The Tenacious Unicorn Ranch: How to Build a Haven, Part 2: The Sentinel

James and Gare look into the causes of the siege and the solidarity and support that people around the world showed to the ranch.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
It was a couple of days after although had its
run with the locals. When I arrived, if one was
on edge, if where we went it was with guns.
So I remember there was a point when I was here,
which was like a week or so after the ALDO run,
those guys off that like we were going out somewhere,
and so folks like, well, can someone who is comfortable
using a gun stay behind? Yeah, that's what it was

(00:32):
at Like, yeah, yeah, it was because not all of
us like want to or can Like I can't, I'm
too scared of guns. Like I recognize that they're very important.
I'm glad I am surrounded by people who can like
defend me, but um, and I think that's important to
allow space for that too. Yeah, what kind of saying
there is really important not just for this story, but

(00:53):
for folks listening to this and thinking, oh funk, I
need to get guns. If you want to get guns,
go ahead and get some if you can, say le illegally.
But what you need is community. Everyone at the ranch
works hard every day to keep their project going. Sometimes
that's with a gun, most of the time it's with
a sack of crunchy al pack of food or sometimes
with a keyboard. The community that sustains the ranch is

(01:20):
much bigger than the people on the ground, and it's
a great illustration of the power of solidarity to sustain
a project, which, in times like today, is the world
A really needs today. Hundreds of queer people visit the
ranch every year for hundreds of different reasons. CAT takes
care of the ranches, visitors, amnities, social media gen helps
administer a Patreon account for the ranch, complete with daily

(01:43):
alpaca photos and updates on events. When I arrived at
the ranch in it became pretty clear that I wasn't
the only one who'd seen the tweet. Paul now THEO
both have backgrounds in combat arms, both of them before
it was they now don't think we're a great idea,
both of them waiting to use skills the state gave
them to protect people who to state wouldn't. Paul, like

(02:05):
Caldo and I came because of a tweet. I saw
Aldo tweet like a stop sign or something, and it said,
you know, a few years ago, I never would imagined
being on like a transgender anarchist alpaca farm, but here
I am, and I think I d med him or something.

(02:26):
I was like, what the funk are you talking about?
And uh. We ended up signal chatting and he explained
what was happening and what had happened the day he
was there, or one of the days he was there,
and I was like, oh wow, that sounds super fucked up. Hey,
I'm gonna book a flight. Before they left, they picked

(02:49):
up another tail. We went into Westcliffe, the closest town,
for something, I think, just to the gas station. And
when we when we came back down at the query
owned by the airport, which is like three or four
miles down the road towards the town, two to three
vehicles pulled out and started following us, and one of
them pulled down the road the ranches on and we

(03:11):
we just drove straight and then they followed us and
we turned around two or three roads down, and then
the third vehicle that had been waiting now was waiting
for us to come back and pull in, so like
they were trying very hard to tail anyone and get
like identified. When I arrived, Paul and I slept in

(03:36):
the guard trailer. Well, I slept, Paul stayed up all
night walking patrols and keeping it on the fence line.
If you're familiar with Hayduke and Edward Abbs echo anarchist
novel The Monkey Ranch Gang. That's a pretty good way
to envision Paul, albeit without the misogyny and racism that
makes it pretty hard to have any respect for that
books author. Throughout the night I check in on Paul.

(03:56):
It wasn't a large trailer, and when I did, I
look through his night vision at the strange movement in
the fields around the ranch. People seem to huddle behind
a pickup and they used the headlight to try and
blind us. Now and vision doesn't really work that way anymore,
but they moved around throughout the night thinking that we
couldn't see them, staging in different areas on the ridge

(04:17):
above us, with the commanding field of view and presumably
a field of fire as well. We assume they were
trying to watch us as we sat there watching them.
It was actually pretty fascinating. Um So, a house that
happens to be visible from the or another property that's
visible from from the hilltop of the ranches on here,

(04:37):
Like every evening it would start to get dark out
and then like fifteen or twenty cars would show up.
Oh yeah, it was like which has never happened since. Yeah, well,
so like fifteen to twenty cars would show up, and um,
I can't remember what precipitated it. But the second night

