The Ballad of Cliven Bundy

There once was a guy named Cliven
He probably hated Alinsky and Piven
He thought that the Federal Government owed him a livin'
But he...

Oh wait, this has gone far enough.  Back to the story:

So there is this right wing rancher guy and all around asshole, named Cliven Bundy.  No relation to Ted, as far as I know.  He's been grazing his cattle on Federal land for twenty years, and for twenty years he's been refusing to pay the grazing fees, because, well...you know, Freedom or something.

"Two federal court orders issued within the past year called for the rancher’s livestock to be impounded from a vast swath of mountains and desert. That roundup began Saturday on almost 600,000 acres closed to the public during the operation."

Bundy doesn't agree with that:

"Why I raise cattle there and why I can raise cattle there is because I have preemptive rights,” he asserted, explaining to TheBlaze that this includes the right to forage, too.
Furthermore, Bundy has argued that it is the United States trespassing on Clark County, Nev., land, not he..."Since 1993, Cliven Bundy has been battling the agency, as well as the National Park Service, the Center for Biological Diversity and the courts, to graze his cattle on 150 square miles of Gold Butte scrub land in the Lake Mead National Recreation Area. He stopped paying his grazing fees back then, saying he “fired” the Bureau of Land Management as land manager."

Anyone familiar with the phenomenon will recognize the similarity of his "views" to Sovereign Citizen doctrine, with equally meaningless legal cant used to justify not holding up his end of the social contract.  Although, to be fair, so far I haven't seen any direct link between him and the Sovereign Citizen movement.  Anyway, it's not exactly the Sovereign Citizens he's mixing with now:

"Militias ‘mobilizing’ to support embattled Clark County rancher in clash with federal rangers

 From near and wide, armed men are trickling toward Cliven Bundy’s ranch, where the rancher’s fight with the federal government has become a rallying cry for militia groups across the United States.

On Wednesday, that dispute teetered at the edge of deadly ...By late Wednesday, three militia members — two from Montana and one from Utah — had arrived at the ranch 80 miles northeast of Las Vegas. Other militia groups have inundated the Bundy household with calls and pledges to muster at the site. Their stated goal: to protect the Bundys from tyranny.

They say they are prepared for armed confrontation...Ryan Payne and Jim Lardy, members of the West Mountain Rangers, made the 12-hour drive from western Montana on Tuesday night. Payne is also a coordinator with Operation Mutual Aid, a national association that describes itself as a coalition of state militias.

“They all tell me they are in the process of mobilizing as we speak,” Payne said.

“We need to be the barrier between the oppressed and the tyrants,” he said. “Expect to see a band of soldiers.”

Well, this is the sort of thing the militia guys have been begging for over the last couple of decades.  I'm not suggesting that this is the start of a holy war or anything, but I have been writing for a long time about my fear that one day one of these incidents, deliberately fomented by hate-filled, ignorant, armed maniacs is going to explode.  The constant incitement of these people, by a host of fringe characters and now the political leaders of the Republican party, is inevitably going to lead to something that, a couple of decades ago, we could not even imagine in this country.  And that will not be the end of it.  Then the Limbaughs and the Ted Cruzes and the Sarah Palins will come out of the woodwork, praising these evil jackasses as true patriots, and who knows how many people they will induce to fulfill their sick revenge fantasies.  We could see a wave of violence that few even today could imagine; violence that could destroy the little that seems to be left of our social fabric.  And as the economy gradually improves despite the sabotage of the right, as Obamacare does not fulfill their doomsday predictions, as Obama's term moves toward an end, they are going to become more and more desperate to have their colossal tantrum.

I know that the great majority of those who happens to read these words will write them off as grossly paranoid delusions.  I can only say to them that I have fairly consistently predicted our country's "progress" to this point, and I see little to make me doubt that much, much worse is coming.