Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Three Beautiful Things 01-24-2023: Clearing Garage Clutter, Donating to St. Vincent de Paul, Moving Deeper into *Bundyville*

1. It helps clear my head as well as the garage when I load up the Sube with cardboard and empty cans, newspapers, and plastic jugs and blast up to the Transfer Station to recycle them.  The pleasure I feel from keeping the garage as uncluttered as possible is akin to the pleasure I experience when I start the day with a glass of orange juice when I take my medicine followed by two or three mugs of half coffee and half heated up milk. 

2. Debbie purchased a rug a couple years ago to use upstairs, but it turned out she didn't like it. I took it out of the basement over the weekend, ready to put it down in the Vizio room. The rug was too big. Today, I further cleared my head and felt more pleasure when I dropped off the rug as a donation to St. Vincent de Paul. 

3. I needed a clear head and some simple pleasures today as a balance to the time I spent listening to more of Leah Sottile's podcast, Bundyville. Sottile strikes me as a courageous, tireless reporter. She and her producer, Ryan Haas, drove into a remote Arizona ghost town known as Bundyville to gain a deeper understanding of the Bundy family. Sottile and Haas also persuaded Ryan and Cliven Bundy to host them at the Bundy ranch and they gave Sottile and Haas a three hour interview. Sottile and Haas also reached militia stalwart William Keebler, who was deeply involved in both of the Bundy-led standoffs at Bunkerville and at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, and they interviewed him for three hours at a Utah truck stop Denny's restaurant. 

I have a lot of listening still to do. I'm only two episodes into Season 2.

I've drawn one conclusion, for sure. Sottile must be easy to talk to. The Bundys, William Keebler, and other people involved in the nationwide revolt against the federal government and its agencies talked openly with Sottile about how they understand the US Constitution (and for some, especially the Bundys, its relationship to being members of the LDS church), how they justify acts of violence -- whether causing bloodshed or property damage -- what they see needing to be drastically changed in the USA, and to what extremes they are willing to go to in order to bring this change about. Most, if not all, of what they want requires transforming the USA into a decentralized and largely ungoverned country, one they imagine it once was at some time in the past. 

These ideas and this vision coupled with being willing to do whatever it takes to make this revolution happen has a powerful hold on the people who see things this way. 


No comments: