FSTO said:
Baltimore and Ferguson are built up urban areas where riots were happening and it is extremely hard to control people's actions.
Eastern Oregon is high country desert without many people. Federal forces surround the building, nobody gets in or out and you starve them out and nobody gets hurt.
Why does the limousine Liberals want to turn this into a race thing?
Right, I make this exact point in the same post just above the part you quoted. My main point however, is that even the reason for a limited response is for tactical purposes, it's not playing well in the media given what we saw in Baltimore and Ferguson. Optics are important here, because a case can be made that the over-policed African-American communities we're talking about have just as much of a grievance if not more than these guys. Remember, the protest is in support of two people who burned 130 acres of public land to the ground.
PuckChaser said:
This has all the hallmarks over another Waco, and Kilo would love to see them shoot the place up (from what I gather with the quotes). These guys will get bored eventually, they're highly unlikely to start shooting people or taking hostages. Media coverage to get their opinions out is enough.
My initial reaction was yes, send in the tanks. The Bundy protesters were actually drawing down on law enforcement. Whatever the geographic area, we've seen dozens of cases recently where police shot innocent people or used far too much force. So when you see a group that's well armed, openly saying they're willing to fight and die in position my reaction was "let's help them do that." However, for reasons in the Jacobin article I posted above, this reaction was wrongheaded and I admit that.
For posterity's sake though, let's all remember the reactions many had to the protests in Ferguson or Baltimore. I didn't see this level of empathy here for those people. So the question is, why? What makes this grievance more legitimate than a community who has seen police wrongfully kill or murder their fellow citizens on a regular basis?
This situation could be useful, if we use it to address what we have in common, and what we agree upon (we being the right and left in the US who don't think either party is going address real issues). I would imagine that many of us agree that the State in this case is illegitimate. Now, personally I think the State
(in this specific case) is behaving appropriately, because two people committed arson, and mandatory minimums demand they see more time (funny that mandatory minimums are usually supported in most cases by those who lean to the right, but not this time...).
But this doesn't mean the State as it exists in the US is by definition legitimate, and it's perfectly ok to question its power. I'm coming at this from a socialist perspective, but I suspect I would agree with some of the concepts that the militia are citing to limit state power. However, if this is the case, and many of you agree with them, you must also accept that the State acted illegitimately in Baltimore and Ferguson. First by protecting the officers involved, attempting to cover up facts, and then deploying military force to face off with mostly peaceful protesters.
I agree with cupper, that this should probably be split off. I would reiterate however, that the left and right can find some common ground here. Trump and Sanders are front runners for a reason. There is a large swathe of the populace that isn't satisfied with the Dems OR the Republicans and this situation underlines that.