The armed protest that took place in Nevada because of a government attempt to reclaim public land from a rancher gave the Tea Party a reason to do pursue what they’ve been aching to do: start an armed conflict with the federal government. Knowing that, the federal government should have remained persistent and called the National Guard.
Armed conflict against the government has been every Tea Partier’s dream since the faction’s conception in 2009. Not only have they yearned and wished for it, but they have also prepared for it by arming themselves with stockpiles of weapons from handguns to high-powered assault rifles.
At least one protester was found to be posted on a nearby overpass, assault rifle ready to be trained on any federal agent he thought would pose a “dangerous” threat.
Fairleigh Dickinson University released a gun control poll last year that found that 44 percent of Republicans think an armed revolution is needed to protect American liberties. The Nevada protest became a chance for paranoia-infused Tea Partiers to act on that belief. This is the same kind of madness that fueled Timothy McVeigh, won bombed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995.
What’s strange is that the federal government knows this about the Tea Party, yet the U.S. Bureau of Land Management showed little backbone. The Tea Party now sees this standoff as a win and will only become more confident and passionate in their insane ideology.
If not before, the Tea Party has now truly proven itself as an insane political faction where armed conflict with the government is always an option. The federal government dropped the ball in Bunkerville, NV by not flexing its muscle against this dangerous party. The government should have been calling all cars in order to extinguish any threat of armed resistance.
The BLM’s inaction begs one to ask: Is the government really that scared of the Tea Party? History shows us it certainly wasn’t afraid of liberal 20-somethings protesting on Wall Street, nor college students at Kent State, or poor blacks in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles. So why does the Tea Party get their way?
Surely, many of the 1,000 protesters who came from out-of-state had no, real vested interest in the rancher, because a core Tea Party tenet is “doesn’t bother me none, why should I care?” They only cared because they saw it as an opportunity to exchange licks with the federal government.
Is it so unreasonable to say that many of those traveling like Wild West marauders only came to Nevada motivated by some sick, deluded appetite for gunplay and violence?
The Tea Party protesters were ready to kill, the federal government just wanted to remove cattle.
Josh is a writer and researcher with Ring of Fire. Follow him on Twitter @dnJdeli.
