Warren Bonesteel: An astute and distrurbing analysis

Tonight’s guest commentary is a little bit different than the guest commentaries of the past. Tonight I offer one written by someone who is not a regular reader at this site. I admittedly have some from you folks that have submitted them. I began working on them in earnest this week in an effort to have one ready. However, Mrs. Weapon has kept me busy. I first received an email from this author several months ago. He offered his writing as thinking material for me and I remember that it had an immediate impact. It was well written, informative, and caused the reader to perform some introspection. He has written many different articles or “open letters” in the past, and I intend to offer some of his other work in the near future. I offer tonight’s article because I felt that it was a very relevant piece considering some of the discussions that we have been having lately. I hope that you will enjoy what he has to say….

Tonight’s guest author is Warren “Bones” Bonesteel. Warren is a published author, an e-zine-columnist ‘on sabbatical,’ and has written articles for newspapers and magazines. After his Marine Corps career, he spent two years as a construction worker. He later started, operated and sold a successful formal gardening business. He and his wife of seventeen years currently reside in the Black Hills of South Dakota. Warren sent me this piece in an email in June. After corresponding, he provided me with several other extremely interesting articles. I am impressed with the level of research and thought that go into his articles. He doesn’t come to his conclusions easily. They are the result of much work. I hope that you will enjoy this first offering. I have contacted Warren to let him know that the article is running this evening. I am sure that should he find time, he will pop in and join the conversation.

The Rise of Extremism
by Warren “Bones” Bonesteel

The true wonder is…

The rhetorical and political attacks on right-wing ‘extremists’ by left-wing ’extremist’ politicians, activists, media outlets and bloggers are creating the environments for the very things they fear. The same is true with the right’s rhetorical and political attacks on the left. If both sides don’t stop and take a deep breath and think about the consequences of their own words and deeds and examine the premises of their own ideology, open violence and civil war are inevitable.

The Tiller murder and the demonization of more than a hundred million Americans because of it? The eco-terrorist’s destruction of the environment and private property in the name of protecting the environment? (FBI ten most wanted list.) The RNC Welcoming Committee? ReCreate 68? The stalking and ‘mobbing’ of ideological opponents by right-wing and left-wing ’extremists’? The violent and deadly Muslim attacks on innocent Americans? The miltarization of civilian police departments, with thousands of SWAT teams, ‘accidentally’ killing more than three hundred innocent Americans in their own homes, each and every year? All of that – and more – is only the beginning of the violence that we will see and experience for ourselves.

An extreme pov? No. It is historically inevitable. America is not immune from history. The world is not a nice, quiet, middle-class suburb or a gated community. Violence is always the result when opposing ideologies indulge in such rhetorical and political attacks upon one another as are seen in today’s American political and social landscape. Historically, when the government begins to exert control over the private lives of its citizens? When the civilian police forces become militarized? Historically, when opposition parties begin to actively and openly dehumanize and demonize their ideological opponents, as is now occurring in America? Such things are always a prelude to violence and to civil war.

The wonder isn’t that America will experience another civil war or possibly break up into individual nation-states. The true wonder, historically, is that America has held together as long as it has. Both of the major political ideologies in America will bear full and complete responsibility for the death and destruction that is now almost inevitable. The poor and inept leadership by members of the political, social and intellectual leadership in America has led us all to this point in history.

Ideology: Eyes to the left or eyes to the right.

You complain about the economy and about big government spending… but you vigorously defend your own debt and credit-driven lifestyles. You quite correctly accuse your ideological opponents of corruption, but violently defend your own. You complain when another ideology legislates a law that restricts your own freedom, but you vigorously pursue laws which restrict the freedoms of others. Thus, you now live in a society where anything not approved by the government is a crime – and there is very little that the government approves. Then, you wonder why America has the highest incarceration rate of any nation on earth. Are Americans so evil that we must lock them all up? Or have we imprisoned nearly two million people just because you don’t approve of them? The majority of American ‘criminals’ who are imprisoned have performed no violent crime nor have they committed fraud or interfered in the freedoms of others.

You think you are free…you’ve been told that you are free. …but you cannot make a move without some form of government approval; paying a tax or a fee or getting a license or a permit. Every move you make is regulated by the government. The very air you breath is now being taxed.

But, in the midst of your Keynesian-consumerist driven and government-controlled lifestyles, you think that you are free…and you think that you are just…and you think that you are patriotic, freedom-loving fools…and you believe that anyone who disagrees with you is an unpatriotic ’extremist.’

Whose ‘eye’ is to blame?

As Americans have continued to elect and re-elect such inept and corrupt leaders as we now have in Washington and in state legislatures around the nation, we each bear responsibility for the inevitable result of such leadership. If we wish to place the blame for the current state of affairs on anyone, we need only look in the mirror and reflect upon the eyes that we see.

Disclosure: Although I registered as a Republican for a local election in 2004, I am actually a rare breed these days. I’m a ‘Jeffersonian Democrat.’ A true Classical Liberal. Of course, from the pov of our government, that makes me an enemy of the state. From the pov of the political right, I’m a left-wing liberal. From the pov of the left, I’m a right-wing extremist. The Cassandra Effect does apply, here. You see, your own hubris and ideologies have blinded you. Most of you believe, in complete denial of all of the facts and against all of the evidence of mankind’s recorded history, that ‘this sort of thing just can’t happen in America.’

I’ve got news for you.

That paradigm is about to crash and burn around your ears.

(NOTE: The enclosed links and attachments provide the ‘bibliography’ and ’footnotes’ for this commentary and include peer-reviewed authors and materials as well as government websites and resources. Approximately 30 pages of references with 90 pages in total.)

Warren “Bones” Bonesteel
Author and Researcher
Sgt USMC 1976-1983