MOURNING IN AMERICA

I woke up on 11/9 to a landscape I no longer recognize. Scary weather is on the horizon. There is no silver lining in this looming shit storm, no way to lighten a dark future. The only mystery is the extent to which we are fucked. I’m mourning what awaits us all.

I’ve looked for solace from my favorite comedic commentators: Colbert, Bee, Meyers, Desus & Mero. Nothing helps. The poignant laments from the Daily Show’s correspondents made me cry, not laugh (“That’s not how you handle a pussy!”).

How could this have happened? We can blame Comey, or Bernie, or Gary Johnson, or the too-late-to-wake-up media, or Paul Ryan, or Fox, or the Clintons’ flaws – and all deserve blame. Nevertheless, with eyes wide open, close to half the country’s voters intentionally picked Donald Trump to be leader of the Free World, holder of the nuclear codes, and role model for our children.

There will be no excuses for buyer’s remorse. No one can be surprised with what we’re going to get. The President-Elect’s ignorance, vulgarity, dishonesty, racism, misogyny, bigotry, and pathological narcissism have been on display for decades – splashed on tabloids, publicized on his TV show, and creepily revealed in numerous on-air conversations with Howard Stern. Trump’s endless, abominable smear on Obama’s legitimacy left no doubt of his true character.

Then came the primaries. As a rubbernecker to a gruesome wreck, I watched the Republican clown car careen out of control and plunge into a septic cesspool. What emerged, like the creature from the black lagoon, was a cartoon humanoid covered in orange slime – the soon-to-be-President-Elect of the United States of America.

Throughout the debates, the Republican Party’s new leader reveled in his delusions of brilliance, preening and sniffling and bullying and giving inchoate responses to complicated issues. He preyed on the deepest fears of working-class, white Americans, confirming their suspicions of The Other – scapegoats for all their very real problems: the Chinese, the Muslims, a rigged system, the Mexicans, the lying media.

“Ladies and gentlemen, either you are closing your eyes to a situation you do not wish to acknowledge, or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster indicated by the presence of a pool table in your community!” – Professor Harold Hill (“The Music Man”)

Trump, the greatest con artist in American history, closed his campaign promising that by electing him, “all your dreams, for the nation and personally, will come true.” He proclaimed himself a messianic mensch who was “what you’ve been waiting for your entire life.”

I know we’ve survived terrible politicians before, men like McCarthy, Nixon, and Cheney and their henchmen. We’ll probably muddle through somehow with Trump and his crew of crazies. But there will be costs.

In my state of Oregon some 400,000 people will lose their health insurance when Obamacare is repealed. Across the nation, millions of decent people fear deportation from their homes to foreign and unsafe places they may have never known. Parents have to shield their children’s ears from vulgarities spewed by the heir to the office of Lincoln.

I’m not going to detail all the damage on the way: erosion of rights, critical setbacks to slowing climate change, protective regulations weakened, loss of moral standing in the world, and worst of all, an unpredictable foreign policy overseen by a stupid, dangerous man. It’s all been explained many times by others.

And as for the rejected alternative to this gloomy apocalypse, the evil Hillary, the villainess in the Trump immorality play, I spelled out my thoughts on that last summer in “Why I’m With Her.” What might have been, however, no longer matters.

Friends have called to commiserate and share their depression. Some grumble, only half-seriously, about moving to Canada. Some, like me, can no longer bear to watch the news, retreating from politics to family and friends. But not all.

A few relatives and acquaintances are ecstatic about the prospect of making America great again. Most are professed Christians. Their enthusiasm for Trump baffles me. I wonder what Jesus would say.

“Lock her up! Build the wall!”

Is that was Jesus would say? Or this?

“It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God.”

Trump's boosters, however, love The Donald precisely because he’s rich. Like they want to be. They cheer and vote for a morally bankrupt, womanizing, conniving hustler with zero relevant experience because they’ve somehow conjured an image of Hillary that’s even worse. They care more about emails than racism. I’ll never understand.

I’m glad I live on the West Coast, which generally hates Trump and loves cannabis. Not that we can escape entirely the country’s cultural cleavage. After all, it was an Oregon jury that just let the Bundy brothers off scot-free after they led an armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge last winter, a stunt that cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars. (See “What the Heck’s Going On in Oregon?” and “Blame the Mormons.”) But I digress.

“If there is single sentence that characterizes the election, it is this: ‘He says the things I’m thinking.’ That may be what is so terrifying. Who knew that so many tens of millions of white Americans were thinking unconscionable things about their fellow Americans? Who knew that tens of millions of white men felt so emasculated by women and challenged by minorities? Who knew that after years of seeming progress on race and gender, tens of millions of white Americans lived in seething resentment, waiting for a demagogue to arrive who would legitimize their worst selves and channel them into political power? Perhaps we had been living in a fool’s paradise. Now we aren’t.” – Neal Gabler, “Farewell, America,” Nov. 10

Millions of words have been spent trying to explain why so many have been fooled by Trump’s bullshit. Maybe it’s not that complicated. I call it Wayne’s Rule, a failsafe, four-word way to explain most any inexplicable human behavior: people are fucking morons.

~ ~ ~

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WHY I'M WITH HER

Trump gushes that he loves “the poorly educated.” He should. These Bigfoot, Noah’s ark, Obama-is-a secret-Muslim believers are the only people who truly love The Donald. I know everyone is entitled to their own stupid opinion, but this is getting ridiculous.

The vast majority of the rest of us, other than a few right-wing loons, see Trump as a narcissistic bully, a lunatic, or worse (notwithstanding the sycophants on his payroll or in his own family). Even die-hard Republicans who grudgingly support Trump are embarrassed by his behavior.

Some will justify their vote by hatred of Hillary. She can’t be trusted, they say. So, instead, they hitch their fortunes to a con man who lies as effortlessly as he breathes. There are a lot of dumb people in this country, and they believe this billionaire ignoramus is just like them. They’re half right.

If this sounds terribly elitist, consider that exactly fifty percent the country is of below-average intelligence. And their votes count the same as the other half. It’s not that all poorly educated people are stupid. Or, that anyone with a college education is smarter than average. It’s that Trump’s base of support from poorly-educated (predominately white) people poses a genuine threat to the future of America.

Don’t take my word for it. Listen carefully to any of America’s accepted smart people – politicians, scholars, journalists, foreign policy wonks, TV talking heads, business owners, military leaders, and scientists (to say nothing of the rest of the world). Doesn’t it count for something that almost none of these people, regardless of their political beliefs (e.g., arch-conservative George Will), find anything good to say with any sincerity about Donald Trump?

Of course, his Trumpettes dismiss such talk as from “the Establishment” with searing critiques of the status quo:  If these people are so smart, why is the country in such a mess?

Unfortunately for all of us, there are no simple answers to fixing our messes. No wall, bumper sticker slogan, or goofy hats will fix what ails us.

In one of Trump’s recent stream-of-consciousness speeches, he talked about contractors who work for him. He claimed many of them can’t even read or write, but are smarter than Harvard graduates. His audience ate it up. After all, these are the same folks who get all orgasmic when they chant, “build the wall” and “lock her up,” and love their orange hero’s wholesale insults to Muslims, Hispanics, women, journalists, and anyone from governors to the Pope who doesn’t fawn at his magnificence.

