When Sorrow Comes by Melissa M. Matthes

Author:Melissa M. Matthes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

The Oklahoma Bombing: Not the Los Angeles Uprisings

Despite initial appearances to the contrary, there were several important similarities between the Oklahoma bombing of 1995 and the Los Angeles uprisings in 1992. The violence in each was an expression of frustration by alienated and impoverished citizens about the role of their government. In the 1990s, White Americans living in the heartland were sequestered in what historian Osha Gray Davidson named the United States’ “rural ghettos.”191 These enclaves were in crisis. There were “pockets of poverty, unemployment, violence and despair that were becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the country. The most American part of America was fast becoming America’s Third World.”192 Father Frank Cordero, a Catholic priest in Iowa, called rural homelessness an invisible problem: “We hide poverty much more easily out here than in the cities.”193

The nostalgic narrative that corporate media promoted after the Oklahoma City bombing did not accurately reflect reality for many Americans living in the heartland. As poverty spiked, the strong tradition of “taking care of one’s own” was deeply challenged. It became increasingly difficult just to take care of oneself.194 Timothy McVeigh and the militia he joined were part of that story. It is now a well-known history—the decimation of small towns by the consolidation of small businesses into a local Walmart, the debt dependence of small farms, and the loss of manufacturing jobs writ large. But in 1995, the rural ghetto was largely invisible to most Americans, just as the frustration of Los Angeles African Americans was largely hidden from the view of the financial center of the city and the wealthy White suburbs that surrounded it.

Tapping into the long tradition of racism and anti-Semitism in the United States, extremist groups became a way for some rural, White, disenfranchised citizens to believe in the possibility of renewed power. It was a chimera, of course, but it was a shiny one, easily accessible and cogently explained, especially after the sieges at Ruby Ridge, Idaho (August 21, 1992), and Waco, Texas (April 19, 1993). After his service in the Gulf War, Timothy McVeigh was disillusioned by American military expenditures abroad. These expenses, he believed, came out of the toil and sweat of everyday Americans and rather than uplifting Americans, the money was squandered on underserving foreigners. He feared that the American government was bloated with taxpayers’ money and was willing to sacrifice its own citizens on the altar of imperial ambition. He was also angry, as were many of his fellow militia members, about the government’s failure to ensure justice for the Branch Davidians and for Randy Weaver’s family at Ruby Ridge.

From the perspective of McVeigh and his militia cohort, the government wielded all the lethal force as was manifest as well to the residents of Los Angeles in the broken ribs and shattered face of Rodney King. Ironically, McVeigh had himself called out the police brutality in Los Angeles; his invective over the deployment of the Seventh Light Infantry into Los Angeles during

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