The trending hashtag on Twitter this morning was #OregonUnderAttack. Immediately my friends on the left began to make it about race. If those guys weren't white... Send in the SWAT teams... If they were Muslims they'd all already be dead (ask Hasan Nidal)... It was a pretty vitriolic topic.
In fairness I'd like to point out that as far as I remember the SWAT teams in both Ferguson and Baltimore weren't arresting anyone. They were acting the fool in Ferguson with bad tactics and worse made for TV sound bite optics, but busting heads and shackling folks they were not. Ferguson burned. Baltimore burned. I doubt the morons who've taken over a remote federal building in Harney County have burned a single building or looted any stores in Burns, most likely because they would have been shot immediately by the locals. For the record the Morons are not at all local, but I digress.
Lawlessness increases by the far right and left, yet overall crime rates continue to drop. Both sides of the political spectrum just see the misbehavior of their adversaries. Taking over the dean's office at Yale is no less a criminal act than taking over a federal building in the middle of nowhere. Having a rifle slung on your back should increase your punishment for said act, by the way, but all participants should be punished similarly. A civil society rests on the consent of the governed, as soon as the fringe on either side figures out they can do what they want, havoc will follow.
All three areas are poor (Baltimore, Ferguson, Burns). Abandoned by industry, though Burns feels as though the logging industry was destroyed by the EPA's Spotted Owl policy. All three areas feel disenfranchised. What my friends on the left don't seem to realize is the same feelings of mistrust that spurred the riots in Ferguson and Baltimore can be seen in Harney County as well. The numbers I found listed the median income for a family in Harney County at around $38,000. What my friends on the left fail to realize is that if you take away the BLM/Forest Service/USDA (name your federal boogie man) employees and State Employees I'd bet that median salary goes down by at least 25%.
I've spent a fair amount of time in Harney County. It's a hard place to make a living. Hell, it's a hard place to stay alive 8 months out of the year. The weather is extreme, cold and windy in the winter, hot and dry in the summer with not much time in between seasons. High desert, dry, desolate. Your best and brightest leave and never look back. The ones left behind feel themselves under the thumb of the folks in Salem or worse yet, DC. For anyone being told how to live, or what you can or can't do on your property is infuriating. When it's someone who doesn't understand you or your home, looking down their nose at your poverty and lack of education it exacerbates the resentment of local ranchers, loggers, and outdoorsmen.
I think this must have been how the 1850's felt like. My friends on both sides of the political spectrum are getting more and more polarized towards one another. Both see the other as simply Other, Enemy, Less. After my time living all over the US I don't know how the Republic holds, short of a police state, from Balkanization. Interesting times my friends. Interesting times.
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