For those who cheer his non-stop preening, Trump rhapsodizes: “My audiences are so smart!” As for the unenlightened, he sneers: “Our country is run by stupid, stupid people.”

I suppose Trump’s support is not all that surprising when you consider these beliefs held by Americans.

·        4 in 10 believe God created the Earth and modern humans, less than 10,000 years ago.

·        3 in 10 believe the story of Noah’s ark.

·        3 in 10 think Bigfoot is “definitely” or “probably” real.

·        1 in 5 believes the U.S. government is covering up evidence of alien existence.

·        1 in 3 believes global warming is a hoax.

·        1 in 5 believes Obama is a secret Muslim.

·        1 in 4 believes in astrology.

·        1 in 5 believes the moon landing was faked.

·        1 in 4 doesn’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not vice versa.

I can appreciate the dilemma of those who reject Hillary’s progressive political agenda. They fear (correctly) that a President Hillary will shift the balance of the Supreme Court for a generation. They fear (incorrectly) that she will try to overturn the Second Amendment and take away our guns. They worry that her plans to invest in clean energy, infrastructure repairs, health care, education, and worker training will bankrupt the country. Some even harbor secret resentment over how Hillary “stood by her man” during her husband’s infamous dalliances.

What I cannot fathom, however, is how such Hillary fear and loathing can legitimize the moral gymnastics needed to vote for Trump. One Evangelical leader justified his endorsement of the hate-spewing hustler by explaining that Trump is a “baby Christian.” I do not recall that Biblical concept.

We’re being warned by a growing number of very smart people that Donald Trump is a genuine, existential danger to our democracy. I believe that.

In my first-ever Presidential election in 1968, my choice was Hubert Humphrey or Richard Nixon. I was so outraged that Humphrey stole the nomination from peace-candidate George McGovern that I refused to vote in that election. Such naïve attitudes helped bring us President Nixon, and we saw how that worked out. No matter how bad things look, they can always get worse.

That’s reason enough for me to vote for Hillary in November. I’m with her!

~ ~ ~

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VENGEANCE FROM THE PECOS PIG

A long-dead peccary got revenge on me today. Again. Curse you, Pecos Pig!

I killed that pig with my Honda Pilot on a god-forsaken Texas highway seven years and 100,000 miles ago. Why wasn’t my six-week, hellish ordeal to fix the car retribution enough for that suicidal swine (see The Pecos Pig)? Plus, there was that delayed breakdown a year later – also javelina-caused (see Revenge of the Pecos Pig).

Today during routine service of my aging Pilot, the mechanic discovered leaking power steering fluid. Mindy, Kendall Honda’s Service Consultant, called me with the bad news. The entire steering rack assembly would have to be replaced. $1,671. Ouch!

It seemed like such an odd car part to break. Mindy said she had seen such a failure just once before. It was caused by an under-engine impact while off-roading. Sounded to me much like the shock of hitting a wild Texas pig at 65 mph. Probably some residual stress-related leak that just took a long time to get bad enough to be noticed.

Mindy has ordered the part and I’m taking my car back at 7:30 Friday morning for the big fix. Given my history with this car, the odds that everything will go well are not good. I think that pig still haunts it.

Maybe it’s time for a new one. A car, that is. Mindy gave me tips about the best time of year to buy a new Pilot. Maybe in the fall.

I’d gotten home for only an hour when Kendall Honda called. I was expecting more bad news. But it was only Michael thanking me profusely for having had service done today, obviously unaware of my unfixed, leaky power steering fluid problem. He quickly got to the real purpose of his call, which was asking if I had considered trading in my old, 2005 Pilot for a newer vehicle. When I explained my pending $1,671 repair bill, he noticeably brightened. “Well, would you consider putting that money against a down payment on a new car and just trading it in, as is?”

“Nice try, Michael,” I laughed. He laughed, too. What else can you do?

