All Hat. No Cattle.

Cosplay cowboys

I listened to an interesting article from The Atlantic on my way to the doctor earlier this week. In fact, I listened to six or seven articles on my way to the doctor.

I live in a rural part of Northwest Missouri on the Iowa line, and many of my doctor’s appointments are two hours from home. I live in a weird place…Omaha and Des Moines and Kansas City are all about two hours from me.

Every time I state that fact, I feel like I’m quoting the pomade line from O Brother, Where Art Thou?

“Well, ain't this place a geographical oddity. Two weeks from everywhere!”

The Atlantic article by Jacob Stern is titled, “Ammon Bundy Is All Alone.”

I have followed the news about Ammon Bundy and his family for over a decade. Most people remember Ammon Bundy from the 2016 occupation in Oregon, but his notoriety began in 2014.

Bundy is an anti-government activist and militia member. He antagonized Federal agents in 2014 in Nevada over his dad’s cattle grazing on Federal land. It eventually led up to a full-blown, armed confrontation.

Ammon Bundy and his father, Cliven Bundy, called for help from local militias after their cattle were corralled by Federal agents. In response, several armed militia members showed up, including the Three Percenters and the Oath Keepers.

I also watched a PBS documentary on the story a few years back, and yesterday I watched it again, but only in pieces because it is so triggering.

Watching men on horseback, wearing cowboy hats and carrying loaded long guns, freeing 400 cattle is too much, because most of these men have been mute on Renee Good and Alex Pretti’s murders. They have said nothing about masked Federal agents kidnapping people from American streets. Nothing about ICE using force to intimidate an entire country.

Those same cowboys and ranchers and militia men are nearly all silent on the tyranny they just stood up against a decade ago. What’s worse? Some of those same men are celebrating ICE.

I live in MAGA country, which is also gun country, which is also god’s country. I live around men like Bundy who are anti-government, anti-vax, anti-LGBTQ, and who have collected guns for decades to fight “government tyranny.”

As I have stated on many occasions, most of these men have decided that armed Federal thugs working for ICE can commit murder all day long. The men who stood up for cows during the Bundy uprising won’t stand up for humans.

Ammon Bundy is one of the only men from these militia movements willing to speak up about ICE activity.

From the Atlantic article:

In November, Bundy self-published a long essay titled “The Stranger,” in which he labeled the Trump administration’s treatment of undocumented immigrants a “moral failure.” “To call such people criminals for lacking official permission” to be in the country, he wrote, “is to forget the moral law of God, the historical truth of our own founding, and the Constitutional ideals that continue to define justice.” On a recent livestream following the killing of Renee Good in Minnesota, Bundy told his audience that ICE’s conduct “clearly looks like tyranny.”

Ammon seems to be as confused as I am about his right-wing gun extremist “Don’t tread on me,” patriots who have remained silent on ICE. And he’s not being shy about it — he’s calling them out.

Just so no one is confused, I am not an Ammon Bundy ally, nor do I think he believes in democracy. But I will say this — at least he is consistent. Consistent when it comes to Federal agents coming up against regular Americans.

Bundy’s story and his disillusionment tie directly into the world of militant Christian masculinity laid out so clearly in a book called Jesus and John Wayne by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.

If you’ve not read the book, you are missing out on a big part of the puzzle with Evangelical Republican culture and the evolution of a militant Christian masculinity that has shaped conservative politics. Long story short, many Evangelicals have turned Jesus into John Wayne. A macho man. A gun nut. A MAGA warrior. A militant.

The book goes on to talk about the distortion of Biblical scripture and how the movement zeroed in on overturning women’s rights while touting the “masculine” man.

Kobes Du Mez stated:

The unspoken mantra of post-war evangelicalism was simple: Jesus can save your soul, but John Wayne will save your ass.

And that hits home.

Most of the men who collected the guns and showed up for a confrontation over grazing rights are cosplay cowboys. They learned about the “John Wayne Jesus” and nothing about the “flipping tables Jesus.” One is fake, and the other was their own prophet.

They don’t seem to understand which is which.

These men have been pretending to be something they aren’t. They are craven cowards. Weak. Something my grandpa called, “All hat and no cattle,” which is ironic in this case.

Where are the folks who dared others to “come and take it” when a man with a concealed carry license and a licensed gun was disarmed and executed by the state?

Most of them are hiding behind their new mantra, “comply or die.” They were only masquerading as a militia armed against tyranny. They are actually just damaged men who don’t mind government overreach or abuse as long as it’s directed away from them. Aimed at immigrants and Black folks and women and anyone on the Left.

They bought the guns to soothe their egos. They are willing to stand with other men like themselves, but they aren’t willing to stand up for anyone else.

They brought their guns to the relative safety of a red town inside a red state to fight for grazing rights. They are not brave enough to stand unarmed against ICE in a city, though.

That sort of tyranny is scary to them…it takes love and compassion to stand with folks.

It takes righteous anger and solidarity, not a gun.

I think differently of these men and all of the “come and take it” men I’ve known all my life. I also think somewhat differently of Ammon Bundy. I don’t think he wants to participate in a liberal democracy, but I think he does tell his own truth. He’s standing against ICE.

And he knows his former “patriot” friends have abandoned their word. He knows they are shameful in their cowardice.

Maybe that’s the hardest truth for Ammon Bundy. Tyranny, for too many of those armed men he stood with in Nevada, only existed when it touched them. When it threatened the white men with the bibles and the cows and the guns.

We already knew that truth.

They never meant to imply they’d stand with the rest of us.

~Jess