What a difference two years make.
In 2014 Clive Bundy and a group of armed militia supporters created a standoff with federal and local law enforcement people, defending Bundy's non-payment of grazing fees on federal land. Fox News featured the story for several days, sympathetically portraying militia men aiming scoped rifles trained on law enforcement. The stories sided with the militia, as did Senator Ted Cruz.
They were patriots, protesting tax and tyranny.
Today, Fox News is covering the story with interviews with the Harney County sheriff. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are campaigning in Iowa, both saying the same thing: there are grievances regarding the BLM, sure, but armed rebellion against the United States is too extreme a solution.
What happened to change things?
***Once burned, twice wary. Last time conservative TV-talk radio-politicians supported armed white men protesting the federal government the issue fit their paradigm of protest, an expression of Tea Party anger at federal tyranny. They found heroes. But they couldn't trust their heroes to stay disciplined and on message. Clive Bundy was quoted saying Negros were better off enslaved--an indefensible comment in this century, and they immediately dropped the story and support. This new standoff had the same hazard. God knows what they might say or a Google search might turn up.
***Domestic terrorism. The number one issue in the Republican campaign is stopping radical Islamic terror, and candidates have been adamant in calling for president Obama quickly to name armed attacks on the people or government of the United States as "terror". The events in Harney County create a dilemma. It clearly is different from Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooters, because the motivation is so different, and yet the result has uncomfortable parallels: armed people openly saying they will kill for a principle demanding the overthrow of an illegitimate government. The parallels are too close for comfort.
***These guys are laughable. At this moment the standoff seems silly, not scary. First of all, they didn't hurt anyone, which is good. They seized an empty, remote building, which seems less like an assault on a vital element of government and more like a boy's treehouse fort. Second, it is almost as if they imprisoned themselves, walled up in a remote federal building where they cannot hurt anyone--sort of a minimum security Alcatraz. If prison is where they belong, well, they are already there. And third, they came unprepared. So the social media world is full of repeats of their request for snack food. Things could get ugly quickly, but for now it seems more like boy scouts in a botched outing rather than armed rebellion against the United States.
***Obama learned from Clinton. This is not Ruby Ridge or Waco. The federal government is standing back, and not engaging. The federal government--so far--is avoiding using force, and likely will if they can. And it is treating this as a local, not federal, law enforcement issue, with the Harney County sheriff taking the lead. White militia 2nd Amendment patriots protest federal authority and they elevate the elected county sheriff to be the highest lawful authority. What a mess for them: they are stuck fighting the guy whose legitimacy they actually support.
***Love the cops. In 2014 conservative media positioned the Clive Bundy standoff as courageous endangered militia men fighting tyranny. But the incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, plus the shooting of the policemen in Brooklyn ostensibly in retaliation for the killing of Michael Brown, put the conservative media-politician cadre on high alert to support police against protesters. Their position is solidified: policemen are good and citizens (i.e. urban blacks) have no right to hurt law enforcement using an excuse of injustice. This frame traps them. White militiamen are the conservative media-politician's "team", but their actions seem too parallel for comfort to black violence against police protesting injustice, which violence they condemn vigorously. When forced to choose between 2nd Amendment supporting militia fighters versus cops, they choose cops.
Two days ago I wondered if any Republican candidate would support the militiamen. Today I am confident they will not. They aren't heroes, after all. They are jokes--silly men playing with their guns.
In 2014 Clive Bundy and a group of armed militia supporters created a standoff with federal and local law enforcement people, defending Bundy's non-payment of grazing fees on federal land. Fox News featured the story for several days, sympathetically portraying militia men aiming scoped rifles trained on law enforcement. The stories sided with the militia, as did Senator Ted Cruz.
They were patriots, protesting tax and tyranny.
Today, Fox News is covering the story with interviews with the Harney County sheriff. Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio are campaigning in Iowa, both saying the same thing: there are grievances regarding the BLM, sure, but armed rebellion against the United States is too extreme a solution.
What happened to change things?