Damned pig.

~~~

Master Mechanic Scott and my dead steering gearbox assembly.

Friday: So far, so good. . .

~ ~ ~

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HARD CRAZY LESSONS

My friend Rick – this was years before he earned his “Crazy Rick” sobriquet – was sprinting in the dark between our pup tents when lightning exploded a nearby tree. The jolt knocked him flat in the flooded field. Thunder was immediate and deafening. Over the raging torrent, from the other tent Arnold yelled, “Damn! That was close. You all right?” Rick crawled into my tent, seemingly stunned.

The vicious downpour had surprised us just past sunset. We were camped on a weedy hilltop overlooking the swampy edge of Lake Huron’s Saginaw Bay. The storm had howled off open water bringing wind, nonstop thunder and lightning, and a deluge as if the big lake was emptying on top of us.

Rick was soaked and scared but unhurt. To the feeble light of candles, we stared at each other sitting in an inch of rising water, my canvas tent no match for the fusillade pounding outside. What were we thinking?

Still in high school that spring month, we had ridden our bikes 65 miles from our homes in Flint in order to camp next to the Great Lakes. Check out the scenery. Maybe take a swim. We had pictured a nice sandy beach, not a mosquito-filled marsh. Our ignorance was matched by our crappy gear. Take my bicycle, for example.

Our family was poor. Few got rich working in the Fifties and Sixties as a fire-and-brimstone preacher and that was my dad’s calling. When I was nine years old, my parents scrimped and finally bought me my first bicycle – a shiny red-and-white Schwinn. I paid half.

Later, we moved from our bucolic, Indiana farm town where you didn’t have to lock your doors, to gritty Flint, Michigan. The first time I rode to the city’s swimming pool without a bike lock, that Schwinn got stolen. Buying me a replacement was out of the question.

Taking pity, a lady in our church gave me a bicycle – actually, the pieces of a bicycle that had been taken apart and packed in grease in a box in her garage since World War II. I eventually figured out how to put back together that clunky, balloon-tired, single-speed bike, and rode it all through high school. Including on our ridiculous trek to Saginaw Bay.

Of course we should have known better. Even though there was no 24-7 weather reporting back then, the fierce winds we battled all the way north on M-15 should have given us a clue that we were headed into trouble.

My antique bike’s frame and steel fenders were weighted down with camping gear, including a humongous sleeping bag and heavy tent – the kind of equipment you get when you have to buy the cheap stuff.

We struggled northward, Rick and me on our overloaded bikes, walking and pushing them when the gale in our faces became overwhelming. Arnold rode ahead on his moped – a glorified bicycle fitted with a sputtering motor that could reach a top speed of maybe 25 mph – then would stop and let us catch up. Exhausted, we reached the edge of Saginaw Bay barely in time before dark to find a weedy farm field to pitch our tents.

We survived that ferocious, sleepless night but realized in the dawn light that we were finished. Everything was sodden. Arnold’s moped was wet and wouldn’t start. All I wanted was my bed. We agreed that Rick and Arnold would stay with our gear and I would ride home and send Arnold’s father to the rescue.

I left my friends and pedaled south through the flat farmlands. Early Sunday morning and the highway deserted. Soaking wet and chilled to the bone. Mile after mile. So tired. The blacktop was starting to dry in the early-morning breeze, and I discovered that it was warmer than my body. Several times I got off my bike and lay flat on the pavement, absorbing a few calories of warmth, trying not to fall asleep and get run over.

I arrived home so dazed that I could barely talk and collapsed in bed. Fortunately, Rick and Arnold had found a pay phone and were eventually rescued later that day, no thanks to me. It would not be our last foolhardy adventure together.

* * *

The winter following our aborted bike trip, the three of us went camping near Flint in the Hadley Hills, a wooded, semi-wild, state-owned land of moraines and kettle lakes – remnants of the mile-thick glaciers that melted away from Michigan 10,000 years ago. I had my new driver’s license and drove us through snow drifts to the back country in my parents green and white ’54 Ford. We lugged our mishmash of camping gear into the woods and tamped down snow for a campsite. We cut pine branches for insulation under our tents like I’d read in my outdoor magazines.

After the sun went down the temperature plummeted to ten below zero. Our water and eggs froze solid. We managed to stay reasonably warm huddled like mummies in our sleeping bags while wearing all our clothes, keeping just our mouths and noses exposed. The fog of my breath froze on the tent fabric, turning to ice crystals that rained back down.

Sometime after midnight, crunching boots and a probing flashlight on the tent walls woke us. Arnold’s worried-sick father somehow had tracked our footprints in the snow from the deserted spot where we left our car to retrieve us. He wasn’t pleased when Rick and I refused deliverance, but insisted on dragging Arnold home with him. From our tent we listened to them packing up to the light of a hissing Coleman lantern, then tromping away into the darkness.

Rick and I should have gotten out when the getting was good. Heavy snow arrived in the morning. By the time we got our frozen tent packed up and the Ford loaded, the road out was nearly impassable. At the bottom of a valley between steep hills we got stuck, miles from the paved highway. We walked until we came to a farm house. No one was home, so we rummaged around an outbuilding and discovered a pair of tire chains. We borrowed them and managed to get the Ford moving. When we passed the farm house we were surprised to see the owners were home. Rather than stop and thank them for the loan, Rick flung the chains into the driveway as we flew by. What must they have thought?

* * *

The next to last time I saw Rick was at my mother’s funeral reception more than fifteen years ago. In the years since our teenage misadventures, Rick had turned himself into “Crazy Rick.”

He definitely looked crazy – black hair and beard long and wild like he was channeling his West Virginia hill-country kin. Short, square-framed, and muscular, he likely would have been a coal miner in an earlier day. As we chatted at the reception in the church gymnasium, Rick’s dark eyes darted about the room, betraying the paranoia that had crept into his brain over the years. He didn’t stay long.

When I went off to college after high school, Rick had joined the Navy. Soon after he told me, “Biggest mistake of my life,” and shared his detailed, year-long plan to convince the Navy’s shrinks that he was nuts in order to get himself discharged. He said he had convinced everyone that he was the perfect sailor, but now was going to start acting, little by little, like a crazy person. I’ve forgotten the details, but his “act” worked perfectly. The Navy gave him a “general discharge” (preserving his G.I. benefits), and he returned to Michigan to attend college. That’s how we came to call him Crazy Rick, though not to his face.

After college, we went separate ways. I started a career as an environmental activist. Rick got married, had some kids, and lived in squalor, based on what I saw during one brief visit. In a moment of local fame, he made the front page of the Lansing newspaper when he cut in half two surplus schoolhouse buildings he bought for next to nothing from the township, intending to move each half down the highway and then reassemble them – I don’t remember to where or if he ever succeeded.

Our last, slightly scary meeting came sometime after our funereal encounter. One day out of the blue I got a call from him at my work in Ann Arbor. He seemed agitated, and insisted on seeing me as soon as possible. I suggested a late lunch at a local café, and he readily agreed. Yes, I assured him, they served vegan.

When I arrived, Rick was waiting for me out front. Within minutes of going in, he was loudly complaining to restaurant staff about our delay in getting seated. It promised to be a long lunch. Once we had ordered I pressed him on the purpose of his sudden appearance.

Rick responded by grilling me about where I’d been on certain dates, asking if I had made such-and-such phone calls to the government. It was all very mysterious, but the look on his face said this was no laughing matter. He leaned over the table, his deep, penetrating eyes hardly blinking, staring into mine like this was an inquisition.

I pressed him for an explanation, while professing innocence of whatever he thought I’d done. He was vague, saying it had to do with anonymous, untrue allegations that he was mistreating his children. For some reason, he assumed the caller had been me.

