Anarchy is Not Freedom - for Anyone

Is this how we assert our rights?  Is this how we protect freedom?  There just has to be a better way.  In the Bundy Ranch conflict, everyone seems to see their own favorite cause represented.

What I saw depicted in the popular media was a confrontation provoked by acting out, anger, and threats of violence from both sides.  It would have been difficult to tell, judging by which side was doing more screaming and threats, which represents traditional values of justice and freedom and which was just a screaming mob.

Why must the proponents of "freedom" engage in a violent shouting and shoving match?  Some of the scenes bore uncanny resemblance to two playground bullies striving against each other to assert their dominance.  The frenzy of uncontrolled rage was the most obvious characteristic of the "militia", who in many photos and videos of the incident appeared to be bristling with fierce looking weapons, many with the substantial bulges of personal body armor.

In the scenes I witnessed, there were no black helicopters from embattled government forces hovering overhead.  No sharpshooting snipers appeared to be zeroing in on their assassination targets.  Many of the BLM guys appeared to be intimidated and unprepared to confront the screaming mob, their six-shooters holstered against the threat of facing many wielding semiautomatics and high-power hunting rifles.  I heard one member of the Bundy family promise that they had a shotgun, and knew how to use it.  It looks like the BLM "thugs" were outnumbered by the screaming protesters, and were most anxious to get the heck out of dodge.

Witnessing the prudent retreat, many of the protesters were apparently emboldened, screaming dire imprecations and making derisive and rude gestures at the government "thugs" as they sped away.

If that is the appearance of freedom vanquishing tyranny, I'm pretty sure I'm not favorably impressed.  I'm trying to grasp how all this reconciles with counsel from General LDS Church leaders.

Our whole society really rests on the capacity of its citizens to give 'obedience to the unenforceable.' (Elder Neal A. Maxwell)

Citizens are not free to choose which laws they consider themselves not subject to, and which they opt to obey.  This rationale to justify disobedience to the laws of the land is not far removed from justification for disobeying the laws of God.  (Elder Dallin H. Oaks)

I don't really care to argue further about "liberty" and "freedom".  Those who have appropriated this event as some sort of symbolic cause, fine for them.  Believe whatever you please.  But I think I am pretty clear on the relation between land and money.

Like most western cattle ranchers, I understand that the Bundy Ranch has title to holdings of just over 100 acres.  This is what traces back to family tradition.  All of the rest of the more than 7000 acres being claimed for grazing land has always been owned by the state.

Bundy has no title or deed of ownership for this extensive area.  But like many others, the Bundy Ranch happens to be a strategic location that controls most of the available water in the area.   With range cattle, this is the primary difference that controls whether the land can support the big herd of cattle, or is just more burning sands.

Snopes comments about the Chinese conspiracy theory and other such misinformation. Both sides of this controversy have tossed in so much irrelevant information now, it is impossible to separate.  It makes me uncomfortable to see so little difference in methods used by either side.  I think they're both losing.

Unforgiven

(Please note – there are rational comments below – please DO NOT PROCEED if you do not want to take further thought!)

 
Having a rhetorical discussion with refugees from the fringes at "Feminist Mormon Housewives" kinda reminds me of the scene from "Unforgiven"...

"Any man don't want to get killed, better clear on out the back..."

Every contact I have with people of this ilk ends in a violent gunfight.  Further confirms my suspicion that they aren't interested in open discussion, or anything that really "celebrates diversity" other than their own approved brand of weirdness.  That they speak it in public forum belies the unwritten protocol of silencing.

One of the beloved paradigms of feminist misinformation

Run, run, fast as you can!
Can't catch me, I'm the Genderbread Man, er, Person!

I always loved the story about the gingerbread man.  Now they have redefined the terms to appeal to simple-minded naive deviants.  Worse than Sesame Street.  I fail to see how this distorted thinking differs significantly from the pejorative "whitebread", referring to people of European ancestry.  The gingerbread man used to be a man.  Now we can't tell what he is - and he can't either.

The language perversion of feminism and homosexuality is one of the things that provokes me.  They tend to isolate on perfectly understandable things, then warp them to their own nuanced meaning.  Like it is somehow more natural and gentle to call yourself "gay" and pretend that it's all about rainbows.

Not that it is any sort of celebration of diversity anyway.  My suggestion about implications of the genetic mosaicism that is unique to all human females produced feeble responses.  They seemed to obsess about abnormal human genitalia and deviant behavior, to the point of gushing in effusiveness.  I had thought that a forum for women's issues would share my intellectual interest in a subject that personally affects more than half the human population.  It was my mistake to suppose that women would find anything of interest in such cerebral rhetoric.  Obviously it was just too demanding.

The main focus of the post in question seems to be on establishing some kind of parallel between abnormal embryology and deviant sexuality.  This is a specious premise, there is no such parallel.  Abnormal development of unborn babies is not characterized in behavioral habits.  Deviant sexuality is characterized by nothing other than superficial self-identified behavioral preferences.  The only comparison is that neither characteristic is anything to be admired or praised.  Misuse of well defined terms of science disciplines to justify social trends and abnormal behavioral habits is highly irrational.  Anyone can copy graphics from the Internet these days, but it takes something more than that to frame a convincing thesis.

Generally the blog participants seem to be talking because it so gratifies their own egos to hear themselves talk.  Talking without purpose seems to be another trait that characterizes human females.  Most of the outspoken proponents seem far too deeply invested in their own "social constructs" to consider that there might be more legitimate points of view.

I continue to reserve the right to apply the same personal preferences and tyrannical ground rules on this blog.  Dissenters will be moderated by the neck until dead.

...reason and accountability...

Ugarte: You despise me, don't you?
Rick: If I gave you any thought I probably would...

Regardless, I still can't even pretend to ever be quite as capricious and arbitrary as this troupe of illiterate misinformed gossips.

One of the politically-correct categorizations that has evolved in Internet parlance is the modern-day epithet "troll".  The etymology and semantics are rather interesting.  Most who use it now seem to believe the term has roots in reference to some mythical ugly little sub-human creature to be driven away and shunned, although this is simply another distortion of real meaning.  In general terms it has become the online equivalent to labelling someone "nigger" in pre-civil-rights days.  Not that it really means anything in particular.  Calling someone a "troll" has become one of the de riguer labels for disparaging and marginalizing one who disagrees with you.

Make no mistake - these folks are haters. The whole feminazi business is so ludicrous, it's laughable.  :-)