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Trailing Murphy cattle across the desert. The Paisley Caves are found in the hillock above and left of the cows. Photo by Sam Pyke/The Len Babb Movie Project
“Men…go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.”
–Charles Mackay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
Poised, as it seems we are, on the edge of a dark well with no visible bottom, I thought it might be fun to look back into my daybook and see what I was thinking about a year ago today. On April 20, 2020, I wrote:
“It appears the bodies are stacking up but who really knows. Most big cities long ago ran out of morgue space. LA has been piling up its daily haul of bodies in parking lots for years, so the refrigerator trucks don’t mean that much. Hyperbole rules the day. Nobody was prepared for this event – no one could have been — and much of the hand-wringing and finger-pointing and carpet-chewing reeks of pure power politics. For now, it seems, my best and highest purpose is to get the garden planted. Self-sufficiency has always been the road to freedom, which is a little bell in my head that doesn’t stop ringing. For instance: there is a robin – first one I’ve seen this year – sitting on a ponderosa limb just outside the window, staring at me and tilting his head back and forth. He pays his own debts, never bothers anybody, and lives to fly. And anyway I have other problems. I’m still, years later, grieving the death of Sam Shepard, still my intellectual and artistic North Star, who managed to drag himself through the mine fields of duplicity, bedded Jessica Lange for an impressive number of years, and who had a lifelong weakness for tight paragraphs, quirky pals, and quarter horses with some color.”
It appears that I was then, as I remain, more concerned about the machinations of mass fear and the sparks thrown off by that machine than I was the plague. That stance appears even more valid over time given a 99% survival rate from infections and the massive – and likely permanent — new intrusions of government into daily life. Businesses here – indeed our entire small town – have been punched very hard in the face by the seesawing decrees of our governor and her step-and-fetch-it assembly, who collectively mistake any movement whatsoever for effective action. They are like McClellan, endlessly building up the Army of the Potomac, feinting this way and that, but never quite attacking a meaningful center of gravity. Lincoln, who the Woke Pharisees of Media and Academia have now decreed an abominable racist, at least got fed up and eventually fired him. But here in small town Oregon the net result has been, for the second year in a row, a seemingly endless and bumbling mediocrity and the cancellation of every important event hosted by our town – events which bring “sticky dollars” into a community that severely needs them.
And who knew then that we would enjoy not only a strange new disease of dubious origin, but also live long enough to enjoy a summer stuffed to overflowing with an utterly embarrassing presidential campaign, the lionizing of a bizarre celebrity physician named Fauci (I have yet to be convinced it is ever, historically speaking, a good idea to have medical doctors anywhere near the seats of government power) routine and sustained rioting, bizarre public-square boot-kissing rituals, and a kind of Jonestown “come to me my babies” season of frenzied apocalyptic poetry readings and woke punch-drinking.

Lunch on the trail. Tyler Mecham and Brady Murphy. Murphy Ranch, Paisley, Oregon. Photo: Craig Rullman/The Len Babb Movie Project
To top it off, of course, we had George Floyd, whatever it was that happened at the Capitol riot, and to complete the circle we now have the show trials of Derek Chauvin and Chewbacca Guy, or whatever his name is. Also, I read yesterday that somebody’s government funded statistics show more women than ever are shaving their faces, and also that: “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” That alarming bit of news came from somebody called Devan Cole over at that pillar of media integrity known as CNN, a network that has become the functional equivalent of TASS or PRAVDA.
Fortunately, I’ve been able to spend most of my time this last year unmasked and unashamed, chasing cows and filming The Len Babb Movie Project. We’ve managed to visit seven states and log hours of film we will soon start editing into a rough cut of the film. That work has created great new friendships, a deeper understanding of my own convictions, and a salve for the slings and arrows of daily life in a nation apparently hell-bent on a life of self-mutilation.
In our travels it has been interesting to observe the various degrees to which anyone was obsessed with putting a diaper on their face. The best was Idaho, where people understood the risks and chose freedom anyway. It was possible to enter a restaurant, sit at the bar, and eat a sandwich. The worst was probably the Stockmen’s Casino in Elko, where it was fine to sit at the bar but between sips one was required to fandango the diaper around in a kind of ritualistic face-palming. One could get away with slinging the diaper under the chin for two rapid-fire sips from a Jack and Coke, but there was the distinct feel of being on the clock and suspicious eyes were everywhere. Somewhere in the security office, no doubt, an obese but well-meaning flunky on his fourth pack of Marlboro Reds was eyeballing the monitors and taking notes on the potential offenders below.
