The Rude Pundit ain't gonna get into the whole comparison thing when it comes to the platoon of armed, angry rednecks who took a mighty stand this weekend by taking over an empty wildlife refuge building in the Middle of Snowy Fuckwhere, Oregon. He ain't gonna say what would have happened if they had been a group of Black Lives Matters protesters. We know how that would have played out. He ain't gonna discuss how this is or isn't terrorism. That's playing the same game as "Why doesn't Obama say Muslim cocksuckers?" He ain't even gonna say that Ryan Bundy's face looks like what happens when a sloth fucks an old shoe. (Okay, he is gonna say that.)
What he is gonna say, in the few minutes here before his flight takes off from the deep South, is that the major complaint of the aforementioned rednecks is the wrong issue. Mostly, they're just greedy shit-for-brains who want more land and don't like the government passing "laws" that can tell them what to do with land that isn't theirs. The rednecks, most of whom come from elsewhere and are loathed by the locals, say they're pissed because two ranchers, father and son by the last name of Hammond, should have been allowed to set supposed brush-clearing fires on federal land. For that clear crime, they had to pay a fine and go to jail for a spell.
The rednecks are upset about the land issue because, as said before, they are greedy fucks, like the redneck leader, Ammon Bundy, and his despicable father, Cliven, who you might remember from last year's armed redneck stand-off in Nevada over cattle-grazing fees. What they should be upset about, way more than the land bullshit, is that the Hammonds were prosecuted under a 1996 anti-terrorism law and are being sent back to jail because the federal government didn't think the original judge should have shortened the mandatory five-year sentence to under a year. The judge did that because how the fuck is the land burning in any way, shape, or form terrorism, and aren't mandatory minimums kind of fucked up?
What the rednecks ought to be protesting is the egregious and seemingly random use of "terrorism" to prosecute and persecute people around the country and the world. The section of the 1996 law the Hammonds were subject to is titled "Criminal Law Modifications to Counter Terrorism." To put the Hammonds in the same category as someone who tries to blow up a plane makes the word "terrorist" and the laws behind it meaningless. To not prosecute abortion clinic shooters as terrorists makes the word less than meaningless. To proudly announce that the FBI has arrested a terrorist who is really just a poor, mentally ill bastard who was entrapped because he said one or two things on an online forum is to render the entire terrorist state apparatus antithetical to an alleged democracy.
Of course, this is a more complicated issue than "I want more land because fuck you and I love the Constitution except the parts I hate." So, in the end, fuck you, armed rednecks. Reap what you've fuckin' sowed.
(Update: Clarified because the Hammonds weren't prosecuted as "terrorists," but under an anti-terrorism law, which included arson on federal lands, which was a response to some environmental activists using more violent means. They were called "eco-terrorsts" by the media. Thanks to rude reader Matt C. for the info.)
