some 30 years ago a conservative
land-use doctrine called Wise Use emerged, a successor if you will to
the Sagebrush Rebellion of the 1970s, which goes back even farther to
to the anti-national park movement, which goes back ultimately to
Plymouth Rock and the European understanding of what was “developed
land” in the early 17th century.
The Wise Use doctrine claims
that moral primacy in the West belongs to ranching families, logging
and all natural resource companies. The goal is to eliminate such
things as most of our environmental regulations, get rid of the
Endangered Species Act, promise unrestricted use of off-road vehicles
and privatize virtually everything. What a grand vision!
Above all else the true
believers will tell anyone that listens that they are far better
stewards of the land than any government entity. Needless to say the
timber industry, the mining and oil industry, among others, while
not necessarily in support of armed bandits with automatic weapons,
tell us that these poor souls are victims of government overreach. Of
course they are.
Death eaters, dead-enders
and the profitable business of victimhood
In a perfect world Cliven
Bundy, the family patriarch, would willingly pay the extremely modest
grazing fee ( now up to some $1 million ) as a functioning citizen of
the United States, in order to keep his cattle on my property—or--he
would be living out his days in a federal prison and his cows sold on
the open market.
Ammon Bundy, the oldest son
of Cliven and the self-proclaimed leader of the white terrorist
militia at Malheur, is a recipient of a small business government
loan, courtesy of my tax dollars. He is not even a rancher but an
owner of a trucking business in Arizona.
It is not that we can not
find any ranchers in the West today who understand modern land
ecology, different ways of raising cattle, the importance of large
natural sanctuaries, the value of predators in a healthy ecosystem,
climate change, as well as ultimately preserving a future legacy for
all Americans; it's that we still have, hovering over everything, a
thuggish history of human plundering, a disrespect for nature and
above all the decaying ideology of white entitlement and self-serving
victimhood.
Most likely the majority of
people that are sympathetic to these various white militia groups do
not want to go to prison or get shot, but it's pretty clear there is
a core group of deadenders that long for a cowbilly Valhalla. We as a
society must get on with the 21st century if we want to
preserve anything worthwhile.
We took away their country
and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their
habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them, and it was
for this and against this they made war. Could any one expec t less.
Then, why wonder at Indian difficulties.
(General Philip Henry
Sheridan, Commanding Army General in Army Report of 1878)
No comments:
Post a Comment