The January 2016 Douchey McDouche Bag Award

 

Just when most of us were still putting away our party favors and recovering from making some lofty resolutions, an armed group of people from Oregon brought in the New Year with a veritable bang and in doing so, captured government buildings and our first prize of 2016.

The group, led by the son of our trio-o-douche bags cited in April of 2014 as a prize winner, became our first “Legacy Douche” when he brought in 2016 by protesting and taking over a government building and proclaiming his patriot status as a protesting against the arrest of two Oregon farmers.

All fitted with more cowboy hats than a hoe down, the armed douche bags were led by Ammon Bundy and his brother Ryan, two ranchers from Nevada and a merry band of western land rights activists who dubbed themselves: “Citizens For Constitutional Reform.”

The unprecedented move gathered farmers, armed militia members, residents of Nevada and Oregon and intstantly transformed the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge into a “douche ranch.” In doing so, Citizens and their “movement” became the Boom Bap Radio Douchey McDouche Bag Award winner for the month of January 2016.

The armed kooks, i.e. the Bundy brothers, were joined by other anti-government “patriots,” like the controversial Jon Ritzheimer from Arizona who spent time last year combining art and Anti-Islamic sentiments in Arizona to a violent outcome.

Another member of the douchey posse was Ryan Payne, an Army vet from Montana, who had joined the Bundy brothers’ Dad Cliven, in his armed protest on his Nevada ranch in 2014 and finally there was 55-year-old Arizona rancher Robert LaVoy Finicum.

Finicum, who fancied himself “a simple rancher” despite his bookish appearance, was the first rancher interviewed by the media about the use of weapons against the government. To which he adamantly retorted: “We’ve never pointed any guns at them, they’ve pointed guns at us.”

Finicum later was quoted as saying he was willing to die for the movement, which essentially looked to reclaim land that was set aside by the government more than 100 years ago.

The siege at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge began a day after New Year’s day, when protestors gathered to oppose the arrest and five year sentencing of Dwight and Steven Hammond, father and son ranchers who were convicted of arson on federal lands in connection to a 2001 fire they set.

Federal authorities charged the Hammonds set the fire and scorched some 130 acres of government land to cover up a poaching scheme. An attorney representing the Hammonds was quick to point out that the armed group had no official affiliation with his clients and that the father and son turned themselves into authorities and accepted the minimum penalty of five years imprisonment.

As the Hammonds were driven off into the sunset, armed militia members hunkered down in the hopes of standing against government overreach from then President Teddy Roosevelt, who designated the land as a wildlife refuge in 1908.

Confused?

Me too. Damn that Obama?

What’s Mine Is Mine and What’s Yours Is Mine

How and why the ranchers made this stance now is a mystery, right along with what Rough Riding Teddy has to do with Barack Obama.

However nothing could stop these douche bags from taking up temporary residence in scarcely occupied buildings sited on 188,000 acre bird sanctuary that makes up the Malheur refuge.

Named for nearby Malheur Lake, the government began its overreach in reaction to a set of circumstances that stretch back into the 19^th Century. During those days, when Oregon had only been an official state for about 30-years or so, local settlers were peeved that cattle barons were using the land they’d, um, “re-appropriated” from the Native Americans for personal gain.

In the early 20^th Century, as legend has it, a conservationist came to the area and found some wild egrets had been slaughtered and they’re young were left to starve. The conservationist, who had the ear of Roosevelt, helped shape policy and the area, when the almost 200-acres was turned into wildlife refuge in 1908.

Over the years, area ranchers braved several bouts with drought, overgrazing, starving livestock and grazing rights from the government.

By the 1970’s ranchers were allowed to graze cattle on federal lands for a fee, but as time marched on and cattle munched on, conservationists again became concerned about the survival of local waterfowl and grazing permits were limited.

Whether it was limited permits from the 70’s or “Big Government” calling for preservation and grabbing up land noshed on by so many cattle, the armed protest has been a family activities for the Bundy’s for more than 100 years.

Published reports stated large tracts of land known as “Bundyville” were owned by Mormon settler Abraham Bundy in northern Arizona in 1916. Mostly desolate and uninhabitable, the family ancestor to Ammon, Ryan and Cliven Bundy, lived among early western pioneers who grazed cattle in Arizona, but later moved to parts of Nevada.

Cliven Bundy, the father of two of the armed protestors, headed a similar protest outside of his land in Nevada in 2014 in defiance of paying about $1 million dollars in grazing fees he owed the federal government.

