In God We Trust

The Battle of Bunker Hill Reincarnated—The Battle of Bunkerville, Nevada

 

By Dr. Donald W. Hendon
DonaldHendon.com

One year ago, on April 12, 2014, the federal government’s Bureau of Land Management sent hundreds of armed men, including SWAT teams and snipers, to Bunkerville, Nevada, home of rancher Cliven Bundy and his large family. (Bunkerville is 80 miles from Las Vegas.) The BLM went there to barricade roads, seal off Bundy’s property, and steal all of his cattle—600 of them. They said they were doing this because he hadn’t paid fees to the BLM for several years. The fees were to allow his cattle to graze on federal land. (The feds own 86 percent of all land in Nevada.)

Nevada’s Democratic senator, multi-millionaire Harry Reid (who I call “Dirty Harry” in my Fractured Fairy Tales, which you’ve read over the years here on StupidFrogs.org) pressured the BLM to do this. He claimed that Bundy’s cattle are endangering a weird-looking turtle called the desert tortoise. The turtle bears a startling resemblance to Harry himself. So Dirty Harry got the BLM to change the boundaries of the turtle protection area. The new boundaries included Bundy’s grazing area!  But Reid’s real reason was big bucks in kickbacks to him and his son Rory Reid from a Chinese company, ENN Energy Group.. 

When Ridiculous Rory was chairman of the Clark County Commission (2003-2011), he sold 9,000 acres of county land to ENN at a rock-bottom price—way, way below market area. Why did Rory sell all that land to ENN? So it could build a $5 billion wind and solar power plant—right in the middle of Bundy’s grazing area!

Rory used his big-bucks kickback to run against Republican Brian Sandoval for governor in 2012. Rory lost big-time, thank goodness. Who knows what Dirty Harry did with his kickback! Maybe yet another facelift. But he won’t get any more kickbacks from his good buddy, Wang Yusuo, a solar billionaire from the People’s Republic of China, Wang gave up and pulled the plug on the Dry Lake Solar Energy Zone. I’ve heard rumors that Dirty Harry’s January 1, 2015, “accident” wasn’t caused by his faulty exercise machine. Rumor 1: Wang had him beat up. Rumor 2: Vegas mobsters beat him up because he made a “disrespectful” comment about them. Rumor 3: Dirty Harry’s younger brother, Larry Joe, a 73-year old alcoholic, beat him up at a family get-together, just for the hell of it. 

But the story’s just beginning. The BLM goons, all heavily armed, showed up on April 12, 2014, to seize Bundy’s cattle. They corralled 400 of the 600. They were going to arrest Bundy, too. But they didn’t. Why not? Because they were met by several thousand Bundy supporters, many of them armed. About half were from southern Nevada. Others came from Wyoming, Oregon, California, New Mexico, Arizona, Idaho—and even Florida and Virginia. I know. I was there to support Bundy—I live only 3 miles away from him, in Mesquite, Nevada. Nearby Interstate 15 was blocked by around 30 big-ass white vans, full of BLM goons—and by Bundy’s supporters.

The confrontation started quickly. Cliven’s sister, Margaret, was thrown to the ground. His son, Ammon, was tased with 50,000 volts. Things were getting out of hand, and so timid Doug Gillespie, the Clark County sheriff, finally found the guts to stop the confrontation before a lot of people were killed. He had the legal authority to stop the BLM from closing off roads in Clark County and to stop them from threatening citizens with armed force.

So Gillespie got on a makeshift platform with Bundy on the banks of the Virgin River. He ordered the BLM to back off. He tried to save face by saying the BLM lied to him about having a place to take Bundy’s cattle. I don’t know which was the biggest liar—Gillespie or the BLM. Anyway, the crowd cheered as the BLM retreated in disgrace, with their tails between their legs. 

Since April 12, 2014, around 5 to 10 RVs have been camped at the entrance to the Bundy ranch—where the confrontation took place. They are there in case the BLM comes back. I’ve talked with them several times during the last year, and they are very dedicated to the cause.

Well, a year has passed since the Battle of Bunkerville. History will tell us whether Bunkerville will be as important as the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought in Boston on June 17, 1775. I’m willing to bet it will be included in American history books for grade-school, high school, and college students read. And I’m proud to have been there.

To commemorate the 2014 Battle of Bunkerville, the Bundy family held a three-day event this past weekend. I was there all three days—April 10, 11, and 12. Great barbeque, lots of inspiring speeches, books and T-shirts for sale. And a church service on Sunday April 12, the one-year anniversary of the event. I enjoyed myself a lot. And I sold many copies of my 2014 book, Fractured Fairy Tales: Political Monkey Business. It includes a story about what happened in Bunkerville last year. It’s called “The Miracle of the Battle of Bunkerville—the Ghosts of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan to the Rescue.” In my story, Wayne and Reagan, looked down from Heaven and saw what was happening in Bunkerville one year ago. They came down to earth and used their heavenly powers to make the BLM goons think they were being attacked by demons with pitchforks. And so the BLM retreated, and everybody lived happily ever after—except for Dirty Harry and his buddy, Neil Kornze, head of the BLM.

Fractured Fairy Tales contains 34 other short political satires. Get it at Amazon or at Barnes and Noble.

Copyright (c) 2015 by Dr. Donald Wayne Hendon


Dr. Donald Wayne Hendon is a consultant, speaker, trainer, and author of 14 books, including The Way of the Warrior in Business, Guerrilla Deal-Making (with Jay Conrad Levinson) and 365 Powerful Ways to Influence. Jay Levinson recently passed away. He specifically chose Don to be his final co-author—the person most qualified to  carry the torch of guerrilla marketing into the 21st century. Deal-Making contains the 100 most powerful tactics from 365 Powerful Ways—along with 400 winning countermeasures. There are 121 aggressive tactics, 92 defensive ones, 24 cooperative ones, and 16 submissive ones to get what you want from other people. Plus 81 dirty tricks to watch out for and 31 tactics to prepare you for your interaction with them. Download Chapter 1, free of charge, at www.DonaldHendon.com. Play Don’s free online Negotiation Poker game by going to GuerrillaDon.com. Apps will soon be available.