The Revolution Has Been Postponed

I think there is a really good lesson in the recent humiliating collapse of the great Malheur range war- and the people who should be learning this lesson are the mainstream press, who took these guys seriously in the first place.  The truth is that the great national call for "patriots" to join them in their uprising against Obama's Communist tyranny resulted in about three dozen people showing up; yet it was an excuse for the press to treat them as a serious force for weeks, and to pretend that something is going on here.  In fact, almost no one on earth (except people like the Koch Brothers, of course, who plan on ending up owning all of the land that these jackasses could pry away from the government) supported their efforts.  The whole thing was an egomaniacal Kabuki act, which the press, like a stupid trout, couldn't resist swallowing, hook line and sinker.

Longtime readers of this blog (both of you- thanks for the faithfulness, mother) will know that I have reported over and over again, on events that right wingers claimed were the start of a grand revolution, which turned out to be colossal, humiliating failures- marches whose organizers predicted millions,  would attend, forcing Obama right out of the White House, attracting a hundred or so followers, and uprisings that never got off the ground.  And yet the mainstream press falls for their shtick over and over again, legitimizing the Ted Cruzes and Donald Trumps who claim to speak for this nonexistent majority.

Here's another thing that we can learn from this most recent revolution:  These militia members, who claim to have spent so much time in military training, and to have so much military experience, may have learned what privates know- how to shoot straight and how to load your gun- but they don't seem to have learned a damned thing about what officers are supposed to know- tactics, logistics, how not to be lured into a totally predictable ambush which decapitated your movement, how to seize a property that is not totally indefensible, having reinforcements if your fighters are incapacitated; they don't seem to have understood even the notion of bringing along some food.  They are just about the most pathetic army in history.

But there are still so many who will insist that these losers represent a significant proportion of Americans, and that they have a rational cause to fight for.  So, decent, competent people like Hillary and Bernie have to duke it out with ignorant, vicious clowns like Trump and Cruz, to determine who gets to run our country.

And we wonder why the rest of the world looks at us with a mixture of derision and fear.