I flashed back to the picture in my head of a couple of filthy, naked kids running about like free-range chickens in the dirt-packed yard of his house, back that one time I’d visited. The guy was creeping me out, but I finally convinced him I had no idea what he was talking about. At that point he abruptly changed the subject and pulled from his backpack a thick, dog-eared report and placed it face down on the table, his forearm guarding it. It felt like I’d just passed a test. In reward, I was about to be offered secret information about UFOs, aliens, and the big, government cover-up.

He explained that his father had been in the military and come across certain secrets. Now, Rick was keeper of this hush-hush information that the government refused to admit. My eyes glazed over; I remember little of his passionate description of the conspiracy to which he was privy. As for his secret UFO report, he demanded, “If I let you read this, will you promise me you will take it seriously?”

I told him I was curious and would like to read it, but “Honestly, I can’t promise you that.”

Rick was visibly insulted – more with my narrow-minded ignorance than with my personal slight, I suppose. He put his report back into hiding and, with that, our lunch date ended. I paid our bill, left a generous tip, and Crazy Rick walked away down Liberty Street. Recently I heard a rumor that these days he’s toothless and homeless, but I couldn’t say.

* * *

The last time I saw my other old friend, Arnold, also was at my mother’s funeral – at the visitation at the funeral home. We hadn’t been in touch since high school. I learned that, unsurprisingly, Arnold, far from ever a successful student, had spent his life working in a local auto plant. To my complete surprise, he had spent his spare time and retirement becoming a self-taught artist, sculpting metal into all manner of his visions. In the parking lot, Arnold opened his trunk and showed me several albums filled with photos of his fabulous creations. I gushed over his artistry and he beamed.

We reminisced about old times and laughed about our ill-fated ride to Saginaw Bay. He asked if I had seen our old high school principal inside at the visitation. “I had to get out of there,” Arnold said. “You know what he once told me?”

I shook my head and he continued, obviously agitated. “Arnold, you will never amount to anything. He actually said that to me.” Despite the sting of the insult, lingering still after decades, it was apparent that Arnold was proud that he’d “proved that asshole principal wrong.”

A few months later, a small package from Arnold arrived in the mail. Inside was a strange-looking, two-tined fork, artistically fashioned from a pitted, foot-long cast-iron spike. Like a blacksmith of old, Arnold had heated, hammered, twisted, and split the heated spike into this fork. A note explained that while diving in Lake Huron, he had retrieved the spike from the deck of a ship that had sunk during a storm in the early 1900’s.

Probably not unlike that storm off the big lake that had taught hard crazy lessons to us boys back when we still had a whole lot of life ahead of us and a whole lot yet to prove.

~ ~ ~

Third of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also:

“Dark as Death”
“Ayn Rand Got Me High”

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DARK AS DEATH

I flipped off my flashlight to utter darkness. Not dark as in “a dark and stormy night” but dark as in buried alive dark. No sense of front or back or up or down except a vaguely directed gravity. My eyes, seeking a glimmer of light, tried to adjust but nothing changed. No hint of the hand in front of my face.

I leaned into my backpack cushioning a jagged wall of the long-closed mine and listened. Somewhere water dripped. A moan echoed from the tunnel’s abandoned timbers straining under the weight of the world above. A falling rock clattered.

I was alone in the middle of the night nearly a quarter-mile below ground, evidence of cave-ins all around, and not a soul knew where I was. The copper mine I was exploring had been abandoned for more than 30 years.

If something happened, how long before anyone found me? Would time have meaning where there is no light? The dread was unbearable and I turned my light back on.

Far above, my bicycle hidden in the bushes, it was nearing midnight, which this far north in summer was just two hours past sunset. I had ridden 20 miles from my college dorm room in town. Then, waiting for dusk so I could sneak across an open field past the “Keep Out - No Trespassing” signs, I lifted rotted boards capping the mine shaft and dropped out of sight. After descending the first few hundred feet, I paused to catch my breath, relieved that I wasn’t going to get caught. I was alone. Really, really alone.

All to find a rare but worthless rock found in this mine on a remote reach of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Arching off the “U.P.” is the Keweenaw Peninsula, jutting like a stony finger 75 miles into Lake Superior. Here, hundreds of mines once were bored thousands of feet deep chasing copper-bearing ores. But only in this one spot did a peculiar assemblage of billion-year-old rocks have just the right combination of chemicals – primarily copper, zinc, and arsenic – that were mixed over eons to form the heavy, metallic blue-silver mineral, mohawkite. A rock found nowhere else on Earth but here in its namesake Mohawk Mine.

When you hold a piece of mohawkite in your hand, the weight is what you notice first. It’s heavy like lead. Yet if dropped, it shatters like ice. Its color is not leaden gray but sparkles silvery across a rough surface. Where exposed to air, it weathers to blotches of color– unique compounds in shades from tea green to turquoise.

What circuitous paths carry us from here to there. I wouldn’t have been underground if I hadn’t decided to go to college at Michigan Tech, located in Houghton on the Keweenaw Peninsula. I was 19 and majoring in geological engineering. The school was 500 miles from my depressing hometown of Flint and the farthest I could get away and still pay in-state tuition. It’s not that I wanted to be a geologist or an engineer. I didn’t. It’s just that I couldn’t think of anything better to do. And I kind of liked rocks.

To get a general idea of where in the mine’s miles of tunnels I most likely would find mohawkite I had studied yellowing mine maps in musty file drawers at the college library. It appeared that the mine’s 11^th and 12^th “levels” were richest in mohawkite.

A level is a horizontal tunnel extending from the mine’s shaft. In the Mohawk Mine, every hundred feet deeper a new level was blasted out in two directions following the erratic seams of copper ore. Where a level interrupted a quality copper deposit, it might open into room-sized excavations, even breaking through into the next level above.

The mine’s shafts (there once were six, the first dug in 1899) are 8 feet wide and 18 feet tall, penetrating the earth at a 54-degree incline, matching the dip of the ore-bearing seam. At that steep angle I could just barely clamber down the shaft’s jumble of rocks, maneuvering hand-over-hand while holding my flashlight, all the while trying not to bang my bare head on broken timbers. In some places I was able to clutch the rusted iron rails that remained, once used to ferry miners up and down and hoist out millions of pounds of copper ore.

For the few decades it lasted, the Mohawk Mine made more than $15 million in profits and employed more than a thousand workers. Dirty, dangerous, unhealthy work, to be sure, but compared to what? How else could you make a living in the early 1900s in the U.P. wilderness where winter can bury you in 300 inches of snow?

I slowly descended the mine’s shaft, keeping count until I reached the 11^th level. All the U.P.’s old copper mines are shut down now, like this mine since 1932, and slowly filling with groundwater. It was said by my fellow geology students, who had talked to people who supposedly knew whereof they spoke, that the Mohawk Mine, which went down nearly 3,000 feet, was flooded with water at about 1,500 feet. I was still a few hundred feet above that so drowning was the least of my worries. Just to be sure, I threw a rock as far as I could down into the dark mine shaft. It flew for a long time, then bounced and rattled into the void. No splash.

I explored a few hundred feet of the tunnels. Despite my flashlight’s anemic beam, there it was, silvery traces of mohawkite glittering in the reflected light. Some was exposed on a tunnel wall, once blasted by dynamite, flat as a tombstone, and impossible to fracture with a hand pick. Other mohawkite-laden rock glistened in veins from lips of broken ledges, fallen rock, or discarded mining rubble.

I couldn’t imagine spending my working life entombed in this rock crypt. Men once lived and died here. Blasting and cursing filled the air. Now all was silent. As I chipped and banged away with my rock hammer, filling my flimsy Boy Scout backpack with the best chunks and slivers until it strained at the seams, the echoes felt creepy. Like I was alerting spirits that I was there and up to no good. Old cave-ins sealed access to some of the tunnels, chilling reminders that the slightest thing could trigger a pent-up cave-in.