(04:59):
I was here, Oh, I know what it was. Somebody
had walked their dog and I happened to kind of
meet them down by the gate because they were walking
up the road. It was like two o'clock in the
morning during a blizzard, and I was like, this is
very unusual. So I met them down there, and um,
I happened to have like night vision gear and they

(05:19):
it was obviously like from them because from that point
on they would actually point vehicles at the ranch with
their headlights on the entire night from some properties that
are closer to the highway, which like is semi effective.
It makes this bloom for fifteen ft around that vehicle,
but then everything else you can just see, so it

(05:41):
didn't matter. Inside the house, it got harder and harder
to move over the course, in the next few days,
a support came flooding in. There was sounding the round
of ammunition plate carriers, plates, the kind of stop bullets,
and boxes of first aid supplies. One day, Paul and
I set around staging first aid it's unwrapping and preparing

(06:01):
to products to make the mesia to use. People messaged
every day volunteering to help. When we look them up
using some background check websites, I often use the work
to check that they weren't to trying to infiltrate their runch.
The amount of support that we've seen is largely absurd,
Like I would have never guessed that, like people would

(06:22):
have come out. It's hard for us. Yeah, it must
be nice to that, Like everybody fucking wants you to succeed, right, yeah,
Like it gets us through me, Like you can't troll me. Yeah, no,
I mean there are no haters that you get to
us because of how much support that we know is
out there, not only um locally, but internationally, like nationally,

(06:46):
Like we have people from all over the world that
have taken a moment to be like what can I do?
Like what do you need right now? Like and that
is just like you can't troll that out of me,
Like there is nothing you can say that I can't
be like, yeah, but also I've got twelve people who
would kill you for me. I don't know. The ranch

(07:09):
became something of a course celebra on the arm left.
The outpouring of support was incredible. In March one, we
all probably felt a little bit helpless. A summer of
uprising and VAULT had yielded a new geriatric white dude
in charge. COVID was still raging, and the cops had
shown less anger at thousands of church storm in Congress
than they did at kids holding Black Lives Matter plattards

(07:30):
in the street. In a time when it was difficult
to feel powerful, the ranch openly defying attempts to scare
them out of the valley gave people a sense of
success and they were more than willing to show up
and help. So, yeah, I want to talk about that
because you guys attempted to basically stock up on far
around at the time in American history when that may
have been hardest and most expensive. And what sort of

(07:53):
got you through was a lot of people from all
over the Internet showing for them all over the world,
like it was literally all over the world. Any fascist organizations, Yeah,
we got sent plate plate carriers, people did runs for Ammo,
like people would like buy Ammo like or organize something

(08:15):
and get Ammo and food and things and then just
drive up, drop it and leave. Because you know, not
everybody's ready to be in like an active zone where
you could get shot, but they would do runs up
to drop stuff off force like it was crazy crazy,
But that solidarity wasn't just on the internet. It was
in the valley as well. Even before the attacks on

(08:36):
the ranch began, the unicorns knew they were coming. They
knew because people told them, and people told them because
they cared about them and wanted them to be safe.
They cared about them because from the outset the unicorns
had made themselves an important part of that community. When
the county stopped recycling waste it could be recycled, the

(08:57):
Unicorns stepped up and volunteered to do it themselves. On
my first trip, I joined Penny and Jay for the
long drive into Canyon City with a rickety horse trailer
full of Bold beer cans and a truck with a
struggling transmission. The money they get paid to recycle the
cans is less than the gas they spent getting there,
but it's an important thing to do, so they do it. Hey, Garrison, here,

(09:24):
now that we have talked about how the siege happened,
we need to explain why. At the start of this series,
we said that this was a story that was about
the Internet, and it is. It's a story about how
the Internet has allowed a section of the American right
that's always existed to develop links and gained both power

(09:46):
and coherence in the last two decades, thanks largely to
online organizing. The story of how these groups got where
they are is a long one. It starts with talk
radio with Schlimbaugh and then with Glenn Beck, and the
gradual drift to Fox News, from bad journalism to outright

