View from the Cheap Seats is kind of an extension of the newsroom. Whenever our three regular reporters, Calvin Daniels, Thom Barker and Randy Brenzen are in the building together, it is frequently a site of heated debate. This week: What do you think of the armed standoff in Oregon between militiamen and the federal government.
Want to scream
I kind of regret picking the standoff between a small group of armed ranchers and federal authorities at an Oregon wildlife refuge as a topic for Cheap Seats.
These yahoos are so exasperating they just make me want to scream.
Let’s be clear about one thing. They are not protesters. They are not freedom fighters. They are not patriots.
They are terrorists, plain and simple.
If they were poor black people, they would be in jail, hospital or worse right now.
If they were muslim, every single one of them would be dead right now.
The fact that authorities put up with this crap from privileged white men is appalling.
Do you want to know how bad it is? Even two of the most reprehensible right wing politicians in America, Republican presidential hopefuls Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio have called on the traitors to stand down.
That’s right, traitors, not patriots.
Everybody has a right to free speech and peaceful protest under the U.S. Constitution. This is not that. This is an act of armed sedition against a lawfully elected government. They have threatened to use force and violence if their vague and ill-conceived demands are not met. They have the capacity to do so.
They should all be captured, tried for treason and sent to Guantanamo Bay.
—Thom Barker
Seditious
The situation at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon is an interesting one.
It’s not that a group of armed American domestic terrorists have bravely occupied a building which was closed for the season, but rather the reaction to their action.
In its simplest form the act is one of sedition.
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, which tends toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent (or resistance) to lawful authority.
One might expect the government in the United States would be doing something in the face of domestic terrorism.
Certainly with no hostages, and the general isolation of the site, the urgency to deal with the radicals is low, but what message does that send?
Will other domestic militants take it as a sign of government weakness and feel braver and so they take over a government building with hostages?
If that happens and it escalates because of a nervous terrorist with a military rifle in his hands, and a hostage is murdered, does the government bear a share of the blame because they waffled in Oregon?
The public outcry, or lack thereof, is telling too.
If the terrorists were of Middle Eastern descent, there would have been a deafening cry for immediate action (read a military strike).
Even a peaceful demonstration — no firearms — by First Nations people would have caused far more public outrage.
But as it is, the threat of domestic terrorism is being under played because of race.
The situation is one which very much reflects the American problems of race and firearms and government distrust, and now a lack of resolve to address the issues head on.
—Calvin Daniels
Terrorists
I really have no idea what to even say about the Oregon Standoff other then why do we give these nut jobs the time of day to write about them?
Really, they deserve absolutely no recognition; or rather, no recognition by people like us.
The only time they deserve to be recognized is by a judge when they’re eventually sentenced to prison (if they’re not killed in the process of their ‘cause’).
Writing about them honestly angers me. In my mind they’re no better than ISIS or Al-Qaeda or any of the other terrorist cells and groups.
Sure, they may say they’re against terrorism and that they hate it, but they’re also actively participating in it for the sake of having their ‘cause’ brought to the forefront.
As for their ‘cause’, the family that they’re allegedly doing this for (the Hammonds) have come out and said that these boneheads do not speak for them and are not associated with them.
The fact that the family that they’re allegedly supporting wants nothing to do with them is evidence that they most likely have ulterior motives (other than the whole trying to get the Malheur National Forest to be given up by the federal government).
To end, because I won’t name the culprits or their terrorist organization, all I can say is that hopefully justice will prevail and these dummies see the inside of a jail cell sooner rather than later.
—Randy Brenzen
