Militia yahoos

So a bunch of yahoos took over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge a couple days ago, ostensibly as a protest to the sentencing of Dwight and Steve Hammond, who were ordered to return to prison to serve a mandatory minimum sentence after they set a few fires some years back that incinerated a good bit of public land, they originally were sentenced to a lesser term, served it, and were released, but a judge ruled that under Oregon's mandatory minimum sentencing laws, they had another four years or so.

The Hammonds are horrible people and deserve what they get, though I disagree with mandatory minimum sentences for crimes, and I also have problems with people getting told after they were released that they need to go back, however I find it interesting that the folks protesting are very likely people who would be voting for those same laws, all the while thinking they would be used to put them drug fiends in the city away forever, so it sort of pleases me that this is biting them in the ass, although I realize I am making connections that may not really be there.

I got sidetracked though, the Hammonds are idiot ranchers who think that things like property boundaries and "having forests that aren't infernos" are bad ideas, and they have a lot of similarly mentally equipped supporters, many of whom gave a remarkably peaceful demonstration prior to the Refuge being seized.

The Hammonds are a sideshow though, the other putative reason given by the militia idiots for their protest has something to do with the federal government owning land, specifically it seems they don't approve of that, and it should stop immediately, it is unclear who the land should go to, some say the States, others are somewhat vague, presumably because they would get laughed at if they just came out and admitted that they wanted it all themselves.

I've been using the word protest rather than terrorism here, because I am not sure this really counts, oh I am sure the FBI could make a case if they wanted, but it doesn't really feel like it to me, I realize that is not a very scientifically accurate description but there you go, so if it's a protest why do I disagree with it and want it to stop? As I have said before, if a protest inconveniences no on, then it really isn't doing its job. So I had to ask myself if this was a group of people I agreed with, say for example Black Lives Matter protesters, doing something similar would I rush to condemn them? I am afraid the answer is no, no I wouldn't, and then I had to figure out why.

I stopped this post for about half an hour and talked to Zena about it, and what we came up with has to do with the relative power of the groups involved. I won't talk a lot about racism here tonight, but I will say that ranchers and farmers are enormously influential politically and the successful ones tend to have a decent deal of money, as we can see with this group of idiots who have said they would be there for years if need be, someone who has to worry about rent would probably think twice about that commitment. These guys have power and freedom that very few other groups in America have is what I am saying, more at the local level, but their groups are being pandered to in the presidential campaigns right now as well. They have choices that don't involve threatening to murder people for going to work is what I am saying.

A BLM protest, hmm, I mean Black Lives Matter, not Bureau of Land Management, man I never thought I'd right a post that has to distinguish between the two, anyway, a that group has very little power and influence, and while I might disagree with the use of arms to get a point across, I find it hard to condemn a powerless group from using whatever tactic is available to them to get a message out.
These guys are ridiculous, the government, at all levels, has bent over backwards to appease middle class white men from rural areas for pretty much the entirety of its history, the federal over reaching they are protesting is stuff like being asked politely to not SET FIRE TO GOVERNMENT LAND or asking to be paid for using it in the first place, for years, uncompensated, then giving up anyway once confronted with the idea that redneck assholes might get mad about it. They aren't asking for grievances the be addressed, they aren't looking for privileges that some groups are getting that they are not, they are literally saying that they don't think they should have to obey the law of the country they claim to be patriots for.

So that's my argument for now, groups like BLM aren't looking for special treatment, they are looking for the same treatment we give groups like these militia nutbars, they aren't looking for exemptions from the law, they simply want it applied fairly, rather than in the flagrantly racist way it is done now.

I'm not a fan of armed insurrection, mostly because I don't want to get shot during a civil war, which I feel is reasonable, but I am saying some groups might have a teensy bit more justification than others.

...

Well maybe not that, I think I am saying some groups have a shitload less justification than others, and some groups include the useless blowhards out in Burns at the moment.

Oh yeah, you can probably disregard the numbers in most of the news articles, there are likely less than two dozen people out there, just remembered that fact and didn't have anywhere else to put it.