(10:07):
barking for genocide seven nights a week at prime time.
It's the story that we can't tell here and not
in its entirety, but we can show you a little
of what it looks like when that rhetoric leaves the
forums and Facebook comments and lands on the ground in
a small town in Colorado. There are two versions of

(10:30):
the truth in Westcliffe. There's the one that most of
you are going to hear, and then there's the one
that you can find George Gramlich purveying in his local newspaper,
the Sangree to Cristo Sentinel. The Sentinel is probably best
summarized as a print version of the Facebook comments from
some of your older relatives that you've hopefully long since

(10:53):
MU did. It's the guy who doesn't know when to
stop booming on about Obama at the Thanksgiving table. But
in a stream of consciousness, unedited print format, we're gonna
let George lay out what the Sentinel is about in
his own words. We didn't get much joy out of
trying to speak with him, and not for lack of trying.

(11:15):
I approached his office numerous times, knocking on the door
and trying to have a good old chat with George.
But luckily he did go on the record for the
Texas t l in Exile podcast. This kind of spectacular
programming two white dudes shooting the breeze is certainly a
tried and true recipe for success in the podcasting space.

(11:38):
But you could be forgiven for not having heard of
this particular podcast before, because even though we knew about it,
it took us forever to even find it on the
hit podcasting app Rumble Wait. Moved to Custa County from
the Anaron Back Mounds in northern New York about twelve

(12:00):
years ago, and uh, the wife and I were basically
political and second amended refugees. We had a couple of
friends who had moved to UH, southern Colorado, and they
said that, Uh, the most conservative county maybe in the state,

(12:20):
So certainly in southern Colorado is Custer County. It's about
an hour and a half south of Colorado Springs high
in the Rocky Mountains. Population dre a ranking community, stunning dues,
just simply beautiful. Um, two small towns right in the

(12:43):
middle of the county. Each was about five six hundred
people in it, and hardcore conservatives I'd say six of
the county's registered Republicans. But even in his conservative paradise,
George found that most folks couldn't live up to his
high standards for political engagement. After Obama got elected his

(13:07):
first term, slowly over that four year period, UH, interest
in the Tea Party started to diminishing as Obama was
destroying the country. Um. After we got elected the second time,
we had our first meeting since his election in January.
And normally at that point after four years, we were

(13:30):
againting four to sixty people showing up. At that meeting,
only twelve people showed up and it was doom and gloom.
You know, Obama is destroying the Conscire's nothing We can
do blah blah blah. We started talking long pool. You know,
we've got to keep cuts the county red and uh

(13:50):
and uh. And the fact came up which has been
a problem in the county forever, was that the local newspaper,
in the only newspaper in the county was extremely liberal paper.
And we have done research over the years and we
found out that a corporal America, this phenomenon of was

(14:12):
common that the rural counties that tended to have liberal papers.
And it's just because the lists vegetate to that media
and they know they could have an influence on the
populations via that. So I mean, I mean it was over.
We went home and on the way home I turned
to I said, we're gonna start a paper. So uh

(14:35):
next day, I like, It's been a whole day building
on a business plan on how to start a print
and conservative newspaper in the rural community. Now, we couldn't
find the research that George is talking about, and that's
probably because it's not true. What we can find is
that dred largely small newspapers closed in the past fifteen years.

(14:57):
To learn more about the newspaper business in southern Colorado,
we spoke to George's arch rival, the publisher of the
only other publication in the west, or at least the
only other one in the valley, Jordan Hedberg, You are
the editor of the owner and publisher, and I could
barely spell my own name, so the publisher of the

(15:18):
Wet Mountain Tribune newspaper. Jordan's and George aren't exactly best pals,
largely thanks to George's attacks on Jordan's and his publication.
We asked Jordan to give us a sense of the
competition in the local media market and for his overall
thoughts on the Sentinel. I think it's his lies. I mean,
that's the problem with the Sentinel. I don't see the

(15:40):
media spaces as zero sum game. Um, if somebody wants
to have a openly conservative newspaper in this town, and
I said, there's plenty of readers, Um, it doesn't really
compete with me because we do just community news and
we always have since three so we've been here for
a little while. I don't see it as a zero