That’s when I rested, sitting on broken rock, and turned off my flashlight to save the batteries. That’s when the world turned dark as death. I jumped as if shocked when a cold drop of water landed on my bare neck. The air I sucked in tasted old, dank, and stale. What the hell am I doing down here?

Certainly, getting a bag of mohawkite was one reason. But how many rocks are enough? I made that perilous trip back down into the mine twice more, exploring other levels, collecting more rocks. Each trip, I would struggle back to the surface, canvas pack straps biting my shoulders and pedal down US-41 in the dark to my college dorm with 25 or so pounds of rocks poking into my back.

It’s not like I could brag about my stunts; that would have gotten me expelled from college (and drafted: Good Morning, Vietnam!). I don’t know. Why do we do anything when we’re young and trying to figure out how to grow up?

Earlier that year of my mining adventures I had gone steelhead fishing on a remote U.P. river. I had to slog through several feet of snow drifts to reach the river bank. The sun was out and thawing chunks of ice raced by in the current. At the mouth of the river where it plunged into Lake Superior, I watched the flow disappear under a sheet of unbroken ice. Far offshore and barely visible was the end of the ice and open water of the world’s largest lake.

I leaned my fishing rod against a leafless shrub and, still in my chest waders, struck out alone. A half-mile later I was standing on the very edge of the two-feet-thick ice shelf. At my toes stretched 50 miles of empty water. Small waves lapped the ice, their irregular splashes the only sound. Wind from the U.P. wilds blew against my back and it dawned on me that if an ice floe broke off with me on it, I would die an ugly death.

I found no epiphany that day on the edge of Lake Superior’s ice sheet. Just relief at surviving. Like after going down in that mine. Doing it for the thrill.

Was it really that simple? Or might it have had something to do with the crushing insecurities of youth? Courting danger to compensate for fears about a terrifying future? Burdened with still having something to prove.

Like so much that we accumulate over the years, most of those hard-earned rocks of mohawkite became dead weight and got buried in a hole along the way. Yet not all. A few chunks sit on shelves in my house today. They’ve been wrapped, packed, and unbundled in a lifetime of moves from here to there. Their original burnish of blue‑silver is dulled with tarnish. But every now and then, I’ll chip a corner off one to see again that fresh sparkle of raw mohawkite. Its naked glint will carry me back to adventures of my youth, alone in the depths with nothing but a cheap flashlight, and all life’s terrors and wonders luring me ever deeper, curious, driven to check out just one more level.

~ ~ ~

First of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also:

“Ayn Rand Got Me High”

       “Hard Crazy Lessons”



Wayne's Blog -- Home Page & Index

AYN RAND GOT ME HIGH

“A man’s ego is the fountainhead of human progress.” – novelist Ayn Rand

Each time the aircraft warning light blinked red next to my head, I closed my eyes to keep from being blinded, clinging for dear life to the ice-cold ladder. As for why I was perched atop a 275-feet-high smokestack on a blustery February night, I mostly credit Ayn Rand.

Technically, I suppose I should blame Crazy Rick. My long-time friend had a way of leading me into trouble. He was a wiry, tough little guy who, during our college years, loved showing off and bragging about his feats. Like how many miles he could walk while balancing on the iron rail of a railroad track without slipping off, a stunt he took straight from one of Rand's novels.

We both idealized the ego-crazed hero created by Rand – “a man who perseveres to achieve his values, even when his ability and independence leads to conflict with others.” (Wikipedia)

Instead of "What would Jesus do?" we asked "What would Ayn Rand do?" Her philosophy proved a dangerous catalyst for our self-absorption.

Crazy Rick challenged his own considerable ego with daring nighttime exploits on the campus of Michigan State University near where we lived. He had, for example, figured out how to sneak into the university’s mammoth powerplant and reach its smokestack’s ladder.

So late one night, there we were, standing in darkness just beyond reach of garish security lights, looking across a snowy field to the powerplant. We made a run for it, ducking past a line of coal cars waiting to be unloaded and into a long, enclosed structure that carried coal from mountainous piles along the railroad tracks to the powerplant’s boilers. The giant, black conveyor belt was silent, and we crept up it into the plant. Once inside, we slapped off coal dust, then slipped across metal gangways and up several floors to a door leading to the roof and gigantic brick chimney, massive at its base and tapering to a twelve-foot diameter top. A ladder up its side faded into the night like an Escher illusion.

I took a deep breath and exhaled a frozen cloud. “You coming?” said Rick, looking down at me from the ladder, just a hint of sneer on his lips.

Up and up we climbed, hundreds of steps. Cold from the steel rungs burned through our gloves. We paused often, hanging onto the ladder with our arms while trying to warm our hands, but the wind was brutal, cutting through our jackets, and we had to keep moving. Far below, a few cars crawled silently along Farm Lane. Downtown East Lansing twinkled in the distance. An airport light blinked way off to the northwest. When we reached the smokestack’s flashing red light, we knew we could get no higher.

In truth, the view from the top was a bit of a letdown – mostly snow-covered farmlands in the dark. We’d actually gotten a better view on an earlier climb. Weeks before, Crazy Rick had found a way into the university’s other powerplant. Its brick smokestack was a local landmark, towering 239 feet above the center of MSU’s campus, vertically emblazoned at the top with immense white letters, “MSC,” for the school’s name, Michigan State College, when the powerplant was built in 1948.

Getting in was easy. We crept up late one night to the gigantic metal door used for letting in coal-carrying railroad cars and hit a button. I didn’t know what to expect but certainly not the explosion of racket as the immense door rolled and clattered upwards. We ducked inside and hit a button to reverse the door’s direction. The powerplant’s operating noise was so loud that no one working there noticed the door’s starts and stops.

We sneaked up open metal stairways to reach a door to the roof and the smokestack’s ladder. The 20-year-old stack was showing its age, and as we climbed silently in the dark we bypassed several ladder rungs that were rusted nearly through and ladder anchors pulling loose from the bricks and mortar.

At the top, a glorious, bird’s-eye panorama spread around us – the city’s lights; glowing paths, streets, and buildings of campus; and looming below across the dark ribbon of the Red Cedar River, snow-covered Spartan Stadium.

Crazy Rick was like a monkey – strong, agile, and fearless. He roamed the rooftops of any building he set his mind to, always finding a way to sneak up there, whether through unlocked windows or by scaling walls. He also went below ground, exploring the ten-mile web of tunnels underlying the MSU campus, which house steam-heat pipes running from the powerplants to university buildings. I followed him on his four-story-high, slate-covered-rooftop romps a few times and down into the rat-infested tunnels just once. What finally got me in trouble, however, was trailing him across a campus pedestrian bridge.

By “across” I mean under it. It was dark and it was winter and I should have known better. But there was youthful testosterone in the air and ego at stake. If he can do it, I can do it, I told myself. Standing in the snow on the steep riverbank, I watched him grip the flat, frozen I‑beam on the underside of the bridge and quickly move hand-over-hand out over the river, feet dangling five feet above the water.

Back in high school, Rick and I had been on the wrestling team. He was good and won most of his matches. I was awful and lost nearly all of mine. During one after-school practice, our coach had teammates wrestle each other in “grudge matches,” starting with the two lightest. The winner would take on the next heavier guy. You kept wrestling until you got pinned.

That’s how I ended up paired against Rick, who was two weight classes lighter than me. It felt personal, the way he came after me. A bit scary, like he had something to prove. Although I was heavier, he was stronger and a far better wrestler. I vowed to not let him beat me and found some untapped fortitude to avoid humiliation. The coach finally had to declare a draw.

