The government better not hurt a hair on their heads. All across the middle east: Syria, Egypt, Libya, etc, and in the Ukraine, when armed protesters attack government troops and government troops respond with deadly force, President Obama and the west have sided with the protesters and called for "regime change". So, if government troops use deadly force against this group in Oregon, then Obama should step down. To not do so would be hypocritical, no?
no. But I don't think anyone cares what these Gomers do for a Winter out in the middle of nowhere. It just isn't worth the trouble, they will quit before Spring.
This is an example of how living in an echo chamber gives one a false since of reality. Within their circles this action seemed critical and necessary, honorable and inspiring. But the reality from outside is that it seems petty, self-serving and ridiculous.
First of all Obama has not sided with protesters in the cases you mentioned unless you mean wanting to get rid of Gadaffi, or Assad or other dictators. Protesting against murderous dictators if far different than protesting against the legally elected president of the United States. Protesting against those dictators and asking citizens of the United States is not hypocritical. They are both moves that favor the course of democracy. Now we can talk about hypocritical when a black person gets killed by police and folks say they should have just followed the police's orders and they would be alive. Yet those same people aren't claiming that these criminals would be okay if they died for not following the police's orders.
But we can't govern based on the wishes of a violent, fringe set of nutballs, can we? What would you do with the idiots in Oregon? I honestly have no clue other than to ignore them (i.e. Alcatraz treatment).
So, to be clear, you think you can have a fruitful discourse about federal ownership of lands in the West with these 8 guys who are all carrying guns and vowing they will shoot law enforcement officers who try to remove them from the premises they are illegally occupying. But, you cannot have a conversation about police brutality with a representative from Black Lives Matter because some minority of their membership has in the past engaged in acts of violence (that were condemned by the leadership) and your life might be in danger. Do I have that right? Also, I would point out that you seem to have a hard time distinguishing one BLM protester from another, and one imam from another. You can't seem to tell a jihadi from an honest Muslim citizen. So you put them into a big bucket and say you can't really trust any of them because some sub-category has engaged in violence in the past and you can't tell the good ones from the bad ones. And yet, you can implicitly and automatically distinguish this right-wing, anti-federal group from other right-wing, anti-federal groups that have engaged in violence in the past. And moreover, you can declare this one to be likely nonviolent even though holding loaded weapons and threatening to shoot law enforcement is arguably assault and terrorism. Again the guns change everything. If you do a sit-in at a post office you may be disturbing the peace and trespassing. That's civic disobedience and I can respect it so long as protesters are indeed willing to go to jail for the crimes they commit to make their protest. If you do such a sit-in with guns and threaten law enforcement, it's disturbing the peace, trespassing, assault, and terrorism. I can't respect that unless we're talking about a response to severe government oppression, French Revolution style.
Isolated in a freezing small building with limited food is sort of jail. You just put out a few infrared detectors and drive out an arrest them when they pack up to leave. Really it's the most impotent protest movement ever. I'll uh, just arrest myself
Learn the lesson of Syria and get out before it gets ugly in this Obama dictatorship. Don't end up at the Canadian border as an undesirable refugee stereotyped as a violent as ****, gun toting, ignorant American. Leave now before it's too late!
not in all middle east countries, we & the west sure as hell sided with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain etc when they decided to beat & shoot protesters.
Hopefully there is some way to drop felonies on these guys that will disallow them from owning guns in the future. That would be absolutely hilarious.
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Sided with protesters in the overthrow of secular "dictators", so that muslim extremists can take their place. Such an improvement. Let's ask the thousands that have been killed since what they think. I think they would have rather continued to live under a "dictator" than be slaughtered by religious extremists that now control Libya and much of Syria. Oh, and Viktor Yanukovych was legally and lawfully elected. He was deposed with Obama's support and eagerness to side with every rebel cause, but he is actually still rightfully the lawful president of Ukraine. And are you really trying to link the Oregon standoff to BLM crap? Such a farce. An open, controlled standoff with two -way dialogue has nothing in common with the poster-child cases of "injustice" that BLM touts, which are typically spontaneous interactions between police and suspects whose intentions are not known. Far different from the Oregon situation. I guarantee you that if a black supremacist group were to take over a similar federal building, they would be treated with even greater care by the authorities. Come on, this country is so whipped and sensitive to racial tension that the media refuses to give descriptions of black criminal suspects, police officers doing their jobs get fired and railroaded because police departments and municipalities are afraid the black communities will riot, causing widespread destruction. All of these incidents are promoting the idea amongst the black community that it's okay or even noble to buck up to and disobey police officers when you're interacting with them. Whether it be a kid refusing an officer's order to get out of a schoolchair and leave a classroom, a girl in a bikini refusing an officers order to leave the scene, or a woman who is being let go without a ticket who couldn't stop herself from mouthing off and being stupid, causing her to be taken to prison when she easily could have been on her way if she acted like an intelligent person.
Oh, I've said several times in this thread: don't give them a bunch of media coverage, don't escalate anything unless they do, try and negotiate, then cut off the power and wait. They are in the middle of frikken nowhere, more power to 'em. These guys are worthless loudmouth candyasses and will give up soon (and hopefully get charged with various federal crimes), just don't give them a reason to get violent.
More Armed Men Arriving at Oregon Wildlife Refuge This is the downside to "just waiting it out". It's turning into a redneck cluster****. Now you've got two, separate unaffiliated groups of armed gubmint-hating yahoos.