(16:02):
sum game until you start lying about things because you're
in what you perceived to be a power struggle. So
that's the problem of the Sentinel. There's there's no problem
with the Sentinel overall, other than that they like to
tell lies two kind of justify their existence. Yeah, Jordan's
take on the founding of The Sentinel, whose logo prominently

(16:22):
features a bald eagle on the cover. If you hadn't
quite picked up on the vibe yet, it was a
little different. You know. They got started in their minds
during the Tea Party movement to combat hyper liberal newspaper.
But they only labeled the Tribune that because they needed
an enemy. You know, they were they're very whipped up
about Obama getting elected and um, at the time, there

(16:43):
had been that Aurora shooting, and so the real reason
they really got started was when Carroo put a assault
weapons magazine ban into place so you couldn't have anything
that could fire more than fifteen rounds after the Aurora
Theater shooting, which was I guess ten years ago this week. Um,
So that that was one of the big things that
really got him started, was what they felt like an

(17:05):
attack on weapons. But they did it in a community
that's very you know, pro Second Amendment. I mean at
the time it was probably Republican. These days it's fifty
but still a majority Um. Even the moderates and most
Democrats probably have guns and are okay with the idea
of that, But they had a much more militant style saying, hey,

(17:27):
we should be allowed to arm ourselves with whatever. Um.
But again they still had to create a bunch of
lies locally saying that. Um. You know, at the time,
it was the former owner that the Tribune was hyper liberal, communist,
you know, against guns, which wasn't the truth. Gun rights

(17:58):
and the threat of gun confiscation have been a constant
source of profitable panic for agitators on the right for decades. Now.
In Westcliffe, that doesn't really seem to be much controversy
about guns. People who want them have them, and people
who don't don't. On my drive from the airport to
the ranch, I stopped at a couple of gun stores,

(18:18):
and I've seen people lining up to by magazines, guns
and other things that they'd worried about the government banning,
which seems a very odd reaction to a mass murder
in your state. But once I got to rural Colorado
and passed Mantique's gun room, there wasn't really any of that.
It was just some old dudes deplaning about the relative
value of different big bore revolvers and then sks, which

(18:38):
has been entirely violated by someone's attempt to make it
more modern. George apparently has seen an earlier mass shooting
in Aurora as an opportunity for the liberals and rhinos
he's so loath to take away his guns, and an
opportunity for him to take a stand against him. He
decided to take a stand at a place where no
one really disagreed with him, and it gainst a thing

(19:00):
that wasn't really happening. But nonetheless he decided to write
the troops and hold well, will let him describe what
he held about. I don't know, six or seven years ago,
TL the lists and called Ronald En Denaver passed the
gun uh gun laws, and they one of them was
the magazine limitation law, and before there's no limitation, and

(19:23):
they passed awards that you can't have any you can't
buy any new magazines. Was more than fifteen rounds in it.
But they all went their grandfather. Now, during this the
legislative session, as you as you remembered, the whole state
was up and arms about this. I mean it was
demonstrations in Denver. I mean, uh, we were passed off

(19:44):
and the SLPs passed it. So Westcliffe has uh July
fourth parade that we actually took over the sessil took
over into a couple of years. Um and uh and
there's usually maybe twenty five entry the horses who know,

(20:08):
hold on, hold on, George. Let's dwell on that for
a minute. When when I mentioned that I came down
there and then you had like five or six hundred
people in this parade, Um, I think it might have
got glossed over. How big are these towns to start with,
because it's it's basically a combination of Silver Cliff and

(20:28):
West Cliff, right, Yeah, each town has about five people
out of five hundred people out of out of a
total of a thousand people. I mean you you can
you can describe it, but describe that to the listeners
for a little bit about, um, what that parade looks

(20:52):
like versus how many people are on the sidewalk. YEA Similarly,
in and the Tea Party had an entry and we
usually had maybe fifteen twenty people march down with you know,
gads and flags and stuff. But that that those gun
laws the MacMan I mean just energized the sentinel tremendously.

