Civil Disobedience being in the eye of the beholder, I'm not at all sure what it is specifically, but there's a fair degree of certainty that what's going on in Oregon ain't it.
militarized law enforcement responses almost always bad idea, but we only raise this point when it's about criminal right wingers
— Atrios (@Atrios) January 3, 2016
Trying hard not to say, "It's time to regulate the fuck outa that militia."
https://t.co/n018rc9ENf
— Mike Roberts (@EvilleMike) January 3, 2016
There's so much happening, and so many flips and turns, and so much that's gone before that leads up to this, it's hard to find the room to step back far enough to get the whole picture.
One of the big things is that outfits like The Bundy Gang have been playing this "I'm not gonna be da gubmint's bitch" game for a very long time. Well sorry-not-sorry, guys, but you're not the government's bitch. You're Sheldon Adelson's bitch. You're Charlie Koch's bitch. You're Roger Ailes's bitch. You've been lied to and manipulated into being pissed off at all the wrong people. Which makes you a very useful bitch for anybody with a sizable media budget, who plays on your need for martyrdom and pity in order to hide his own power-grabbing agenda. In the old story, you're Guy of Gisborne to Rush Limbaugh's Prince John. Not to put too fine a point on it for ya, Sparky, but you're on the wrong fucking side. Again.
So anyway -
Nobody ever taught these moochers about The Tragedy Of The Commons. They see "open land" that belongs to all Americans; they need to expand their operation to make it pay for an expanding clan of (eg) Bundy kids; and so they believe in their hearts that they can just take what they need because all that land is right there and they feel entitled to it.
And none of that ever registers as ironic in their pea-pickin' little brain pans. And if you try to teach them a little sumpthin' about how they have to share - or at least they have to pay for what they get - they go into that cornered-animal crouch and start whining about being the victims of Oppressive Gubmint again.
These guys seem never to have matured past being hormone-poisoned teenagers. They're subsumed by that deadly combination of ignorance and adolescent bravado which makes it impossible for them to know their conclusion can't be true when they start from a false premise.
--BTW: that last bit is Ayn Rand. You remember Ayn Rand - the patron saint of your Radically Libertarian Douchenozzlery, right, Sparky? Yeah, no - it never sounds like you remember shit about it even if you ever fucking read any of it.
Don't worry
Even as we speak the media is sending their best thesauruses to Oregon to find other words than "terrorists."
#OregonUnderAttack
— Steve Marmel (@Marmel) January 3, 2016
I remember watching some Western on TV and the typical barroom brawl breaks out, and I asked my dad why everybody gets in on the fight when it was just a beef between two guys. He told me something like - some jokers got nuthin' better to do than hang around waitin' for an excuse to punch somebody.
So now we wait.
