Damn it. Wanted to see someone get tasered or pepper sprayed at least.
It is pretty weird that they are going out and, like, picking up pizza and stuff.
Whiteface.
This is a bunch of dudes playing soldier.
Articles today are indicating they now have a massive stockpile of food.
I'm all for a peaceful, de-escalation approach by the authorities as opposed to a shootout, but I think letting these clowns and their supporters have free rein to come and go and build up their food and ammo stockpiles is taking the hands off approach a little too far. Not sure how that's going to make anything better when the time finally comes to do something about them.
Two thoughts:
1) This is how law enforcement should treat all politically-motivated occupations or else it's pretty clear that sympathetic politics and white faces result in grossly different outcomes. Right now, I think the latter is the case, especially when you compare this latest iteration of this brand of extremism with, say, the black panthers.
2) Cleaning these fuckers out will now be infinitely more powerful as a symbol to anti-government domestic terrorists than it would have been if they droned the building out of existence on day one.
Before the mission, one of the crew, Jon Ritzheimer, released an almost-touching farewell video in which he vows to “die a free man”. Only almost, because, after all, the plan was to seize a nesting habitat for migratory birds in a remote, frigid desert. The mystique is further undercut by Mr Ritzheimer’s record of Muslim-baiting in his home state of Arizona. That points to another interpretation of such activism: less agrarian and romantic than a combustible form of anti-government extremism, fuelled by conspiracy theories and sharing ideological roots, and some personnel, with white supremacism.