(21:15):
So we decided a couple of months before July fourth
that we were gonna turn the Tea Party parade entry
into a Second Amendment protests UH entry. So we printed
up flyers and uh we innovated Southern Colorado every gun, shot,

(21:35):
park shot everything with thousands of flyers come to the
Western July fourth thing and told them what part to
go to, what place to go to, and protested the
PS laws and stuff like that and so uh uh
So that morning the priest starts of Dena Cross. Uh

(21:59):
we set up shop in front of uh. We told
the FRED organizers and we might have some more people coming.
So we've had a field where we could set up,
and we set up there and we had a couple
of thir We had three or fours the guys there
to check guns. We said, you know, you could bring
uh long rifles, no magazines. They got to be clear shoulder.

(22:22):
Uh carried on the polster pistols, you know. And we
had to holp us people to check for safety and
stuff like that. And so we had no idea how
many people are gonna show off, And normally there's twenty
five entries and maybe a hundred fifty people in the parade,
maybe two hundred total, and all of a sudden, uh

(22:44):
on Main Street where our field was, around eight thirty,
there was a traffic jam that went down like a
mile both ways, and people were turning into our part
a lot field there and going nowhere else, and they
kept calmon and common and common and common. This went

(23:05):
off for an hour and a half. The Sharon for
freaking out. We had over five hundred heavily armed citizens
there that morning, with about twenty fo military trucks and
a half we had a Korean War half tract there
with a fifty cow on top. Jildan, the Tribune publisher,

(23:30):
those things a little bit differently. So, but right before
the sentinel got started, they were like, hey, we're gonna advertise,
and they did it all across the state. They said
bring your big black evil guns to um Custer County.
And the problem is is, you know, that was the issue.
It was this is a family event and so ever
since then. So what happened was in response, the Republican

(23:53):
town Council in the Republican Chamber of Commerce all said
we're not going to have a parade we we can't
have a bunch of Randos showing up right after the
Aurora Theater shootings, carrying massive amounts of firepower, even if
you claim it's unloaded or whatever. We just can't have
that for a family event. And so the thing is
is they took out a permit and did the parade themselves.

(24:14):
So that's really how things. So Fourth of July for
them is sort of their anniversary every year. You know,
they're very they really consider that whole thing to be
that way. But that's really what happened. Now, that's a
conservative area. There's no bravery, Marchi, assault rifles, sucoustic County. Now,
if they've done in downtown Denver where guns are banned

(24:36):
or at least those types of guns, at least you
could say they had a backbone and down. But it's
not MLK gang. So the problem the Sentinel is the lives.
You know, if they're just a conservative paper, fine, they're
allowed to have their opinion, but they tend to tell
lies constantly. George had miraculously managed to turn a mass
murder into a sort of pseudo victory parade for a

(24:57):
cultural war he was fighting every day with his newspaper
Soon enough, and largely thanks to this parade, the culture
war will be opening a whole new front on this
tenaceous unicorn ranch. Of course, the Sentinel has opinions about

(25:24):
the ranch and transpoke in general. When we arrived in Westcliffe,
Garrett and I grabbed a coffee at Peregrine Coffee Roasters,
long term friends at the ranch and supporters of me
staying up all night with Paul and an up all
day with Penny and j. We also grabbed a copy
of the Sentinel from the dispenser, pulled up a chair
and started a live reading. Even after a year of

(25:44):
me being aware of their rhetoric, it did not disappoint.
So I just I just suched the word gender on
the Sentinel's website. We got a We got an article
on social emotional learning, which is basically the al right,
trying to read ran there like a critical race theory ship,
but make it even broader um. And we do have
an article from January of last year called a Meat

(26:07):
at the Gun toting tenacious unicorns and happy Valley. That's
a let's click on that and see what the Sentinel
has to say. What is this? What is this guy's
name the Eric Siegel. Yes, High Country New. Oh that's
what they've done. They have just plays played rights piece
from High Counry News. Oh, so they just stroll this
from somewhere else. If we're stopping here to point out