Me & Rick (right) -- winter church camp, 1964

Rick always wanted to best me, and under that MSU campus bridge that wintry night, he succeeded. The bare metal was brutally cold on my fingers as I inched out over the river. Halfway across I knew I was in trouble when I saw the tree branch from the opposite riverbank blocking our progress. I watched as Rick swung like an ape under the branch to keep going, then scrambled to the opposite bank.

I tried to copy his trick, letting go with my right hand to swing under the branch and catch the I-beam, even while knowing it was hopeless. My left hand lost its tenuous grip and down I went into the dark depths of the too-polluted-to-be-frozen Red Cedar River. I bobbed up and splashed to shore, slipping, sputtering, and shuttering, then ran the mile back to my dorm room.

It didn’t take long. Within hours my body started purging that germ-infested river water in ugly fashion. Still the middle of the night, I walked to the campus infirmary. When I explained what had happened, the nurse just shook her head, then admitted me. I was in there sick for two days.

We were young and foolhardy, testing every limit, challenging authority, looking for truth. Ayn Rand’s novels, since branded as “the most exquisitely adolescent of fictions” (essayist Nancy Mairs), gave us such nuggets of moral guidance as:

“Your mind is your only judge of truth – and if others dissent from your verdict, reality is the court of final appeal.” (Atlas Shrugged)

Such were the foibles of youth. Some of us grow out of them. Some of us don’t. There are still people who take Ayn Rand seriously. One guy online calls himself “The Profitability Coach.” Send him money and you can learn how to “Live a Life and Lifestyle of an Ayn Rand Hero, Know Your Purpose, Build True Wealth, Love The Journey.”

It’s been nearly 50 years since my Red Cedar River dunking; I suffered no obvious lasting effects, but who can really say? That pedestrian bridge is still there, crossed every day by throngs of students. The iconic MSC smokestack we climbed was demolished long ago. The taller stack that we scaled still sits atop MSU’s T.B. Simon Powerplant, which since has been expanded, repeatedly fined for air pollution, and now has two smokestacks. I’m pretty sure nobody gets to sneak in and climb either of them these days. Ayn Rand would not be pleased:

“One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”

~ ~ ~

Second of a series, “Wayne’s Crazy Days.” See also:

“Dark as Death”

“Hard Crazy Lessons”

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BLAME THE MORMONS

The armed takeover of a national wildlife refuge in my adopted state of Oregon is sputtering to its inevitable finale. Just four pathetic, leaderless militants – who now are under federal indictment – remain holed up at the isolated refuge. Yet, the question remains: how could this all have happened? I believe one of the roots of this tragi-comedy has been short-changed in the media’s saturation coverage.

At first it wasn’t obvious. When I wrote “What the Heck’s Going On in Oregon?” at the start of their insurrection last month, I missed it, too. But then Ryan Bundy, one of the militants’ chief chuckleheads, explained his actions to a reporter:

“My Mormonism plays a large part in what I do – the biggest part.”

Of course. Relying on divine inspiration explains a lot about the cult-like behavior in any act of terrorism. And no faith is better adapted to creating a religion after one’s own, self-serving image than Mormonism.

Leaders of the takeover, the now-infamous (and jailed) Bundy brothers, Ammon (40) and Ryan (43), come from a seditious, Mormon family tradition. Their father, Cliven Bundy, led the highly-publicized 2014 armed, anti-government protest over paying grazing fees on public lands in southern Nevada.

The feds backed down and Cliven still owes more than $1 million in unpaid fees and fines. It seems self-evident that Cliven’s divinely-sanctioned success in facing down the federal government helped inspire others who claim their religious or political beliefs override the “tyranny” of government laws.

Cliven said God was on his side:

“If the standoff with the Bundys was wrong, would the Lord have been with us? Could those people that stood with me without fear and went through that spiritual experience…have done that without the Lord being there? No, they couldn’t.”

Cliven gave his 14 kids a lot to live up to. Ammon and Ryan apparently saw protesting the jailing of two ranchers, the Hammonds in Harney County, Oregon, who were convicted of arson on public lands, as their chance to live up to Dad’s example.

Spoiler alert: they failed. After getting arrested, Ammon said from jail that the remaining four occupiers should go home. Dad didn’t agree, and decreed (from his home in Nevada) that the refuge should stay in the hands of “the citizens.” “What this is saying,” he told a reporter, “is that Cliven Bundy is taking control of things.”

Ammon Bundy Speaks the Wisdom of the Lord:

Before he got thrown in jail, Ammon Bundy was the face to the world of the wildlife refuge occupation. Low-key with trimmed beard, in flannels, jeans and ubiquitous brown cowboy hat, Ammon used soft-spoken words that belied their fervid radicalism.

Ammon said he had prayed and God told him to go to Harney County to help the Hammonds, and all the other ranchers, miners and loggers, who should have unfettered access to public lands. The iconic Malheur National Wildlife Refuge should be “turned back” to “the people.”

In an online video, Ammon spoke earnestly into the camera, explaining that his mission to Harney County was a revelation direct from God:

“I began to understand that what we were supposed to do is…get together individuals all across this country that understood and cared about what was happening. That understood that our Constitution was being violated, that it is hanging by a thread…

“They understood what is happening to Harney County would happen to all the counties across the United States and go into all the ends of the earth if there was not a stand made. And so I began to understand that I was to call all these people together, to ask them to come and to unite together in Harney County, and that we were to create a defense for the people of Harney County so that they can begin to use their land and resources again…that they can get rid of the tyranny and the chains that are upon them...

“And I began to understand exactly how we should do it, exactly the steps that we were to take, and so I began to move in that direction… [These things] have only become more and more clear. They are wisdom of the Lord. And so I am asking you to come to Harney County to make the decision right now, of whether this is a righteous cause or not, whether I am some crazy person or whether the Lord truly works through individuals to get his purposes accomplished.”

He asked online viewers to join him in “this wonderful thing which the Lord is about to accomplish.”

Ammon and his band of true believers, armed with God, guns and gall, stormed the unoccupied, winter-shuttered refuge headquarters to make their stand on behalf of the Lord. Ammon said of their weapons:

“[W]e have them, and we’re willing to stand with them in our own defense as we exercise our rights, and as we restore our rights back to our brothers and sisters.”

He professed his “willingness to kill or be killed for my God and my countrymen.”

As if having Cliven Bundy for a father wasn’t burden enough, Ammon is saddled with a name straight from the Book of Mormon, Joseph Smith’s (the religion’s founder) phantasmagoria as rich as Lord of the Rings. This helpful explanation from Wikipedia:

“Ammon is the leader of a Nephite expedition from Zarahemla, sent to discover the fate of Zeniff and his people who have not been heard from for 75 years. Zeniff and his followers left Zarahemla and travelled to Nephi, their ancestral home, which was then in the possession of the Lamanites. Ammon is not a Nephite by birth but a descendant of Zarahemla and thus a Mulekite.”

All in the Bundy Family:

Cliven Bundy claims the right to freely graze public lands around Bunkerville, Nevada, (just down the road from southwest Utah) because his Mormon ancestors worked the land before the federal government took ownership (ignoring, apparently, Paiute use of those same lands prior to the Mormons’ armed takeover). Whatever the spurious merits of Cliven’s argument, there is no arguing that the Bundys’ Mormon roots are relevant to the mess the Bundy brothers created in Harney County, Oregon.

In the beginning, there was Dudley Leavitt, the Bundy boys’ great-great-great-grandfather on their mother’s side. He was among the very first Mormons on earth.

Leavitt was born in Canada in 1830, just north of the Vermont line. That same year, not far away in burned-over scrublands of western New York, a self-styled treasure hunter and seer, Joseph Smith, published the Book of Mormon and launched his new religion, declaring himself its Prophet.

