Really good article from Matt Taibbi.
The Dumb and the Restless
*snip*
I like this paragraph:
The Dumb and the Restless
*snip*
Every time these people open their mouths, it's comedy. Earlier this week Bundy gave an interview to CNN in which he tried to play up the "We come in peace" meme they've been pushing from the start. Like the "nobody's wearing camo except the camo I'm wearing" line, "It's apeaceful protest, except for the rifles which we won't use unless we have to" is also high comedy, although not a single person in the group seems to realize it.
Sounding exquisitely reasonable Wednesday, Bundy said, "There is a time to go home. We recognize that. We don't feel it's quite time yet."
Except Bundy will not be going home, after all. His next stop, if it's not the afterlife, will almost certainly be in a cell next to serial poisoner Michael Swango, or Richard Reid the shoe bomber, in the supermax in Florence, Colorado. There will be no snack shortage there, although he'll be getting them through a slit in a door. Maybe they'll let him take up macramé?
Bundy seems not to get this, however. He's convinced that this will all get worked out, as soon as the federal government releases the Hammonds from prison (what is this, a list of demands from Hezbollah?) and hands over a healthy swath of federal land to private ranchers. "We need to make sure that there is some teeth in these land transfers," he said confidently.
It has been suggested that it's somehow wrong to laugh at the Y'all Qaeda/Vanilla ISIS movement. "The idea that satire… can serve as a bulwark against far-right ideas is provably false," writes Natasha Leonard at AlJazeera.com. She goes on to point out that the paranoia and xenophobic racism of people like Bundy are not funny, and neither are the redneck caricatures that have spilled across the Internet in the last week as this "siege" played itself out.
"Satire that deploys classism to skewer racists and conservatives is certainly such a worst case," she says. "Why not focus on their very real, very frightening beliefs?"
Sounding exquisitely reasonable Wednesday, Bundy said, "There is a time to go home. We recognize that. We don't feel it's quite time yet."
Except Bundy will not be going home, after all. His next stop, if it's not the afterlife, will almost certainly be in a cell next to serial poisoner Michael Swango, or Richard Reid the shoe bomber, in the supermax in Florence, Colorado. There will be no snack shortage there, although he'll be getting them through a slit in a door. Maybe they'll let him take up macramé?
Bundy seems not to get this, however. He's convinced that this will all get worked out, as soon as the federal government releases the Hammonds from prison (what is this, a list of demands from Hezbollah?) and hands over a healthy swath of federal land to private ranchers. "We need to make sure that there is some teeth in these land transfers," he said confidently.
It has been suggested that it's somehow wrong to laugh at the Y'all Qaeda/Vanilla ISIS movement. "The idea that satire… can serve as a bulwark against far-right ideas is provably false," writes Natasha Leonard at AlJazeera.com. She goes on to point out that the paranoia and xenophobic racism of people like Bundy are not funny, and neither are the redneck caricatures that have spilled across the Internet in the last week as this "siege" played itself out.
"Satire that deploys classism to skewer racists and conservatives is certainly such a worst case," she says. "Why not focus on their very real, very frightening beliefs?"
I like this paragraph:
There's no doubt that these people are dangerous, but their ridiculousness is a huge part of who they are. Incidentally, this is true of groups like the actual al-Qaeda, too, led as they are by men in beards and Rick-Perry-style "smart glasses" who play at being religious scholars and intellectuals when in fact they are the kind of people who are afraid of cartoons and lie awake at night wondering if it's permissible to play chess with a menstruating woman. Just because a person is dangerous does not mean he's not also absurd.
The Bundy militiamen are an extreme example of a type that's become common in America. Like the Tea Partiers, they seem to not only believe that they're the only people in history who've ever paid taxes, but that they're the only people who were ever sad about it. What they call tyranny on the part of the federal government just means putting up with the same irritating bills and regulations and other crap that we all put up with, only the rest of us don't whine about it in the front seats of our cars while posing in front of tripods.
Again, these people may be dangerous, but their boundless self-pity, their outrageous sense of entitlement and their slapstick incompetence as rebels and terrorists are absolutely ridiculous. Sure, it may not help, but how can we not laugh?
The Bundy militiamen are an extreme example of a type that's become common in America. Like the Tea Partiers, they seem to not only believe that they're the only people in history who've ever paid taxes, but that they're the only people who were ever sad about it. What they call tyranny on the part of the federal government just means putting up with the same irritating bills and regulations and other crap that we all put up with, only the rest of us don't whine about it in the front seats of our cars while posing in front of tripods.
Again, these people may be dangerous, but their boundless self-pity, their outrageous sense of entitlement and their slapstick incompetence as rebels and terrorists are absolutely ridiculous. Sure, it may not help, but how can we not laugh?
