Looks like the militia finally got regulated. After giving these clowns a month to work out their toy army siege fantasies, it all came crashing to an end, ignominiously, on a snowy road to nowhere. Say this much for noted wearer of cowboy hats and tarps LaVoy Finicum -- he meant what he said about how he'd rather die than go to jail.
If anyone was going to get taken down in this, it was Finicum; while Ammon Bundy at least made the effort to present a calm, rational demeanor in his irrational endeavor, Finicum seemed to relish the opportunity to play up the Yosemite Sam stereotype.
It's too bad that someone had to die before something actually got done about this nonsense, but it's not like we didn't all see something like this coming up the road. Perhaps the only real surprise in all this is just how few of them there were -- twenty on all, counting Finicum, the eight that were arrested, and the eleven that remained afterward, most of whom have already been rolled up.
It will be interesting to see if the "movement" sees those low numbers and is disheartened by their measly turnout, or emboldened to step up the internuts recruitment efforts. This is the very essence of what fuels the various 5GW terrorist cells overseas, up to and including more notorious groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. The ease and flexibility of social media enables this sort of thing.
What sets the American domestic terror cells apart strategically is their lack of anonymity. They are so steeped in the bizarre connection between early Mormon land-poaching in the American West and a unique interpretation of certain Constitutional clauses, they just assume everyone's on their side because they're right. And they're not; just like cults inflicting their personal interpretations of Biblical or Quranic text on everyone else, they're simply re-reading the supreme law of the land to suit their personal purposes.
This is not some dopey "urban vs. rural" contretemps of condescension, this is simply a matter of what the appropriate avenues for protest are against laws we disagree with. To attempt to incite insurrection and subvert the Constitution is, not to put too fine a point on it, dangerous by definition, and in the hands of driven zealots, a singularly dangerous proposition. I may kvetch about the corrupted gubmint we live under, and the elites who run it for themselves and their dogsbodies in the media, but I have no illusions about what life would be like for any non-Bundy types in Bundystan.
If anyone was going to get taken down in this, it was Finicum; while Ammon Bundy at least made the effort to present a calm, rational demeanor in his irrational endeavor, Finicum seemed to relish the opportunity to play up the Yosemite Sam stereotype.
It's too bad that someone had to die before something actually got done about this nonsense, but it's not like we didn't all see something like this coming up the road. Perhaps the only real surprise in all this is just how few of them there were -- twenty on all, counting Finicum, the eight that were arrested, and the eleven that remained afterward, most of whom have already been rolled up.
It will be interesting to see if the "movement" sees those low numbers and is disheartened by their measly turnout, or emboldened to step up the internuts recruitment efforts. This is the very essence of what fuels the various 5GW terrorist cells overseas, up to and including more notorious groups like al Qaeda and ISIS. The ease and flexibility of social media enables this sort of thing.
What sets the American domestic terror cells apart strategically is their lack of anonymity. They are so steeped in the bizarre connection between early Mormon land-poaching in the American West and a unique interpretation of certain Constitutional clauses, they just assume everyone's on their side because they're right. And they're not; just like cults inflicting their personal interpretations of Biblical or Quranic text on everyone else, they're simply re-reading the supreme law of the land to suit their personal purposes.
This is not some dopey "urban vs. rural" contretemps of condescension, this is simply a matter of what the appropriate avenues for protest are against laws we disagree with. To attempt to incite insurrection and subvert the Constitution is, not to put too fine a point on it, dangerous by definition, and in the hands of driven zealots, a singularly dangerous proposition. I may kvetch about the corrupted gubmint we live under, and the elites who run it for themselves and their dogsbodies in the media, but I have no illusions about what life would be like for any non-Bundy types in Bundystan.
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