Killdozer

Yeah - I moved to Fraser (next town over) a year-ish after Marv’s wild ride. Always interesting to see this come up.

IIRC, the story was much more complex than this article paints it (& much more sympathetic to Marv). There were apparently some blatant conflicts of interest with the zoning committee, which painted a picture of a corrupt town government. Additionally, due to the changes, his business had virtually no access, meaning that he lost the livelihood he had worked years to build. IOW, they really painted him into a corner, and left even his shop’s land/building value worthless.

By all means, what he did was crazy. But most of us who knew the town wished both sides had been a little more yielding. Either way, always interesting to see it come up.

I don't know for certain whether or not Marvin Heemeyer had a legitimate complaint that was badly mishandled by the State but from other accounts of the incident I read at the time it seems he did. Irrespective, clearly Heemeyer was at the end of his tether with the bureaucratic process and it's clear that those in authority did little to defuse the situation and or were completely ineffective trying to doing so.

Whenever citizens have dealings with the State and for whatever reason they reach an impasse over some matter (as with Heemeyer) then it's nearly always the case that the State has neither interest in resolving matters amicably nor does it have any sufficiently satisfactory mechanisms to do so. The fact is that our governance doesn't possess the necessary mechanics to satisfactorily manage such matters in ways which would (and should) empower ordinary citizens and ensure that they always receive a fair go.

Thus, after the State arrives at a questionable decision ordinary citizens have little comeback or recourse if they want to have genuine grievances rectified. Moreover, justice is often further denied when State authority uses unreasonable methods of justifying its decisions that aren't easily verifiable. Thus, in an attempt to seek justice, hapless citizens are then left with only two lawful alternatives both of which are unpalatable. Either take matters to court where the imbalance of power between the State and citizens usually favors the State, or lobby politicians for a change to the law, which, in the unlikely event of that being successful, then said changes will inevitably arrive too late to resolve the initial problem. In our so-called democracies, ordinary citizens frequently face a Hobson's choice which they all too often lose through no fault of their own.

Over the years, I too have had similar bad experiences with officialdom, especially so when dealing with authorities who approved developments that clearly contained errors or were outside existing building regulations. Fortunately, mine never escalated to the extent that Heemeyer's did. In each instance I lost out badly after Council decided to permit developments next to my property whose size was well in excess of official rules and guidelines (as already mentioned, there's always some clause or 'out' that authorities often use to bypass official planning rules, this is what happened in my cases).

When one looks deeper into many such cases one often finds that even if they are not technically corrupt on paper they're nevertheless morally so. Petty bureaucrats often find it much easier to deal with powerful developers if they're on their side. As well, agreeing with developers is considerably less stressful for them. Clearly, one doesn't have to be Einstein to figure out why encounters between a powerful developer and an essentially-powerless and technically handicapped John Dow/Joe Bloggs citizen often ends up so badly for the latter.

Furthermore, it's highly likely that the developer's architects frequent the same clubs and pubs as council's—'birds of a feather'/'old boy's network' so to speak (whereas the complainant likely doesn't even have an architect). Thus the hapless citizen hasn't a snowball's chance of proving wrongdoing either as there's no incriminating paper trail to be found no matter how deep an investigation might be! In my case, [different] architects both separately own the properties on either side of my home and they actually live in them. In reality this makes them developers with a determined motive to drive home their plans through Council and its planing process. You guessed it, 'stupid', non-architect, techie I never stood a chance against the combined forces.

Tragically, our democracies and democratic processes are riddled throughout with these seemingly small inequities and we citizens are effectively powerless to change or rectify them for the better. That's not to say change doesn't happen. These days, often change occurs after many aggrieved and like-minded citizens have come together as a collective to protest over a single issue. More often than not members of these groups personally identify themselves with the issue. We're familiar with the term identity politics and we know how influential and successful those who 'fit' under its umbrella have been in achieving change for their own ends.

Whilst identity politics movements have genuinely achieved much better levels of social equity for those involved, the very success of these movements has unfortunately also seen them give rise to other problems of a tertiary nature, which, overall, has been quite detrimental for democracy. Citizens whose opinions are contrary to ideas espoused by those within identity politics movements often feel alienated and or believe they weren't given a fair hearing during the public discourse on said matters, and or they rightly or wrongly think, that recent changes in societal values were unfairly railroaded through to their detriment.

Of course, what I've said above is an over simplification of a very complex problem, also I've not herein included other relevant factors (such as those dealing with the intrinsic nature of democracy per se, or the applicability and or granularity of laws in liberal democracies, etc.), this is simply because of the limitations and nature of these posts, so please try to not misinterpret what I've said.

One of the key points that I wish to make is that across my lifetime Western democracies have never been at a lower ebb than they are now, citizens now have precious little respect for governments, or for long-established and once respected institutions and respect for politicians is at an all-time low; and citizens have never been so polarized about key social and economic issues as they are today.

Whilst identity politics has helped many to achieve a sense of self-respect and worth, it's done essentially nothing to bring a necessary sense of cohesion, unity and purpose across all of society, nor has it done anything to counter or reduce the increasingly polarized views shared by many citizens. In fact, I (and many others) would argue that the fractures running through our society are now larger and deeper than they've been for a century or more. Essentially, the divide is so great that democracy in some countries has just about become unworkable.

It seems to me there are ways that we can fix and repair our ailing democracies (but there's no way I'd attempt to describe that mammoth task here). Suffice to say, the covenant that binds the citizenry and State is severely broken to the extent that we should re-examine it in every minute detail from its very core to its outer limits with the view of altering it for the better. In doing so, fairness, dignity and equity are key axioms, and first we must make sure that citizens (and the collective citizenry) are the most important entities in our democracies. Moreover, those principles should be inviolate to the extent that they must be fully enshrined in our constitutions and in law. Unlike the current situation where government bureaucracies not only consider themselves above the citizenry but also above the law. [How many instances of governments and bureaucracies breaking law would you like me to cite?]

Similarly, the truly outrageous situation that exists today where an inanimate entity that's defined as a corporation is treated equally in law to that of a citizen. Given precedent and power, corporations already wield much more power than do ordinary citizens. This 'obscene' situation is proof positive that in a democracy some citizens are more equal than others—own a powerful corporation and you can effectively run government, if not much of the world. (Think Google, Microsoft and Facebook.)

Right, the task of democratic reform is truly daunting and those who now control or benefit from the 'fucked' status quo are by far citizens' greatest enemies.

It's only when democracy has been renewed and restored with humans and their moral values put at its center that we should seriously look at tackling tragic social problems such as those that Marvin Heemeyer found himself experiencing (for whilst the corruption he experienced continued no reasonable solution was possible, thus fixing it first was a necessary a priori requirement. Even then, I'd suggest that such cases would be few and far between as the conditions that led to problems that Heemeyer experienced would be unlikely to exist in a 'reordered' democracy. Thus, Heemeyer's rampage was the last act of a person driven to despair after confronting entrenched bureaucracy and corruption on multiple occasions only to find that in the end there was nothing else he could do.

It's little wonder occasionally that people such as Heemeyer are driven mad and run amok.