(26:28):
that the Sentinel does this a lot. It's not clear
if they have permission or not, but they seem to
dedicate at least half their print pages to aggregating content.
It's mostly from the fire right of the Internet. Notable
examples include a really spectacularly racist piece on anti material
rifles which we will not read, and numerous fire right
commentary sites which turned shreds of news into a thousand

(26:48):
words of panic rundering opinion. Anyway, let's see what they
have to say about the pretty good article of Eric
Siegel wrote about the Unicorn ranch for High Country News.
Note the Sentinel is prodominantly featured in this article negatively,
of course. Hold onto your cowboy hats, fellow patriots, this
is one wild ride. For the first time ever, we
are warning our readers that the article below is very,

(27:09):
very disturbing in many aspects. It may not be appropriate
for some folks or children. Are apologies, but the citizens
of this wonderful county need to know how the county
has been betrayed so apparent, I guess the article is
kind of a Yeah, so they do have an edit
at the bottom that that the central Road based on
the article. Well, folks, the veil has been lifted. For

(27:32):
those of you who haven't seen or experienced left wing
fascism here it is from Biden to Polis and all
the way down to this hypocritical bunch of hate filled xenophobes.
They are all the same, felled with hate, paranoia, solt righteousness, intolerance,
and the desire to rule and control, and obsessed with violence.
Their radical, narrow minded view of the world and our

(27:53):
rural community is the only allowable viewpoint. All of a sudden,
the citizens of Custer County are fascists and Nazis. This
fascist retorically George himself, a transplant from outside the valley
who has tried to transform local politics. It's referring to
it's what sparked off the confrontation that bought me Aldo
and Pull to the ranch last year. Yeah, so that
one wasn't even a parade. What it was was it

(28:14):
was a protest on the fourth of July because during
COVID they weren't doing any parade things, so they just
did this as a protest, right, and so the sheriff
and everybody, I mean, you couldn't distinguish it from a
Fourth of July prade, except there wasn't. I don't think
the fire department and stuff took you know, the Sheriff's
office and the fire department didn't take part. And it

(28:36):
was just it was really a bunch of people with
on horses, marching guns, stuff like that. But the flags
were a little more disturbing. You know. Most of the
American flags were replaced with three percent flags or the
thin blue line flags. There was a couple of Confederate flags,
always fun. I still can't figure out I still can't

(28:56):
figure out the Confederate A long way south here. Yeah,
you know, but there is that lost cause myth that
does take place here. Yes, and and you know they'll
say it's not a racist flag, but it absolutely isn't.
This was the parade the unicorns called out, and this
was what put them at the center of graham Lets
conspiracy riddled hate machine. Jordan gave us a little more

(29:20):
insight into exactly who those fascist groups were the people
that the Sentinel brought to town for their little protest parade.
George grime Like is a member of Oathkeepers. We've been
able to confirm that through not only himself, but Thompson
Writers had an investigative reporter that confirmed that for us
um so, Oathkeepers is a big one three percent. You'll

(29:41):
see some of those shirts around that the two of
them are kind of scenoymous. That none of it's super organized.
You know, it's kind of like saying that Antifa's superorganized.
It's it's very decent. The problem is is that they
do write extreme things, and I think people like um
myself and then you know, definitely the Unicorn ranch suffers

(30:02):
because they they can't really spread their message without an enemy.
And you were asking earlier how how much influence do
they have? Yeah, not a lot. They have about eight
hundred subscriptions from what I can tell. Some receipts accidentally
got put in my box versus there because we're the
wet Mound Publishing company. Yeah, um, and they're the Mountain
Publishing the post Office at all their glory occasionally give

(30:24):
me a win, but you know, they're eight hundreds to
maybe a thousand by their own own numbers. The Sentinels
stands on vaccines will definitely not shock you, considering everything
else we've said about George and the Sentinel thus far.
So this comes from market ticket doggal effectiveness. The primary
infection against to be a critical or fatal COVID nineteen

(30:47):
reinfection with ninety seven point three irrespected the variant of
primary infection or reinfection and were similar and with no
evidence for waning some results. We found the subgroup analyzes
for those less than fifty years of age. Got it? No,
let me explain it. If you've got COVID noteen lived,
you are more than nine certain with a very narrow
confidence band protected against a severe or fatal d in

(31:11):
hospital dead second infection, even though coronavirus is always mutate.
And I'm just going to check really quickly if that's
what they're saying and normally yet they've quite a discort
of out of context and there is no evidence of
protection ever goes away. That is not what the quote says.

