The people who occupied the Malheur refuge were more than just sanctimonious criminals — they were also disgusting. Here’s a gallery of photos illustrating the wreckage they left behind. They trashed the place. They wrecked the land. They disrespected the property of the people who worked at the refuge while demanding that their property rights were paramount.
That photo is of their legacy: a shit-filled trench.
That’s how I’ll always remember the Bundys.
I say bill the rat bastards for the cleanup and garnishee their canteen allowance for the next 1,000 years to pay it off.
From the linked article:
Not just vandals, but thieves.
Add it to the charges. And, by the way, are they being charged with terrorism? They should be.
The fact is these guys are too stupid to understand their profound hypocrisy. They claim to be all about self-reliance, property rights and individual liberty, but what they are demanding is something for nothing. And they’ve shown that when they have a chance, they’ll steal.
If the Justice Dept. wants to, they can all be locked up for life. I say let them out at age 80 or so. Of course Cliven will come out of prison feet first.
In part this is a result from the rhetoric long found on the right amongst even the most liberal wings, the idea that somehow working for the government is illegitimate. In that view government employees aren’t part of the “common people” the right claims to represent, but little different from the “welfare cheats” they think exist in large numbers, lazy bums who need to get a real job instead of sponging off the government. Because collecting government revenue, helping people start businesses, and making sure food is healthy aren’t real jobs.
If only the US government had the manpower and equipment to arrest the men on day one instead of waiting six weeks.
timgueguen,
Here’s what one Republican congressman from Iowa thinks of government:
Which is rich coming from a representative from a state that games the presidential nomination process to ensure it continues to get its precious ethanol subsidy.
I’m pretty sure that construction in DC is 98% private anyway. The biggest industry there is lobbying.
well, if their sentences include community service, then cleaning this trench should be job #1.
One of the ideas backed by the Bundys and their cohorts is that public land should be taken away from the federal government and given over to local control. Is the vandalism at the refuge an example of how public lands would be managed if the feds were kicked out?
Some elected officials join the Bundy-types in pushing for federal lands to be taken out of the hands of the feds. Here’s a cross post from the Moments of Political Madness thread:
We’re seeing more fallout from the two Bundy-related standoffs on public land. Dunderheaded Republicans in Congress have come up with a bill that blocks federal enforcement of laws on public lands.
Talking Points Memo link.
The people sponsoring this bill have even worse, ulterior motives. They want to turn all public lands over to local control. In Utah, this would mean that a bunch of right-wingers who support extractive industries, (and who would like to cash in themselves by building housing developments, resorts, hunting lodges, etc.), would be managing previously protected public lands. What could possibly go wrong?
Of course all the “patriots” are claiming that these photos have been staged by the gov’t as yet another part of the dedicated conspiracy to undermine their movement. A similar article from OregonLive.com was shared by the Bundy Ranch page, and the comments are…interesting.
Welcome to your libertarian paradise. The shit trench is over there.
@ greenspine #12
Thanks for that, you win the thread.
This actually made me quite sad….more sad than angry. But at least the whole continent (I live in British Columbia) witnessed the abject failure of the Bundy-clown way of thinking from start to finish. I hope we can learn from this.
So they believe enough in governance to share labour, maintain a common shit trench, and enforce its use. Seems like they’re just a few more shared acts away from understanding how a society works.
numerobis,
Enforce its use, not so much. From the link:
Tongues, only.
The feces trench is called a straddle trench, we used them in the military for stays of a week or two. After that, burn-out latrines are used, with urinals for urine. Those are drained into drain fields, with crushed stone covering the urine.
The straddle trench is treated with lime, a layer of dirt and one continues using the trench until two feet from the surface, when it’s filled in and marked as a former latrine.
No excuse for littering, letting trash accumulate, breaking into safes, theft of private and government property and desecration of graves.
As all of the above was conducted illegally, all mitigation costs should be applied to their properties, liquidating them to cover expenses.
Deuteronomy
23:12 Thou shalt have a place also without the camp, whither thou shalt go forth abroad:
23:13 And thou shalt have a paddle upon thy weapon; and it shall be, when thou wilt ease thyself abroad, thou shalt dig therewith, and shalt turn back and cover that which cometh from thee:
23:14 For the LORD thy God walketh in the midst of thy camp, to deliver thee, and to give up thine enemies before thee; therefore shall thy camp be holy: that he see no unclean thing in thee, and turn away from thee.
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service says it will spend about $4 million repairing damage caused by militia members. I agree with some commenters up-thread that said the militia members should pay for the damage.
Maybe Bundy can sell all his cattle to settle the debt.
One of the shots shows a desk with a pile of tobacco from cigarettes on some cardboard. Aren’t these guys Mormons? I didn’t think they smoked. Also, I’ve seen people do this when they’re rolling spliffs. Could it be…?
And then there’s a picture of a bottle of Jim Beam and a bottle of Canadian Mist. Wow! Now I know where they got their fervor.
By the way, The Oregonian article where I saw the pictures estimates the cost at $6 million, rather than $4 million.
greenspine @ 12:
So that’s what they mean by “going Galt”!
A few thoughts:
1. What the hell is up with that pile of tobacco from emptied cigarettes? If they were trying to smoke pot, there are far easier ways.
2. Even as a teenage boy, I was never this untidy. I don’t know how they could look at that mess without being overcome by an urge to clean.
3. Survivalists, these guys aren’t. They generated giant piles of trash because they couldn’t leave their disposable, consumerist lifestyle behind for a few weeks. They wouldn’t last three days alone in the woods.
Area Man, it’s even worse than that. They entirely failed to collect their garbage and collect it in a location away from their habitation. Anyone who has lived in the woods for more than a few days knows better, not doing so attracts scavengers and bears.
One can forgive the alcohol, despite them proclaiming that they were tactically oriented, save that they also failed to police the empties up.
Frankly, the only thing that was done nearly correctly was the straddle trench, which was also not universally utilized and should have been a burn-out latrine – both for number of users and length of stay.
This is the kind of crap that results in “camping prohibited” signage being posted. Frankly, a troop of boy scouts likely could have routed them, if this is the epitome of their competence. If they can’t get basic field craft right, it’s unlikely that they’d have competent patrols, observation points and competent defense.
We also have a graphic visualization of Galt’s Gulch.
PZ, any imagery on the Native American religious sites?
Dear gentle folk, please enjoy this:
And this delusional drivel:
http://news2share.com/start/2016/03/24/ryan-bundy-writes-to-news2share-a-manifesto-of-faith-and-history/
Chris #28, ooh, a manifesto. How socialist of him…
More like a theocracy based on greed.
I should add: because those clowns, especially Papa Cliven, are nothing more than common thieves.
PZ@25 I think you’re being a bit unfair. The inhabitants of the “real” Galt’s Gulch probably used their genius and Rationalism™ to create a gizmo to instantly deal with trash and bodily fluids. Or figured out a way to get some dupe to do it for them.
The real Galt’s Gulch got bogged down in paperwork, and all the money got stolen, before anyone even showed up. So they don’t have waste disposal problems.
Let the state have first crack at their prison sentences. Force them to repair the damage –open-ended chain gang hard labor, ala Cool Hand Luke, until it’s all repaired. Fine them the entire cost of supervising the chain gang. Then they get to serve out the remainder of their time for murder and other state offenses in a maximum security prison. Then the Feds get them.
But Oregon probably doesn’t have jurisdiction for the property crimes, being the refuge is federal land. Oh well, I can dream.