In case you missed the Broadway play, here’s a thumbnail: In a vision, the angel Moroni came to Smith and directed him to buried golden plates inscribed with the history of an ancient American civilization between 600 BC and 421 AD. Smith translated the mysterious texts by staring at special stones in the bottom of a stovepipe hat, dictating his visions over several years. Taking a Pope-like role, he proclaimed that only he held the keys to the mysteries. Throughout his life Smith continued to receive “revelations” from God that would spell out the kooky rules for his new “latter-day saints,” such as “plural marriage,” special underwear, and how to get your own planet to rule after you die.

Leavitt’s parents were among the first to fall for Smith’s elaborate con, and gave up everything to follow him west to create the New Zion – a collective, utopian settlement that eventually would lead to theocratic rule over the whole earth. What they found was a real world violently hostile to their religion. Mormons were murdered, homes torched, and some, including Smith, were tarred and feathered. Smith and his followers moved again and again around the Midwest in fruitless efforts to gain their independence from niggling government interference with their affairs. Smith preached that Mormons were under no obligation to obey laws they deemed contrary to their “religious privilege” (e.g., polygamy).

In Missouri, Smith was arrested for “overt acts of treason” but escaped to Illinois. Five years later, he was again in jail for treason. That’s where Mormonism’s “Prophet, Priest and King” was murdered by a mob of 200 men who stormed the jail. (Smith left behind 40 wives, including at least ten who were married to other Mormons.)

At Smith’s funeral, thirteen-year-old Dudley Leavitt joined the line of believers who filed by Smith’s body. Already, the boy had suffered bloody noses at school for defending his religion and the Prophet who talked to God and angels. At that moment, staring into Joseph Smith’s dead face, Leavitt reaffirmed his dedication to Smith’s vision.

When Brigham Young was chosen as Smith’s successor as 1844, Leavitt was in the back of the audience. His new allegiance to Young would result, thirteen years later, in the absolute worst day of Leavitt’s long life.

In 1846, his family traveled the Mormon trail to Utah, where Leavitt started his own family, eventually marrying four women. The last was an Indian girl, who had been adopted by a Mormon family as an infant. Leavitt had been traveling away from home, trading molasses and dried fruit for essentials, and a church elder intervened and insisted that he marry the young girl. Imagine coming home from a business trip and surprising your family with a new wife in tow. And an Indian girl, at that.

Leavitt no doubt felt obligated to do his part to accelerate the whitening of the dark Indian race, as called for in the Book of Mormon. Native Americans, after all, were the cursed Lamanites that Joseph Smith said would eventually transition into God’s favored, white, “delightsome people.”

That’s how Mormons justified their common practice of buying Indian children from destitute parents, taking them in as part of their own families, all the while insisting the purchased children were not slaves. It was simply part of God’s plan to redeem the cursed Lamanites and turn them white.

The Other 9/11 – the Mountain Meadows Massacre:

On September 11, 1857, at Mountain Meadows, a rolling valley 30 miles north of St. George, Utah, a homegrown, ragtag Mormon militia murdered in cold blood 120 men, women and children traveling in an oxen-powered wagon caravan from Arkansas to California. Only the 17 youngest children were spared.

Dudley Leavitt was there that day and did his duty to the infallible Brigham Young and to God, in that order. As a leader in his Mormon community and church, Leavitt could no more refuse a directive from his church elders than swear an oath to the devil.

Those Arkansas emigrants got caught in a larger battle by Mormons against the federal government. Brigham Young, the Mormon President as well as Utah Territory Governor, had trumpeted, “Any President of the United States who lifts his finger against [my] people shall die an untimely death and go to hell!” Young railed against the tyrannical federal government infringing on their rights (e.g., polygamy) and ignoring their interests.

U.S. President Buchanan declared the Mormons in Utah Territory to be in rebellion, and war was in the air. Federal troops were on the way to oust Young as territorial governor.

Whether or not Brigham Young personally gave the order for the Mountain Meadows massacre is immaterial; the church had made it clear that outsiders were a threat to be given no help in their travels. To make matters worse for the Arkansas travelers, a Mormon missionary (Mitt Romney’s great-great-grandfather) had just been murdered in their state.

And so the Mormon militia was called up and attacked the Arkansas emigrants during their breakfast. The first shot killed a child. The surviving emigrants were surrounded for four days, then on September 11 under the militia’s treacherous use of a white flag, were lined up. The order to the Mormon militiamen was given: “Do your duty!” What followed was an orgy of violence as all but the youngest emigrants were shot and clubbed to death, their bodies stripped naked, wagons and belongings looted.

Despite the enormity of their terrorist crimes, almost all those Mormons got away with it. Brigham Young and the church stood up to the feds, lied and blamed the Indians, and only one person (John D. Lee) was ever punished for the atrocity. Not Dudley Leavitt. Not church elders. And certainly not Brigham Young.

Whether or not Leavitt had actual blood on his hands that day (he claimed late in life he did not) is immaterial. This self-righteous man was part of it all and he was guilty as sin.

Eventually after years of dodging federal marshals charged with arresting polygamists, Leavitt and his family ended up in the polygamist community of Bunkerville, Nevada. He died peacefully at 78 and is buried in the Bunkerville cemetery, not far from where the Bundy family grew up.

It’s easy to caricature strange, Mormon fellows like Dudley Leavitt. But for most of his life he was happy and successful, respected by those around him, loved by his wives and adored by his children and grandchildren, and reportedly kind and generous to Indians. That someone is not solely a one-dimensional, anti-government militant, however, can’t exonerate their criminal acts.

Captain Moroni:

Take, for example, one of the Bundys’ biggest fans and participant in the Oregon wildlife refuge takeover – the self-named Captain Moroni, aka Dylan Anderson of Provo, Utah.

Upon arriving at the wildlife refuge occupation, he claimed to a radio reporter, “I didn’t come here to shoot. I came here to die.”

He didn’t die. Instead, Captain Moroni spent his 35^th birthday (Feb. 5) rotting in an Oregon county jail with his Bundy buddies and six of their fellow conspirators.

In Mormon mythology, the “real” Captain Moroni (not to be confused with the Prophet Moroni, son of Mormon, who came as an angel to Joseph Smith to show him the golden plates) was a commander of the Nephite forces in America in the 1^st century BC. According to Mormon scripture, he was “angry with the government, because of their indifference concerning the freedom of their country” and as a result threatened to “take my sword to defend the cause of my country.” In addition to fighting the bad Lamanites, Captain Moroni had to contend with an evil man, Amalickiah, who aspired to be king of the Nephites. When Captain Moroni raised a “title of liberty” (writing on a torn piece of his coat on the end of a pole) as a call to arms for his people to govern themselves and worship as they saw fit, so many flocked to his call that the villain of the story, Amalickiah, simply backed off and went away.

Perhaps the modern-day Captain Moroni believes he is called by God to the same destiny: to make the federal government just go away. Like Moroni’s piece of torn coat, the militants want to pull a battered copy of the U.S. Constitution from their pocket, wave it in the air like the magical “title of liberty,” and expect the federal government to back off and go away.

Dylan Anderson is on Facebook (at least, was, before his unfortunate incarceration). He seems like such a mild-mannered Mormon, not a religious fanatic who would claim Captain Moroni as his alter-ego. In one post, he jokes, “Wonder if heaven is like church that never ends, or if that’s what hell will be.”

Two years ago in announcing his wedding plans to his Facebook friends, he fairly purred with Hallmark, quasi-racist sincerity:

“Here (sic) name is Cynthia. We must have wished on the same star at the same time. The ocean is deeply majestic & romantic to us both. Our honeymoon will be a not fully planned adventure down the Oregon Coast and down into Northern California... everything from a high dollar hotel with a (sic) ocean view to sleeping on the beach. She has a lot of Native American in her so it comes natural to her. I call her my squaw. And so our wedding theme shall be the ocean. Hope a lot of people who come will wear something like a blue tie or even a seashell necklace to add to the mood.”

