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The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom Press Conference, January 12th, 2016
Ammon Bundy: Our intelligence officers have informed us that David Bowie has passed away. After careful study we have confirmed this as true, and not some prepared government disinformation constructed to demoralize my patriots. The news came as an absolute shock to The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, and we feel that we’ve lost a brother in our fight against tyranny.
Ryan Bundy: He was our Diamond Dog, may the Lord hold him in his sweet embrace! Swing low, sweet chariot!
Ammon Bundy: David Bowie was a formative presence in my life. It was difficult for many of us, confused young militia men marginalized by government tyranny, to come to grips with the strange and new feelings we were experiencing while growing up in remote Nevada.
Our constitutional urges were so strong and they felt so true, yet still, the mainstream shunned us for them.
David Bowie…. okay okay, just give me a sec. His passing there, guess it dug deep… Giving me feelings… You know how you put stuff in a closet and you don’t look in there, and then something happens one day and it all just comes spilling out in tears, gunfire and arson? That’s what this is like. I’m just a little emotional here, but let me tell you, if there’s one thing David Bowie taught me, it’s that it’s okay to be different, and I will be different for the Constitution, knowing that it is okay to enforce my interpretation of the Constitution on the nation by any means necessary.
Ryan Bundy: Hallelujah, they named a knife after the shape shifter! Bowie was the man!!
Ammon Bundy: As you might imagine, many of the men are shaken, some so much so that all of their resolve has left them. We lost five men to grief last night. Crippled by sadness, they drove home to their wives and families, and soon will be watching the NFL playoffs and listening to their favourite David Bowie songs. We wish them godspeed. However, the rest of us have rededicated ourselves to the struggle David would want us to fight. David Bowie, apart from being a creative genius, generous spirit, and fashion icon, was first and foremost a patriot, and he would want us to continue in our battle against tyranny.
Ryan Bundy: Anybody who slept with Susan Sarandon and lists Frank O’Hara amongst his favourite poets is okay in my books! He’s my starman in the sky!
Ammon Bundy: And so, until the government– stooge to the bird lobby– cedes to our demands and gives us, The People, all the land they own, we will remain, defending freedom.
We will be heroes.
Ryan Bundy: Please, American patriots, do not forget to send in food and snack donations, keeping in mind some of the warrior’s dietary restrictions, such as nuts and gluten! Nuts and gluten are weapons of tyranny! Just press Donate on the Donate tab on our Facebook page. Long live our Space Oddity and death to tyranny!
It sounds official, like it has a bureaucracy and a headquarters with marble pillars. It sounds like it’s been around longer than you have. Still, when you hear it, you have absolutely no idea what it might mean. It has the effect of sounding like something but conveys no meaning.
Their broad-shouldered leader, Ammon Bundy, exuding the calm and steady manner of a high noon cowboy, announced the name on Fox news.
His heavily armed group, who up until that point had been called patriots, terrorists, activists, militia men and Y’all Qaeda, had taken over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge headquarters in Oregon as a blow against government “tyranny” a few days earlier on January 2nd.
Their storming of the federal building, it should be noted, was clean and lightning-quick; as it being January, the charming, cottage-like structure that gave out free maps during tourist season was entirely abandoned.
Nothing much has happened since their occupation began. Bundy’s men, some of whom who are not camera ready,
have been brandishing copies of the Constitution for the cameras and making YouTube videos from their trucks for their now abandoned families.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbGdMKpHDDE
All over Oregon, wives must have been rolling their eyes, just as they did when these same husbands took off for their annual paintball weekend. It all looked very much like a Fantasy Camp for revolutionaries, and it was clear nobody was taking them seriously.
If any group other than white men had done such a thing, well, it’s reasonable to expect a different response. Imagine what would have happened if a bunch of heavily armed campus radicals took over the headquarters, or to inch closer to armageddon, black protestors or some frustrated Muslims? What would happen then?
We have a pretty good idea, I think.
No matter, what seems to be happening now is that a long-simmering and predictable feud over grazing rights has morphed into a movie-of-the-week. The white guys want the government to hand over land it owns so that they—The People—may use it as they see fit, using it for grazing, mining, logging or opening up paintball camps. As far as I know, the First Nations of America have yet to be consulted.
The Citizens for Constitutional Freedom are not impoverished. They’re not persecuted, marginalized or threatened in any sort of coherent way. Frustrated by their perception of diminishing entitlements, they want to fight back against the forces that impede their ascent, even if they have no idea who or what those forces might be.
They’re easy enough to make fun, these men. Asunder in a rapidly changing and globalized environment, they try to live as heroes in a mythic past, a place where their big sky ambitions could blossom unfettered by government, minorities or environmental regulations.
It’s sunset in the only America these men have ever wanted to live, and so they tilt toward windmills, deserving of our pity as much as our scorn.
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