I was being quite serious. I’ve lost it now but I used to have a cartoon by Handelsmann showing two Pilgrim Fathers arriving in America and one saying “Thank God we’ve escaped from religious persecution, now we can go and deal with those heathen Indians”. But in fact they were perfectly capable of executing other European dissidents such as Quakers, and using ridiculous claims of witchcraft to control women by fear of death.
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Isn’t “occupying” a US federal building meaningless if you are a US citizen? It’s yours as much as it is anyone else’s.
Feds themselves make federal buildings into armed encampments every day all over the US, while hardly anyone complains.
Government are public servants, it’s never “OK” for government to restrict citizens access to government facilities.
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That’s exactly my point, yes. So far these guys are insistent that it’s a vaguely-defined land rights issue. It wouldn’t surprise me one tiny bit if they end up saying racist white-supremacist things during the conflict. But right now the issue is that they are violent terrorists who’ve stolen government property and have declared warlike intentions, and are begging for a conflict.
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I do think that if the people involved were not white (and presumable Christian) this would be handled differently. History tells us that and honestly, not much has changed.
They likely will be denied their martydom, precisely because of their whiteness. Of course, if they open fire first, all bets are off.
I do think you are underestimating the role of race here, though and the power whiteness can have in situations like this.
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As the post pointed out, it can be seen here that the lack of outcry from both in the media and the public shows a visible difference in response from the coverage given to the recent BLM protests. Though, as Cory said, this is in a large part due to the racism that permeates our society, there is another major reason for this that should probably be considered: Money. The domestic terrorist here, rather than attempting to affect traffic to stores at one of the most profitable times of the year, these have taken over a wildlife reserve in the middle of winter. Whereas there were dozens of stores that would have been complaining about the attempt to hold a peaceful protest at the mall of America, no one here has much of anything to lose. And besides that, what could this change? Bundy and friends will likely be gone by Tuesday, as the Hammonds have already agreed to go to prison, they can’t affect much. The fact that there will likely be no repurcusions for this act of terrorism is sickening, but seen through the lens of capitalism, gets a little more understandable
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So, I’ve actually rented a cabin and stayed for a few days at the Lake Malheur wildlife refuge. It is quite possibly the most desolate and isolated “federal” building in existence. I’m kind of picturing some of the locals (who don’t want anything to do with these wackos) sending them out there to get them out of their hair.
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Very agreed there!
And yeah, looks like FOX is already bending themselves into knots here. It might be interesting to see what a ‘flipped’ article looks like that pretends it’s about muslims instead.
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Do you have any statistics that compare Plymouth Colony to Massachusetts Bay Colony?
I don’t disagree and understand you were serious. However, the Pilgrims were only a small subset of English settlers and soon it was lots of other people also escaping religious persecution from Europe’s religious wars raging at that time.
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I believe it’s considered occupying if you go in with guns, food, and a generator, and keep other citizens and government officials out at gun point. It’s equally NOT okay for other citizens to cut off access to buildings for other citizens.
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I saw a few people asking Cruz for comment on twitter yesterday. Not expecting a response, although he is offering the chance to win an engraved shotgun.
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Don’t the “#YallQaeda” have an invasion to stop in Texas?
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They’re waging #yeehawd, apprarently.
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It sounds to me like the Black Lives Matter folks ought to take a page from the Black Panthers and show up to their protests armed to the teeth. If they did that, we’d have gun control laws in no time.
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I concur. LOL.
Of course doing this completely overshadowed and pushed aside the reason for this move. (The rather harsh arson charges which may or may not be warranted.) They could have done a sit-in or occupy-like thing, but I guess this is going to get the national attention they want. The problem is things aren’t NEARLY bad enough for enough people to sympathize enough to condone their actions.
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Worryingly I think that bar is set too low. Only about 9% of the population have IQs below 80 (assuming you are using sigma = 15). Most of them will not vote.
Very few Americans actually benefit from right wing Republican policies. Yet Republicans consistently poll higher than Democrats in many areas. On the other hand polls reported on by Scientific American suggest that over 90% of US scientists vote Democrat. I fear that IQ may well be associated with political support but the correlation is so low that it has to be left out of redneck detection questionnaires.
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I agree that access is the key issue. It still seems a bit hypocritical that feds try to control access to federal facilities on a regular basis. A government which answers to its people wouldn’t do so.
I don’t think that the government is restricting access, these militia men are the ones restricting access, both to government employees, who are also citizens, but also to other citizens who are not employed by the government, with guns.
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I don’t argue against that; I was simply comparing them to the Pilgrim Fathers, not to the entire early European settlement of the US.
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