Speaking of mall cops, it’s interesting to see 150,000 Russians massed on the borders of Ukraine. The Russians, of course, have been using the old “issue them a passport” play since their last foray into the invasion playoffs which was in Georgia, in 2008. I had a chance to embed with some Georgian soldiers in Germany a few years ago, and learned to admire their pluck and determination in the face of existential threats. But the playbook has been dusted off and I feel confident that should the Russians invade nobody will do much. Europe is defended by mall cops and elementary school principles and has no warrior culture left to speak of, so they won’t do much, and Joe Biden – despite his celebrated defeat of Corn Pop at the Scranton lists, won’t do anything either. He might offer some anti-tank missiles in an effort to bog things down, but if you are a shopkeeper in Ukraine you are essentially consigned to hell.
And if I were Chairman Xi I would certainly just go ahead and take Taiwan, which nobody will do anything about either. Now that the Hong Kong Police have adopted the goose-step anything is possible, and one can be fairly certain the US military, which has a shortage of everything except signed copies of White Fragility, will not fare well against a peer competitor whose focus remains on actual warfighting and geo-strategic planning.

In off the desert. Murphy Ranch, Paisley, Oregon. l to r: Tyler Mecham, Brady Murphy, Mark Lally, Craig Rullman, Peanut Babb, Richard, Martin Murphy. Photo: Sam Pyke/The Len Babb Movie Project
All of this sounds much more dour than I actually am. Mostly I feel pretty good about the state of things given the longer history of the world. We’ve never been guaranteed health, peace, or freedom, after all. Also, it’s spring again and the apple trees are budding, though I’m certain we are in for another great round of rioting, looting, and burning, and another year or two of virus terrors and night sweats and possibly some checkpoints where 18 year-old National Guardsmen demand to see your vaccine passport and any other papers required to travel. Although, of course, they won’t be demanding any of that from up to 1 million migrants expected to arrive at our borders by the end of the season.
It’s true that fear is contagious, and that men go mad in herds. And I think it’s also true that they recover at their own pace. The battles of yore were usually brief and hyper-violent events where after a few minutes one side broke and ran, consumed with terror. And that’s when the slaughter began as they were driven down and riven through. It will be interesting to see how long our nation can push back against totalitarian tendencies — inside and outside of our borders — before the grand old American line finally breaks and runs.
In the meantime, a few weeks ago I went down to Paisley to help some friends push cattle onto the desert. I took old Remi with me. He’s come a long way since I bought him at six days old. He’s up in the bridle now — though we go up and down — and I can rope off of him. That day we made a roughly twenty mile round trip, pushing 350 head about nine miles out onto the desert to a watering hole called Dead Cow Tank. It was a beautiful early spring morning, hardly any wind, not too cold. I was so buoyed by Remi, how far he’s come and how far we have left to go together, that I might have just stopped and cried for sheer joy out in that rolling ocean of sagebrush. But we were riding just beneath the Paisley Caves, the oldest known human habitation in North America, and somehow it just felt better to ride on with an honoring smile, the kind of smile so good and so true that your face gets tired, in gratitude for so much that is still so good.
John Willemsma says
Perfect
Good stuff for the mind to ponder
Thanks for sharing
Thank you John. You are a master craftsman, an important link in the legacy of American craftsmanship, and your opinion means a lot to me. I am grateful to have your acquaintance. Stay in the fight, my friend.
John Willemsma says
Perfect
Well said … common sense lives on
Gregory Walker says
“A republic, if you can keep it.”
Our nation has always been a daily grand experiment rooted in its Constitution.
This July 4th, the United States of America will be 245 years old. We are an exceedingly young nation when compared to so many others around the globe and yet we have accomplished more of merit, value, and consideration than near any other country of such a youthful age.
We have fought against domestic enemies, supported by a jealous empire, from the start of our rebellion and the patriots paid a dear price for doing so.
“According to one recent estimate, of the approximately 200,000 Americans who bore arms against the Crown between 1775 and 1783, at least 18,200 were taken; and this figure represents only men wearing the uniform of the Continental forces or serving in one of the state militias. It does not include the thousands of seamen captured from the privateers that preyed on British shipping up and down the coast. Nor does it reflect the untold numbers of civilians rounded up for joining revolutionary committees or speaking out against the Crown. Taken all together, between 24,800 and 32,000 patriots probably fell into British hands during the Revolutionary War. Like Hanford, the great majority of them were held in and around New York City, under conditions so atrocious that as many as 18,000 (almost 60 percent) perished—or two and a half times the 6,800 thought to have fallen in battle. More Americans gave their lives for independence in New York than anywhere else in the country.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it
In our youth as a nation, we have already fought wars within our borders against external foes as well against each other. Pundits have decried our impending fall time and time again only to be proven in error. In each case Americans have rallied under the system of government established by our Founding Fathers and we have emerged a bit stronger, a bit wiser, and a bit older.
