Welfare Cowboys 4
Pap and Robert Kennedy, Jr., discuss Mili(tant) the Moocher.
Part 1: The history.
Part 2: The Moocher.
Aside:
Pap makes an error of fact in Part Two. It was the Philadelphia Police, not the Feds, that tried to bomb the MOVE house. I lived in the Philadelphia suburbs at the time and could see the smoke from my bedroom window. Also, MOVE was a quite an oddball outfit, more apocalyptic cult than anything else,* and extremely annoying to their neighbors, who wanted them to go away.
The Gloomy Historian offers an additional perspective; there’s an excerpt below the fold:
Read the rest, in which he ties Frederick Jackson Turner’s “lost frontier” theory into the mix.
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*Indeed, this may be where MOVE does fall into the same category as the folks who gathered at the Bundy Ranch.
April 18, 2014 at 10:04 am
The US government will do to him exactly what it does to little countries deemed foes short of going to war. He has cash assets to run his huge operation and they will be seized or frozen. One could order the banks who deal with him to freeze his accounts and begin hitting his buyers with subpoenas and demands for all accounting on the cows he sells to them for the meat and hide industry. Or business customers could just be informed that all profit and materials from any transactions with the Bundy Ranch will be taken should they choose to do business with him. It just isn’t as public as an armed enforcement operation. They now know that between Fox News and Alex Jones, you have two media operations that will try to incite a firefight.
There was a bit of a tactical error made. Not counting on what happened, the government could have made more advanced and thorough plans to immediately move the cattle passively seized behind the barrier beyond local reach. It would have meant trucking and animal husbandry on the spot on a much larger scale but it could have been done. If the ‘militia’ had had nothing to march on there would be no present situation.
Paradoxically, the US military has gamed, theoretically, these kinds of things in the recent past. When they have done so, Fox News and the right used them as a source of outrage at the alleged implied calumnies.
April 18, 2014 at 10:09 pm
One can only hope.
One might be puzzled as to why wingnuts select a selfish, lawless bastard as a hero, until one realizes that he is a reflection of wingnuts themselves.
April 19, 2014 at 12:38 am
If you’re a realist about where this country is and what’s been allowed to transpire you can appreciate what the government did. On the other hand, it’s beyond the point where it’s assured things are made better this way. Maybe Fox News and Alex Jones should get what they want so everyone could have their nose rubbed in the reality of it. You’ll recall no one had any trouble deploying tear gas shells on Occupy or has lost any sleep about it since. What’s the difference? I think you, me and many others could write a few thousand words on it. Why even bother, though?
April 19, 2014 at 10:27 pm
So now a wingnut freeloader is a symbol of freedom and patriotism comes to this.
I’m not a great fan of Dave Weigel–he vacillates. But he got this one right. This country was born in racism and everything always comes back to race, however much Americans try to deny it.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/weigel/2014/04/15/bundy_ranch_and_bureau_of_land_management_standoff_what_right_wingers_anger.html
These people are racist nuts and the Great Experiment is close to failure. It’s the working of original sin, which is not just a religious concept, but also how sociology works. Other cultures call it “karma.” Whatever you call it, the deeds of the past affect (infect?) the present.
“The sins of the fathers are visited upon the sons, yea, unto the seventh generation.”
And it’s just about seven generations, now, isn’t it?