Fear and Loathing in the Rockies

As the order of things begins to crumble, the reactionaries do what they have always done, revert to violence to maintain the order and a sense of control. A headline from our local paper here in the rural Rockies:
"Potential Violence Over Zoning Process a Growing Concern"
The local meetings over land use planning or forest travel planning or resource management have always been contentious affairs ,not for the faint hearted. But as the Spectacle gets more spectacular and the US slides into anarchic chaos (as Yeats put it: "The center cannot hold") people up here start packing heat. Our local Director of the County Planning Department cited recent comments heard at meetings such as "heads will roll" and "there will be blood" and "they should be lynched" which remind us all of the violent history of confrontation between government and citizens we have here in our little valley. Encouraged by a general sense of licentiousness, Bushes insistence on the right to torture just for instance, these vigilante types are re- banding back together to fight for property rights, moral values and the American Way of Life. Suzy Foss, who co-owns a huge gentleman ranch and whose husband is one of the biggest real estate brokers around sums it up like this in a letter to the editor :"We are told we need to consider what is best for everyone. Since when did we become a socialist state?"

The curious alliance between the git er done rednecks, out of work loggers, Christian Right and the Real Estate lobby is just another manifestation of the old Sage Brush Rebellion/ Montana Militia/ Libertarian Patriots coalition which had us in the national news a decade ago. Unfortunately, as the economy crumbles and US prestige around the world evaporates, these folks grab weaponry and start to target "the enemy within". Every regulation becomes the Creeping Red Menace or Devil in Disguise. Egged on by Country-Western Music and Glen Beck bad things can happen.

The modern state system of "molecular, integral, invisible control" is also subject to entropy. William Blakes sensitive ear picked up the subtle signs : "In every cry of every Man, In every infants cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, the mind-forged manacles I hear". Of course the key to consent has always been to get people to auto-repress, to forge their own mental mannacles out of their own best hopes but when those hopes turn out to be an illusion, the image rather than the reality, chaos can ensue. Debord realized that "Once the running of the State involves a permanent and massive shortage of historical knowledge, that State can no longer be led strategically." Control of consumerist society requres that same massive shortage but we are learning that such methods can also have dangerous consequences. "Annie get your gun!"