The Hate of Mr Love

From William Norman Grigg:

Dave Bundy was working at his home in Delta, Utah, when a caravan of at least 20 federal vehicles invaded his property last March. The vehicles decanted a platoon of FBI personnel, some of them clad in a battle dress and carrying assault weapons. In what must have been a disappointment to them, Bundy – who wasn’t armed – surrendered without offering the Feds a pretext to dispose of him as they had LaVoy Finicum a few weeks earlier.

Bundy had been indicted on federal conspiracy charges for his role in de-escalating the standoff between his family and the BLM in Bunkerville, Nevada in April 2014. At that time, too, Bundy had not been carrying a gun. He was armed only with his determination to prevent bloodshed as he conducted shuttle diplomacy between the Bundys and their supporters, on the one hand, and the Feds who had stolen the Bundy family’s cattle. His conduct earned the appreciation of then-Clark County Undersheriff Joseph Lombardo, who negotiated with him.

Several days earlier, Bundy had been beaten bloody by the BLM’s khaki-clad chekists while he was standing at the side of a road video-recording their confiscation of his father’s cattle. After suffering that criminal assault he was abducted by the BLM and detained for a night on a spurious charge of obstruction, which was dismissed the following day.

Dave Bundy’s role at Bunkerville was that of a peacemaker. He is now in jail awaiting trial on charges that could result in an 80-year prison term. Where Bundy is a peacemaker, Mike Love, the BLM Special Agent in Charge of the Bunkerville operation, is a bloody-handed psychopath whose appetite for escalation has made him notorious even among his comrades. His operation in Bunkerville was a humiliating failure – which is why the Regime, in utterly predictable fashion, has placed Love in charge of the BLM’s newly minted, nation-wide Security and Intelligence division.

This promotion is an unambiguous display of arrogant hostility toward residents of rural lands in the west – and toward sheriffs and other local officials in Utah and Nevada who have dealt with Love in recent years. Love’s Brownshirts have routinely ignored jurisdictional limits in southern Utah, detaining – which is to say, abducting – local citizens without probable cause, intimidating tourists, and harassing ranchers.

In 2012 the Utah state legislature enacted a measure forbidding BLM cadres from pretending to enforce state and local laws – a tactic often used to justify the agency’s abusive behavior – and imposing criminal penalties for “impersonating an officer” when BLM personnel exceeded their roles as defined in federal statutes. Love retaliated by cancelling BLM contracts with five counties that pay sheriffs for the privilege of patrolling land claimed by the Feds. This was a gratuitous gesture of unfiltered contempt: By the time the contracts were annulled, a federal judge had issued an injunction against the bill, prompting the legislature to repeal it.

Love’s federal supremacy uber alles mindset nearly precipitated a slaughter at Bunkerville, an outcome that would not have surprised former BLM official, Steve Martin. In late 2012, Martin was present at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia, New Mexicowhen Love giddily outlined the rustling operation planned for Bunkerville. Martin later told the High Country News that Love’s plan was “missing a key ingredient: cooperation with the county sheriff.”

Then-Sheriff Doug Gillespie didn’t intervene in the matter until well into the standoff.  Love’s mismanagement of the affair and misreading of the tactical situation – at one point, he placed the armored mouth-breathers under his command in a “kill zone” – would have resulted in avoidable deaths were it not, in large measure, for the diplomatic efforts of Dave Bundy.

So, naturally, Bundy is now behind bars awaiting a trial at which Love will be a star prosecution witness. Love’s promotion will be used to fortify whatever credibility he might possess in the eyes of the jury. The Feds will be very careful to foreclose inquiries into Love’s background and employment history.

Read the whole article here.