By Nathan Barton

I spend a fair amount of time in the Four Corners, one of the areas in the Fifty States most heavily impacted by the FedGov.  Here in Colorado, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are multiple national parks, national forests, vast areas under the control of the Bureau of Land Management, US Forest Service, various other federal agencies, and multiple AmerInd nations on their Federal reservations.

To put it bluntly, the area is a vast network of colonies – huge areas directly under federal control, with isolated pockets of communities that are part of various states or AmerInd nations, with various kinds of local government, but always very much aware of the precarious position they find themselves in, when a single tap on a keyboard by a distant bureaucrat or political appointee (or elected official) in far-off Denver, SLC, Phoenix, Santa Fe, or DC, can change daily life in drastic and usually negative ways.

That makes media lies about many things even more galling. Like the nasty colonial dictat that the Imperial capital (DC) uses.  The Antiquities Act [https://www.nps.gov/history/local-law/anti1906.htm] of 1906 was used by Clinton to create the Canyons of the Ancients and Chimney Rock National Monuments.  Recently (in his last days in power… for now), Obummer used it to create the Bear’s Ears and Gold Hill National Monuments, in the deserts of the American West.  Like the many lies found in this recent news article, from The Guardian, and that which appears in dozens of media outlets promoting and “protecting” the theft of places like the Bear’s Ears and Gold Hill, and Canyons of the Ancients and dozens of other places.

Unfortunately, the alternative media (whether conservative or liberal or libertarian) all too often lies as well.  I’ve touched on this matter previously, but it is very important to understand in order to fight the system.  These situations are made worse by the lies published by both the enemies and supporters of such things.

Some of the lies?

The land converted to “greater preservation” is stolen from private owners. This is most definitely not the case: it is existing public land (almost always under BLM (Bureau of Land Management, not Black Lives Matter!) administration, which is designated by imperial decree (executive order).  There HAVE been times when actual private land was stolen (excuse me, “taken by eminent domain and paid fair-market price”).  But that is usually not the case in these initial actions; although it does happen once the designation is made.  Yet the conservative, anti-government types constantly give the impression that all of this is privately-owned land being taken by the government. However, some of that land now in the National Monument was once proved-up homesteaded land of ranchers in the area in the 1870s and 1880s, in places like Beef Basin and Dark Canyon. It was abandoned or seized for failure to pay taxes many decades ago, and was “owned” by the FedGov before the National Monument was declared.

The people fighting Bear’s Ears want to steal land from the local tribes (Navajo and Ute), and the presidential proclamation was essential to protecting the land of those AmerInd nations. NONE of the land now incorporated into the National Monument has been Indian land for at least 120+ years: the FedGov stole it from the Ute (and maybe Navajo) people a long time ago.  And the designation means as many restrictions and prohibitions on use of the “common land” by enrolled tribal members as on any other American.

The designation of the National Monument was necessary to protect the land and its resources from being exploited by the earth-rapers and the agri-business interests. Not the actual words used but the sentiment is there: the lie that ,without this imperial decree, anyone (or any part of Big Business) could have come and mined everything, grazed cattle on it, or planted gene-modified crops on it, destroying the sacred earth and the environment in their greed.  That is, of course, bogus garbage: the BLM and USFS land incorporated into the National Monument was already protected from such things by exactly the same bureaucrats that are now running it as a National Monument.  It is just that they have more power to prohibit anything at all from being done on the land: less hunting, less hiking, less mountain biking, less four-wheeling, less camping, less fishing (not that there are a lot of trout streams there), and no chance even for the most politically-correct and environmentally-sensitive mining, ag use, or most other commercial uses.

The communities like Moab, Blanding Monticello, Blunt, and even tribal communities like White Mesa and Montezuma Creek and Aneth have very large parts of their area which are government owned.  Since huge chunks of those lands are now “preserved for future generations” by preventing the present generation from using them for much of anything, these communities are big-time negatively impacted economically, socially, and culturally.  They are indeed treated like colonies.

Which brings me to my last point. The media (and government) lies about all the wonderful economic and social benefits that the new National Monuments will bring in their wake.  “Preserve it and they will come.” Again totally bughouse nuts crazy and bogus.  Past designations, like the Canyon of the Ancients National Monument just across the stateline from Utah or the more recent Chimney Rock National Monument a hundred miles east also were done with great shouts of acclamation about how the tourists would swarm more than ever, and fat government contracts to build more viewpoints and visitors centers, would boost local economies and more than make up for losses in oil and gas revenues, timber and cattle and sheep sales, and increased costs for sand and gravel, concrete, and such.

It didn’t happen then, and it is very unlikely that it will happen now.  You can look at the empty storefronts and poor house prices and take-home wages in places like Dove Creek and Monticello and Arboles to see what kind of economic impact results. Either nothing or negative.  The tourists will continue to go to Arches and Canyonlands and Mesa Verde National Parks, and even places like Monument Valley (on the Navajo Rez) and Sand Flats recreation area (near Moab).  But they might spend an extra 15 or 20 minutes, on average, oohing and awing over Bear’s Ears, just as they have done for close to two decades with Clinton’s Canyon of the Ancients.  While colonial administrators – whoops, “government bureaucrats” – will interfere more and more with economic activities even in the buffer zones around these new preserves, to say nothing of the poor enclaves of private land now more firmly than ever trapped in a colonial regime.

And the media, of course, will continue to lie and lie and lie.