(31:33):
If you look at the JAB, I think you get
the picture. It's pseudo science babble, transphobia and general boomer
anti woksm oh, there's a piece here said about the
You know, the U. S. Army is really struggling to
recruit right now. Right. Imagine you're an eighteen year old
white Christian male in Georgia with a family history of
military service. As you progress through your teen years, you

(31:53):
watch Confederate statutes being torn down, a military basis being renamed,
endless media and elitist demonized ation of your culture as
racist and deplorable and backwards, and military and civilian leadership
that thinks diversity and inclusion, a fewer white men. It
is the best thing since slight bread, slice bread? Would
you volunteer? Identity politics works both ways. Trash my tribe

(32:15):
and I won't associate with you, let alone risk my life.
Shouldn't be a shock then that those expressing a great
deal of trust and confidence in the military dropping today.
So that's why, and no one wants to do in
the military because we're not doing enough confederacy. Wow, there's
a whole piece on how to protect your wealth. But

(32:35):
well no, there's a whole section of this called the
Second Amendment corner. Okay, interesting, there's a picture here of
a bunch of a t F agents obviously armed in
plate carriers and a Pride flag. And this this is
a joke, This is a funny, and it says corporate
wants you to find the difference between this picture and
this picture, and then it says they're the same picture.
So I guess the A t F are out there

(32:57):
enforcing pride. The little meme comic that we'd seen was
frankly bizarre. The two pictures on this comic were an
A t F A visit. This particular A t F
A visit got hyped up all over the right wing
media as a raid, a gun grab, etcetera, etcetera. In fact,
what happened was a dude purchased a lot of guns

(33:18):
and the A t F came by to check if
he had sold any of them. It's not routine, but
it's not super uncommon either. Anyway, on one side was
a photo of the A t F agents and plate
carriers with rifles, and on the other was a Pride
flag because apparently, in Custer County, the existence of queer

(33:40):
people is a similar oppression to the people who did
Waco coming to your door. Jordan's has also noted this
turn in the rhetoric of the Sentinel for two years.
Their sole purpose was to rail against COVID restrictions. Now,
with many of those gone, along with twenty two people
from the county where the average ages sixty, they've pivoted

(34:01):
to culture war topics when election fraud and COVID don't
seem to have stuck. Now it's just we're against um.
It was all you know, the big live the election
was stolen, critical race, therey, even though it's a bunch
of crap, and unfortunately you know, the Unicorn match if
there's if there's in the past, it was more against

(34:24):
anybody that was gay, um, but there's not many of
those in the community more because they kind of got
run out and sent to know, you were seeing like
it just conserves in general really hostile. Yeah, but now
it's you know, totally on the trans um. And again
it kind of fights back against the conservative upbringing that

(34:46):
I had, which was as long as you're not interfering
with me, then there's really no conflict. We've talked about
queer extermination as rhetoric before, and it's very evident to
that what we are seeing here is a version of that. Fortunately,
George doesn't seem to have stuck the landing, But it
doesn't mean that this stuff isn't dangerous. It goes without
saying that the unicorns weren't trying to trans anyone's gender

(35:11):
from their ranch. They were just trying to be left alone.
It's not their actions that people disagreed with, it's their
mere existence. And sadly, while the attack on the ranch
might have failed, other attacks on queer folks haven't, and
that makes havens like the Tenacious Unicorn Ranch even more important.
Today next episode, we're want to talk about what brought

(35:33):
people to the ranch and how to make a queer
home in Rule America. It Could Happen Here is a
production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from cool
Zone Media, visit our website cool zone media dot com,
or check us out on the I Heart Radio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can

(35:54):
find sources for It Could Happen Here, updated monthly at
cool zone Media dot com slash sources. Thanks for listening