OK to sell widow’s home over $6 bill, judge rules (AP via Yahoo! News)
After Nevada ranch stand-off, emboldened militias ask: where next? (Reuters)

You know what law I think was a massive government overreach that has devastated America? The 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act. Passed in the aftermath of Bush 43’s reelection, at a time when the national news media was still an obedient lapdog to the Republican Party and their attempts to stifle any kind of dissent to their regime (before the government’s botched response to Hurricane Katrina finally started waking some of them up), the act made it significantly harder for everyday Americans to declare personal bankruptcy, allowing banks and other creditors — who were already generating massive profits — to make even more money by liquidating poor Americans who’d fallen on hard times for whatever reason. It was one of the biggest government gifts to giant corporations ever, but it was largely forgotten about almost as soon as it was passed.

These same banks then cratered the world economy in 2008, but when the banks got in trouble, the American government was quick to offer loans and other assistance to make sure that the banks that hadn’t completely failed yet would stay in business, and that the executives most to blame for the collapse would still get their golden parachutes. That wasn’t quite the case for all the Americans who lost their jobs as a result of the collapse, as the same banks were allowed, under the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act, to destroy these people, even when their own machinations (permitted by the government’s idiotic bank deregulations a decade earlier) meant that these banks were often foreclosing on homes which they couldn’t even produce written proof of owning the mortgages on. The lack of reporting on how the 2005 Bankruptcy Reform Act allowed banks to destroy American families this way in the wake of the economic crash — and make no mistake, banks are still taking advantage of this act in the same way today — is one of the biggest black eyes on the corporatized American news media.

As a general rule, I don’t break the law under any circumstances. Although I am a firm believer in non-violent civil disobedience, and although I believe Thomas Jefferson was right when he said “If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so,” I consider it best, under my present circumstances, to obey the law when it is possible for me to do so. (The grey legal area some kink practices fall in may be an exception to that, but if giving someone a consensual spanking is against the law, well, see the Jefferson quote above.) This meant that even as I grew furious at the American government in the Bush 43 years, I still paid every single cent of taxes I owed, because as vehemently as I disagreed with the American government, it was still my government. I gave a great deal of thought to moving to Canada in those dark days after Bush’s reelection, but in the end I decided to tough it out, in the hope that better days would be ahead.

When I first heard of the armed standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch a couple of weeks ago, I was more than a little disturbed. Obviously there is a rank hypocrisy when the same people who’ve been shouting “We are a nation of laws” ad nauseum about immigration are quick to lionize Bundy and his cause, but long before Bundy made himself unpalatable with his racist comments, he’d already proven himself to be a liar (his family did not own that land before it was part of the United States, but bought it in 1948, so his claims of “ancestral rights” are bunk), and the extent to which Fox News openly tried to canonize Bundy — not only filming him majestically riding a horse with an American flag in his hand, but then airing it in dramatic slow-motion — was reminiscent of the network promoting early Tea Party rallies and even lending its on-screen talent to the events.

I didn’t say anything about Bundy as the standoff first broke because I wanted to be sure I got all my facts straight, but it soon became clear that Bundy is engaged in doing something that his supporters claim to abhor when they accuse others of doing it: Expecting to get something from the government for nothing. We could talk about the obvious differences between Bundy and those other people (and Bundy opened the door wide open for that with his own foolish mouth), but keep in mind that Bundy is a relatively wealthy rancher, and that even the million dollars in grazing fees he owes the government would not put him out of business. The social welfare programmes these same conservatives deride not only pay poor Americans a relative pittance in comparison, but even that small amount of money is often the difference between an unlucky American getting back on their feet, or else living on the street.

There is some question as to whether the government went too far when it began to confiscate Bundy’s cattle, but I can still remember the extent to which my local library hounded me over a $1.40 overdue fee when I was a teenager, so I’m having a hard time feeling sympathy for Bundy there. The bigger question here is what else the government could be expected to do when someone willfully breaks the law for about twenty years, despite multiple court cases (including state courts, not just the courts of the federal government Bundy doesn’t want to recognize) consistently ruling that Bundyhad no right to graze his cattle on federally-owned lands for free, what is the government supposed to do? What is it supposed to tell the other ranchers in Nevada who pay the fees to graze their cattle on that same land? How can the government expect any of them to keep paying their fees if it’s going to allow Bundy to keep freeloading?

The case of Eileen Battisti, a widow who now may be thrown out of her home over six dollars — not sixty thousand, not even six hundred, just six dollars — would be tragic enough in and of itself, another case of the ridiculous pro-corporate laws in this lands allowing creditors to destroy people’s lives over absolutely trifling sums of money. Coming on the heels of the Bundy ranch standoff, though, it provides for a very enlightening, and altogether nauseating, look at how conservative politicians and conservative media have warped America. You’re not hearing the same people who rallied to Cliven Bundy’s side protesting the overreach that could cost Battisti her home, and you’re not seeing anyone on television suggest that an armed “militia” should set up a perimeter around Battisti’s property to prevent law enforcement officials from evicting her from her house, just like you didn’t see anyone rushing to protect the scores upon scores of homes that were foreclosed on during the worst of the financial crisis.

So what’s the difference? I’ve thought it through as best as I can, and I’d really like someone to correct me if I’m wrong, but it appears that the difference is that a private entity, not the government, stands to make money by throwing Battisti out on the street. If it’s some private bank or credit agency, no matter how insidious they ma y be, then it’s perfectly okay for them to act however they want, but if it’s the “fed’ral gubmint” who wants money then they should be met with hundreds of guns and intimidated until they back off.

This is key to understanding the true nature of Bundy supporters, who are now openly looking for other excuses to provide “armed resistance” to the federal government and get themselves lionized in right-wing media all over again. They are not a “citizens’ militia.” They are not “freedom fighters.” What they are, plain and simple, is a corporate army, a band of armed thugs being directed by an ideologically-driven media corporation to prevent the enforcement of any laws that corporation doesn’t like, and in a way that the corporation can slickly produce into “news” of “victimized Americans” like Bundy fighting the good fight against the Evil Government. That kind of heavy-handed storytelling makes Amerika look subtle by comparison, but this isn’t some right-winger’s wet dream of a fiction; this is the reality of America today.

This is why the government backing down at the Bundy ranch standoff is so chilling, because it could set the precedent that any time any American doesn’t want to obey a law, all they have to do is get enough of their friends with guns together, and get the right-wing media to come televise their “valiant struggle” against the Evil Government for the country to see like it’s the latest Billy Bob Thornton movie. If we are to allow these congregations of armed Americans to effectively nullify the enforcement of any law they don’t like, without any fear of being arrested or otherwise held accountable, that would not only render our laws essentially inert, but it would also mean the practical end of democracy in America, because the only kind of power that would hold any sway is the power that comes from wielding a gun. If that is what America is going to become, then maybe I’d be better off moving to another country after all.