I have no doubt we, as a nation, are in the process of doing so again.
“My brave fellows, you have done all I asked you to do, and more than can be reasonably expected; but your country is at stake, your wives, your houses and all that you hold dear. You have worn yourselves out with fatigues and hardships, but we know not how to spare you. If you will consent to stay one month longer, you will render that service to the cause of liberty, and to your country, which you probably can never do under any other circumstances.”
WASHINGTON, ENCOURAGING HIS MEN TO RE-ENLIST IN THE ARMY | TUESDAY, DECEMBER 31, 1776
Each of us selects his or her own way of “staying one month longer”. In doing so we accept the fatigue, the hardships, and the discipline required to go the extra mile and fight the good fight to its conclusion.
The motto of the Special Operations Association (SOA) is this. “To those who have fought for it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know.” Today, there are more Americans amongst us who have fought for freedom around the world than at any other time in our brief history as a world power. And more who after their service to the nation in uniform are now fighting for our freedom today. They — we — come from all walks of life and professions. Our continued service is sometimes brash and loud. And at other times so quiet as to go unnoticed.
The Republic, our Republic, is always a hair’s breadth away from being lost. This is what makes the United States of America so unique, so revolutionary, so impossible to predict the future of.
“If there is a lesson in all of this it is that our Constitution is neither a self-actuating nor a self-correcting document. It requires the constant attention and devotion of all citizens. There is a story, often told, that upon exiting the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates had created. His answer was: “A republic, if you can keep it.” The brevity of that response should not cause us to under-value its essential meaning: democratic republics are not merely founded upon the consent of the people, they are also absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people for their continued good health.”
https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/historical-documents/perspectives-on-the-constitution-a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it
To paraphrase Marine turned actor Steve McQueen — “I would rather wake up anywhere in America than in any other country on earth.”
We, as a nation, will endure. It is not in us to do otherwise.
All of those things are wonderful but I don’t share your optimism on that account. I see more than half of the nation that believes truths quite different than those of our founders. And they are now in charge with zero pushback. None. Anywhere. A house divided will not stand, and the reasoned arguments no longer stand a chance in modern media which is overwhelmingly dominated by leftist totalitarian ideology and a commitment to mediocrity. The public school system was lost forty years ago, or more, and now emotion has replaced reason and policy has replaced law. That reality is far outside the boundaries of what, even a few years ago, would have been considered constitutional behavior. It is now routine. I hope you are right. I fear you are terribly wrong.
Gregory Walker says
Hence my statement -
“The Republic, our Republic, is always a hair’s breadth away from being lost. This is what makes the United States of America so unique, so revolutionary, so impossible to predict the future of.”
Steve says
Perhaps symbolically apropos, did you know that the taxonomic name for Robins is “ Terdus migratorious” yep, migrating terd. It’s springtime and more shits coming.
You have a knack for the taxonomic. Must be all
Of those flies you’ve tied. ?
Steve says
Not so much the tying, but the studying of the ecosystems and the creatures that live in them. Keep pen to paper my friend.
FRANK JENSEN says
Good work Craig
Thanks, Frank.
deuce says
This might be one of your best, Craig. Well done. Keep yer powder dry.
Thank you sir, and I most certainly will.
J.F. Bell says
Dark as it seems, I’m still heartened to see the degree of low-level resistance. For the longest time I suspect most of us have talked among our people what exactly it means to be under the thumb of a government that doesn’t like us, doesn’t understand us, and would just as soon we clear off so they can get back to being our enlightened overseers.
I don’t know how it is in your part of the country. Down this way it seems like the last election broke even the most squishy strain of moderate — not in the sense that we’re having societal breakdowns and crime waves, but that the federal government is increasingly irrelevant in our day-to-day affairs.
I used to be said that if they made the law, we’d abide by it.
Now it’s the sense that they can pass what they want and good luck making it stick.
It’s early to write off the American nation yet, though it’s arguable that we may see THESE United States replacing THE United States. We won’t be saved by anything from the federal level — but in all honesty, have we ever?