Poppa Bundy was arrested in February of his role in that insurrection, which attracted media and bragged of armed snipers ready to take out government agents.

His children would have a date with federal justice system weeks earlier as the protestors lay in wait for armed agents and state law enforcement to move in on the merry band holed up inside the hijacked bird sanctuary.

With big brother surrounding the occupied buildings and doing little else, the protestors began burning through their supplies.

Thing Fall Apart

During the wait, the group fought off a Twitter hoax, desertion and even a joke gift in an effort to alter federal laws on grazing fees and use of vast swaths of land claimed by federal authorities more than a century ago.

First a Tweet went out from an account allegedly belonging to Ammon Bundy that compared the Oregon stand to that taken more than 60 years ago by Civil Rights pioneer Rosa Parks.

Later found to be illegitimate, the Tweet quoted Bundy as stating:

We are doing the same thing as Rosa Parks, did. We are standing up against bad laws which dehumanize us and destroy our freedom.

After a week or two of occupation, the group of about 20 militia members ran through their provisions and started pleading on Facebook for staple goods ranging from warm blankets, hay, tampons, wipes and cigarettes, but instead some interesting “hate mail.”

One of the most interesting packages received was a box of sex toys, replete with plastic dildos and candles shaped like penises.

Outwardly angered by the pranks, the group vowed to fight on and see their cause through, although some members began to listen to group leader Ammon Bundy and returned home.

And then it got worse.

On Jan. 26, 2016 – 11 members of the group, including its leaders, tried to leave the refuge to attend a rally in their honor in a nearby community. The group, which included the Bundy’s and Lavoy Finicum were soon detained by federal authorities on conspiracy charges.

Local Harney County police believed the militia members possessed explosives, night vision goggles and other weapons and were intent on bringing their cause and an intended battle to the town.

During the confrontation between local police and federal agents, Finicum, one of the leaders of the protest, was killed as authorities closed in.

On first blush, it appeared Finicum, may have suffered the fate of so many men of color who unsuccessfully attempt to surrender to police. In fact, I felt that same recurring outrage upon seeing the video tape, “why didn’t they just shoot him in the leg?”

But in the end, police produced a tape that seemed to back up their story of self defense. Who would have guessed a guy like Finicum would have experienced that which is only reserved for hood-shirted men of color without a firearm.

Not only was Finicum armed, but he was taped taunting police and asking them to shoot him.

Finicum, who vowed to not be taken alive and expressed no problems with dying for his cause, got his sadistic wish and was killed in a hail of bullets while reaching for his holstered 9 mm.

The rest was fairly academic.

The other 10 militia members in the two car caravan were arrested by authorities and charged with conspiracy to impede federal officers of the United States from discharging their official duties through the use of force, intimidation or threats.

Another four protestors stood pat at the bird sanctuary despite the urgings of the Bundy’s until mid-February. The 69-year-old Bundy patriarch was arrested days later after stepping off a plane in Oregon.

After all of the militants were quietly rounded up and arrested for breaking any number of federal laws as a part of the siege, the entire incident only leaves the world with more questions than answers.

In the end what did the group hope to accomplish by their douchey act of rebellion?

As all involved face legal woes and imprisonment, the protestors have to be asking themselves will their actions cause the federal government to change its method for assessing grazing fees?

If not, what was the need for such an aggressive action?

One of the douchiest things about this incident was the sense of entitlement that could profoundly be seen in cellphone video tapes before and during the encounter with government officials.

Not only did the armed militia group seemed outraged that the government would have the gall to hold guns on them after they allegedly illegally occupied a federal building, but also could not seem to understand that after seizing the property that they couldn’t just hop in their vehicles and go to another location with weapons as if they weren’t fugitives.

It reminded me of the indignation that exists in the American lexicon with a phrase like “Indian Giving.” Which seems to suggest I stole this from you fair and square how can you demand it back?

We’ll never fully understand that attitude of entitlement that some in our countrymen display, but we do now know what it looks like when its crossed with that dumb-assed –“ I just got arrested,” look on their faces.

So the next time some of the nation’s secret militia groups want to band together, and play cowboys by seizing federal property, at least they’ll remember such actions are both provocative and illegal.

So break out the sex toys cowboys, you are Boom Bap Radio’s January 2016 Douchey McDouche Bag Award winners!

But no matter how purdy you look in your hats, always remember to the rest of us, you’ll always be a bunch of militant, criminal, douche bags!!! Enjoy your prize.