(I’m reminded of Dudley Leavitt’s fourth wife, the Indian girl he wedded to help whiten the race of the cursed Lamanites. But I digress…)

From Anderson’s Facebook page, I learned that his favorite movie is Robin Hood (the Russell Crowe version), Man Vs. Wild is his favorite TV show, and his favorite quote is “Keep your friends close and your enemies at gunpoint.”

A favorite link is to a video, “The REAL Bundy Ranch Story: Feds Forced to Surrender to American Citizens. Here is the video you WILL NOT SEE on the mainstream media.”

One of his most recent posts: “Just because your (sic) paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after you.” But not one word about Dylan Anderson's secret life as Captain Moroni.

The Bundys’ Martyr:

As everyone knows, one militant, Robert LaVoy Finicum was killed when the feds finally moved in on January 26 to arrest the wildlife refuge occupation’s leaders. After being unmolested by law enforcement for weeks despite their blatant crimes at the refuge, these guys had gotten so cocky that one day they all loaded up in a convoy of three vehicles and headed to the next county north of Harney County, where they expected a warm reception at a community meeting.

You’d have thought they were headed for a religious camp meeting, instead of the senior center in the tiny town of John Day. The lead van held the “Sharp Family Singers” – a single mother and seven of her of ten kids, who had driven 1,500 miles from Kansas in a blue van with “Spirit Driven” in big letters on the sides, to serenade the occupiers at the wildlife refuge with bluegrass gospel songs, just as they had done two years prior for Cliven Bundy’s insurrection in Nevada.

Finicum was next, driving a truck packed with video gear and speakers for the big show, along with four occupiers, including Ryan Bundy. Others, including Ammon Bundy, followed in a Jeep. They left the refuge mid-afternoon for the 100-mile trip and kept their vehicles spaced out for what they imagined was sensible security.

The lead van apparently drove right past the police, and the singing brood went on to sing their songs of Jesus and America to those gathered in John Day. But back on the deserted highway, police vehicles with flashing red lights pulled up behind the truck and the Jeep. Finicum reluctantly stopped in the middle of the highway. His front-seat passenger got out and surrendered. Finicum then told his other passengers to get down and he floored it.

At full speed, they drove right into a well-planned law enforcement roadblock down the road. Finicum swerved left, got stuck in the snow bank, jumped out of the car, and was shot and killed – reaching twice (or pretending to reach) for his gun. The FBI’s overhead video proves he was executed by the police, claim some of Bundy’s followers.

Of course it shows no such thing. Shawna Cox (59), a mother of 13 from Utah, was in the truck's back seat. She described the scene to The Oregonian, “[Finicum’s] running away from the vehicle, screaming, ‘Shoot me, shoot me, shoot me.’”

No one should be surprised that Finicum got himself killed on purpose.

Finicum was a neighbor of Cliven Bundy and shared his Mormon religion and radical politics. He wrote a novel entitled Only by Blood and Suffering: Regaining Lost Freedom, the story of one family’s struggles to “survive in the face of devastating end-times chaos.”

On just the fourth night into the wildlife refuge occupation, Finicum sat in the snowy dark in a rocking chair, guarding the refuge's entrance road, covered in a blanket and blue tarp, a rifle on his lap. He told an NBC reporter, “They’re not just going to come with a guy holding a rifle and put cuffs on him.”

Like his Mormon forebears who were seeking the New Zion and just wanted the federal government to leave them alone, Finicum said of federal law enforcers, “I hope that they go home.”

When the reporter told him bluntly that he was obviously violating the law and an arrest warrant was inevitable, Finicum warned that he would never be taken alive:

“I have been raised in the country all my life. I love dearly to feel the wind on my face. To see the sunrise. To see the moon in the night. I have no intention of spending any of my days in a concrete box.”

Three weeks later, in a split-second decision in a snowbank by the side of the highway, Finicum made good on his promise. The grandfather and father of eleven died one day before his 55^th birthday.

Finicum, no doubt, held secret hopes of being a martyr to his anti-government cause. Besides, as a Mormon he could expect a pretty good package of after-life benefits. Not 72 virgins, but a pretty nice setup, nonetheless, depending on which of Mormonism’s three heavens he ended up in. Compare that to Finicum’s only other option – a “concrete box.”

His funeral back in Utah drew a huge crowd. Events for the “LaVoy Finicum’s Last Stand for Freedom” included a memorial horse ride and benefit concert. He was buried in a pine box.

Blame the Mormons:

There is a line running from Finicum’s death and the Bundys’ takeover of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge straight back to Joseph Smith’s 19^th century hallucinogenic visions and his new religion’s founding principles. As Ryan Bundy said, Mormonism was “the biggest part” of their motivation.

Nevertheless, religion is not the only factor involved in the conflict. The Bundys’ self-serving interpretation of their Mormon faith also coincides with a widespread animosity across the rural West toward government rules and regulations – an attitude not necessarily linked to religious beliefs. Not all of Bundys’ supporters are Mormons.

One unusual sympathizer is the Oregon sheriff of Grant County, just north of Harney County, Glenn Palmer. He’s big with the right-wing “Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association." (See High Country News’ Feb. 2 report, “The Rise of the Sagebrush Sheriffs: How rural ‘constitutional’ peace officers are joining the war against the feds.”)

It's no wonder the militants thought they were untouchable when they headed up to Grant County in search of more public support. They were convinced that Sheriff Palmer would protect them. Palmer has repeatedly insisted that under the U.S. Constitution, the federal government has no law enforcement authority in his county. He met twice with the refuge militants, but refused to divulge what they discussed. On that fateful day when Finicum committed suicide by cop, Palmer was scheduled to speak at the militant’s community meeting in John Day.

I wonder if Sheriff Palmer feels any guilt over Finicum’s death. After all, but for his encouragement, tacit or otherwise, it’s doubtful the militant’s convoy would have made themselves sitting ducks to be ambushed by the FBI and Oregon State Police on that deserted highway.

Not all Mormons support the Bundys. Many find them an embarrassment. One Mormon blogger wrote, “Ammon Bundy does not represent my religion… I cringe every time I have to read articles linking his misguided messiah complex to my Mormon faith.”

The peculiar religious basis for the Bundys’ armed showdowns with the federal government is rooted in a strain of Mormonism founded after World War II by prominent right-wing Mormon leaders, such as President Eisenhower’s Secretary of Agriculture. They claimed to promote ideals of maximum individual liberty, free of (non-Mormon) governmental interference. It’s a fringe wing of modern Mormonism.

Ammon Bundy perfectly echoed its libertarian theology when he declared his intentions for the Harney County occupation:

“While we’re here, what we’re going to be doing is freeing these lands up, getting the ranchers back to ranching, getting the miners back to mining, getting the loggers back to logging, where they can do it under the protection of the people – and not be afraid of this tyranny that has been upon them.”

Despite official denouncement by the Mormon Church of the Bundys’ actions in Oregon, its sanctimony rings hollow. The church has a history of persecution, victimization, violence, secrecy and antipathy towards the federal government. Its members are readying for the Last Days, certain they have a manifest destiny to fulfill. Mormonism’s self-righteous theology has propelled a few, like the Bundys, to take armed leadership roles in the anti-government movement always simmering in the West.

The Bundys might have found some other religion to justify their actions, had Joseph Smith never concocted his fantasy revelations way back when. But the fact is, the Mormon religion owns the Bundys. They share the same DNA. These militant extremists were created in the image of their religion’s founders. That’s why I say about the troubles in Harney County – blame the Mormons.

~ ~ ~

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