***Once burned, twice wary. Last time conservative TV-talk radio-politicians supported armed white men protesting the federal government the issue fit their paradigm of protest, an expression of Tea Party anger at federal tyranny. They found heroes. But they couldn't trust their heroes to stay disciplined and on message. Clive Bundy was quoted saying Negros were better off enslaved--an indefensible comment in this century, and they immediately dropped the story and support. This new standoff had the same hazard. God knows what they might say or a Google search might turn up.
***Domestic terrorism. The number one issue in the Republican campaign is stopping radical Islamic terror, and candidates have been adamant in calling for president Obama quickly to name armed attacks on the people or government of the United States as "terror". The events in Harney County create a dilemma. It clearly is different from Tashfeen Malik and Syed Rizwan Farook, the San Bernardino shooters, because the motivation is so different, and yet the result has uncomfortable parallels: armed people openly saying they will kill for a principle demanding the overthrow of an illegitimate government. The parallels are too close for comfort.
***These guys are laughable. At this moment the standoff seems silly, not scary. First of all, they didn't hurt anyone, which is good. They seized an empty, remote building, which seems less like an assault on a vital element of government and more like a boy's treehouse fort. Second, it is almost as if they imprisoned themselves, walled up in a remote federal building where they cannot hurt anyone--sort of a minimum security Alcatraz. If prison is where they belong, well, they are already there. And third, they came unprepared. So the social media world is full of repeats of their request for snack food. Things could get ugly quickly, but for now it seems more like boy scouts in a botched outing rather than armed rebellion against the United States.
***Obama learned from Clinton. This is not Ruby Ridge or Waco. The federal government is standing back, and not engaging. The federal government--so far--is avoiding using force, and likely will if they can. And it is treating this as a local, not federal, law enforcement issue, with the Harney County sheriff taking the lead. White militia 2nd Amendment patriots protest federal authority and they elevate the elected county sheriff to be the highest lawful authority. What a mess for them: they are stuck fighting the guy whose legitimacy they actually support.
***Love the cops. In 2014 conservative media positioned the Clive Bundy standoff as courageous endangered militia men fighting tyranny. But the incidents in Ferguson and Baltimore, plus the shooting of the policemen in Brooklyn ostensibly in retaliation for the killing of Michael Brown, put the conservative media-politician cadre on high alert to support police against protesters. Their position is solidified: policemen are good and citizens (i.e. urban blacks) have no right to hurt law enforcement using an excuse of injustice. This frame traps them. White militiamen are the conservative media-politician's "team", but their actions seem too parallel for comfort to black violence against police protesting injustice, which violence they condemn vigorously. When forced to choose between 2nd Amendment supporting militia fighters versus cops, they choose cops.
Two days ago I wondered if any Republican candidate would support the militiamen. Today I am confident they will not. They aren't heroes, after all. They are jokes--silly men playing with their guns.
2 comments:
I've been inside that building. It's the Visitor's Center for the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. I'm a bird watcher married to a birder, so we spend a lot of time in remote locations like this (halfway from Frenchglen to Burns, on a side road). What I fear most from these seditionists (to coin a word), is that they will wreck the scientific displays inside this building, just to be MEAN and to show 'them' (whomever that may be at the moment) that they are serious and mean business. Oh, and also to keep themselves in the headlines when the world tires of their shenanigans.
Yes, Mike, there is a lot of mess they can make, but I am hopeful they will slink out and hope that the authorities consider it no-harm-no-foul. Or fowl, given the location. Below is what I wrote my classmates at college who are mostly on the east coast:
The air is going out of the Oregon militia boys’ revolt. They wanted a fight against federal tyranny and instead got the local sheriff (the one authority they acknowledge) telling them to go home.
Now they look like boys who made a backyard fort—one short of snacks— and the whole purpose was to have girls, or parents, or some other boys in the neighborhood try to take it away from them. No one is bothering. They aren’t being treated as heroes; they are being treated as fools. Fox news and talk radio and conservative politicians cannot trust them not to do something embarrassing, so they are keeping their distance, acknowledging their grievance but not their method.
It will get cold and boring, like being in a duck blind with nothing to see or shoot.
No Ruby Ridge, no Waco, no blood, no news. No news is good news.
Peter Sage
Medford, Oregon
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