Preliminary Notes from No Man’s Land: An Excerpt from Red State Rebels

[MrsSmith]

Joanne98 (1000+ posts)      Sun Jul-06-08 11:32 AM
Original message

Preliminary Notes from No Man’s Land: An Excerpt from Red State Rebels
 by Jeffrey St. Clair & Joshua Frank / July 5th, 2008

The following is an excerpt from the new book Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland, published this month by AK Press. To learn more about the book, please visit http://www.RedStateRebels.org .

We are not supposed to exist.

According to the political Steinberg map of the nation, we come from no man’s land, fly-over country, the unredeemable middle, where political progressives are as rare as a Hooters in Provo, Utah.

We are children of the wasteland. The rural outback. Where folks carry guns and use them. Where fenced compounds and utopian communes exist side-by-side with a cyanide heap-leach gold mine. Out here cell phones don’t work. Not yet, anyway. And some of us would like to keep it that way.

Frank grew up on the wheated plains of eastern Montana. St. Clair hails from the humid cornfields of central Indiana. These states span the glaciated heart of the continent, a region carved and ground-smooth by the weight of ice. From a distance, the terrain of the Great Plains appears homogenous. From a distance so do its politics and demographics. You must look closer to discover the diversity, the radical nuances.

Even the Republicanism of Indiana, sired as it was by the rigid Lutheranism of German immigrants, is wildly different from the libertarian, anti-government Republicanism of Montana and the Rocky Mountain Front. They are not one. Except on the two-color map of American politics, or Barack Obama’s electoral playbook, which writes off this vast region almost completely.

Neither of us fit in the geo-ideological matrix contrived by the mainstream political establishment. Neither do thousands of others, left, right and anarcho-libertarians, who reside in the forgotten midsection of the nation.

And not all of us are children of Ken Kesey and Ed Abbey. Some follow in the footsteps of David Koresh, Reies Tijerina, Randy Weaver, Elvira Arellano or Mary Dann.

A Red States rebellion is breaking out. It’s been going on for some time. Since Reconstruction in the South and even longer in the West. The true West of Wyoming and Utah, Idaho and Arizona. Where the stakes are high and the odds are long. And the battles are waged over the essentials of life: water, food, wilderness, human liberty.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/07/preliminary-notes...
 

 

tomreedtoon  (1000+ posts)      Sun Jul-06-08 12:01 PM
Response to Original message
1. More like the "No Man's Land" of Batman.

 Edited on Sun Jul-06-08 12:04 PM by tomreedtoon

For those not in the know, a few years ago in the Batman-related comics, the Federal government decided that Gotham City was not worth saving. It was too much trouble to save. So it was declared No Man's Land. It was no longer part of the United States. The bridges were bombed, the harbors were mined, and people were given 48 hours to leave. Most of the poor, insane and greedy were left behind when the border was sealed by Army troops.

I might mention that this happened BEFORE Katrina and New Orleans. No one imagined the government would do something like that outside of a comic book. Goes to show you...

Anyway, the pertinence to this post is that the city became a haven for warlords. People of different factions staked out territory, raided their opposite numbers and killed a hell of a lot of people for the sake of their "lords." Food, gasoline, ammo were scarce and became immensely valuable. Money was worthless; barter (mostly on a warlord's exchange rate) was rampant. A diamond ring for a single apple was considered a bargain. And owning an apple insured that someone would try to kill you for it.

Starting to sound more and more like the Midwestern warlords the OP's are talking about?

And no, Batman and his team of heroes didn't end it. It was ended by a super-warlord, Lex Luthor, the richest man on earth, coming in and pretending to be a philanthropist. He rebuilt Gotham City. The people loved him. They elected him President.

Obama certainly isn't Lex Luthor. Neither is McCain, but he is the frontman for the Lex Luthors of this world, the ones with oil and the copyright on Windows and the energy sources. It's entirely possible that America will fall for his line of BS.

And in the meantime, the gang lords mentioned in the OP - the survivalists, the racists, the Vietnam Veterans Who Still Want To Kill Jane Fonda, the anarchists, the Weather Underground, all the people with anger and weapons and a reason to use them - are starting to flex their muscles. They are not a force to restore freedom. They want all of America to be a No Man's Land. And they want to kill you.
 

 

Warpy  (1000+ posts)       Sun Jul-06-08 12:37 PM
Response to Original message
 
3. I've said for a long time, the progressive resurgence will begin

 in the west. The progressivism in the east is hidebound and mired in the past and in DLC mistakes. Eastern progressivism, while more humane than the fascism we're currently experiencing, is not adequate to the new century.

Just look at Brian Schweitzer, an unabashed progressive elected governor of one of the reddest states in the country, Montana. Look at the mayor of Salt Lake City, Rocky Anderson. There are others who are wildly popular in former reliably fascist states, mostly in the local government pipeline and poised to enter national politics. These are people who talk common sense progressive politics without talking down to anyone. These are the people who know how to get elected without turning into GOP clones.

People out west have had the most experience with the religiously insane and socially backwards GOP and have suffered the most from their economic bungling. People out west have had the most experience with the corporate defilement of the environment and are ready for anyone who proposes reining it in.

Obama needs to look at these folks and stop taking the party advice to play to a mushy middle, a "middle" that is quite a bit to the right of where the center of US political thought actually lies.

The political pendulum is overdue for its swing back to common sense. That swing is going to start out west. To say the west has had enough is a gross understatement.

I can't decide which one is farther from the truth!!  Comparing Batman toons, Gotham City, to Katrina?  Calling the Midwest "reliably fascist," the GOP "religiously insane." and asserting that the leftists are bringing common sense?  Or the wild claims of the OP?   

[MrsSmith]

Take abortion. Largely cast as an urban issue by the flyover press, the real crisis and militant resistance is happening in Utah, South Dakota, Mississippi and Idaho-states where unwanted pregnancy rates are high and abortion clinics are sparse and marked for extermination.

Consigned to death row, the loneliest and most forbidding place in America? Fighting for your life against the conveyor-belt execution industry of Texas is qualitatively different from the struggle in Illinois or California where activists and Ivy-league trained litigators are lined up to give aid. In the grim chambers of the row of interior America you can’t expect to enjoy the right to a competent lawyer, a fair judge or crusading journalism students. It’s just you against the death machine.

OOPS!  At first glance, I thought these paragraphs were on the same subject.  Well, I guess they are, really, but the author surely didn't intend that...
dissidentvoice

When the ATF or FBI come busting through your kitchen door, rousting you at gunpoint from your bed, roughing up your children, accusing you of being a rightwing crazy, an illegal immigrant or an animal liberation terrorist, the ACLU isn’t likely to speed to Wallace, Idaho to bail you out of jail and make your case a cause celebre for constitutional rights.

Hold on...I thought the whole Midwest was "reliably fascist."  Why would there be a problem with a right-wing crazy?

[TheSarge]

I can't decide which one is farther from the truth!!  Comparing Batman toons, Gotham City, to Katrina?  Calling the Midwest "reliably fascist," the GOP "religiously insane." and asserting that the leftists are bringing common sense?  Or the wild claims of the OP?

Just remember that the DUmmies will ALWAYS project onto the rest of America the kind of bizarro world they themselves live in.

[Uhhuh35]

The only "No Mans Lands" I know of are the lawless illegal alien sanctuary cities Like San FagSicko run by Liberals.

[Chris_]

In related news, the US nuked Manhattan in a recent movie.  We should learn from that and not let it happen again.

[jukin]

Please return these DUchebags to their home planet.

[DumbAss Tanker]

What a confused pile of crap.