The world's being quite diplomatic about the armed men who seized a building in the Malheur Wildlife Refuge outside Burns, Ore., this week – although one of their leaders, Ammon Bundy, insists the occupation will go on indefinitely. "We're planning on staying here for years," he says, and claims that the group of undetermined size (the armed men say 150; local media say six to 12) is prepared to fight and die for its cause.
"The facility has been the tool to do all the tyranny that has been placed upon the Hammonds," Mr. Bundy said – putting an awful lot on the shoulders of a wildlife-refuge headquarters. Those must be some pretty despotic birdwatching brochures. The Hammonds he is referring to are a father and son whom a court has ordered must serve a five-year sentence for lighting 56 hectares of forest on fire with matches.
The Washington Post called the group, which has asked other like-minded people to join it, and to bring their weapons, "occupiers." The New York Times called it "militia men" and "armed activists."
"A family previously involved in a showdown with the federal government has occupied a building at a national wildlife refuge in Oregon and is asking militia members to join them," the Associated Press put it, calmly. Police are staying away, suggesting others do the same, and eventually announced that the armed people illegally occupying government property could also come and go as they please.
"The family" here would be that of Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy, who engaged in an armed standoff with federal agents over Mr. Bundy's refusal to pay (for more than 20 years) the legally required fee for letting his cattle graze on government land. At the end of the lengthy confrontation, during which guns were pointed at law-enforcement officers, no one was charged, let alone shot at, by police, no fees were paid (he owes more than $1-million U.S.), and Mr. Bundy's cattle graze happily away for free to this day.
It's not difficult to see why his sons, Ammon and Ryan (Cliven himself is sitting this one out) think this bit of winter camping will be fruitful in some way because … well, I don't really have an ending for this sentence, so I will just say "constitution" a lot in a way that suggests that it means (constitutionally) "I win!" as most, constitution, of the people engaged in these various anti-government movements like to do. Founding Fathers.
Should you feel compelled to rob an American liquor store, try doing it in the name of "We, the people." This seems to ensure you a more sympathetic hearing.
There is, of course, a stark (black and white, it has been pointed out) contrast between the way last year's protests in Ferguson, Mo. – sparked by the police shooting of an 18-year-old black man, Michael Brown – were handled by both law enforcement and the media and the "Wait-and-see and in the meantime let's try and understand where these guys are coming from, here's another explainer …" tactics being employed in and about the armed insurrection in Oregon.
This is not to suggest that state troopers should be brought in to escalate the situation and further endanger lives. Best-case scenario, the encampment is surrounded, no food or beer gets in, and the wildlife-refuge encroachers either come out peacefully and face charges, or this thing ends all Donner Party.
Fair as it may be, the press shouldn't start referring to the "occupiers" as "armed gang members" from families "known to the police," but perhaps the question that should be asked is: What exactly is it about middle-aged white guys that makes us take their opinions so seriously at the same time that we pretty much discount any threat they actually may pose?
Almost without fail, the media parse the concerns and/or manifestos of white men like they were the song lyrics of a favourite band and as if what matters in the discussions isn't so much whether these grievances ("I'd really rather that nature reserve was part of my ranch but no one will give it to me and I can't just burn it down without going to jail," for example) are legitimate but whether a middle-aged white man perceives them as legitimate.
That perception of injury often seems to be taken more seriously than a black man's actual bullet wound, but should a middle-aged white man make any threats regarding his grievances, everyone, we're told, should just take a deep breath. After all, the thinking seems to be, just because a middle-aged white man, holed up in a cabin with a lot of guns, says, for example, that he's prepared to kill, or "I came here to die" – as one of the Oregon men has said – doesn't mean this middle-aged white man and the burgeoning anti-government movement that supports him pose a risk to society.
Somehow, it's always serious enough that we have to listen to that guy, with a straight face, but seldom serious enough that anyone feels compelled to actually do anything about him; middle-aged white man occupies the sweet spot of seriousness.
Middle-aged white man sits there in the middle of our society "aggrieved," while lesser mortals are dismissed as "entitled," you know the ones.
For over a year now, university students asking for "trigger warnings" have been portrayed as the single greatest threat to society as we know it; the delicacy with which armed grown-ups bleating about their constitutional right to own things that aren't theirs is a bit much to take just now.
I happen to think trigger warnings, or at least mandatory trigger warnings, are a terrible idea. Not, as is often suggested, because the trauma under discussion, often rape and racism, is too trivial or minimal to consider, or because there is no injustice, but because human experience and inequality is too vast and common to catalogue in an effective manner. However, university students raising the issue of trigger warnings (even if they're really annoying about it) is hardly the reverse Kent State that much spilled ink suggests.
Students are going to student, it's what they've always done. They come to university and get handed a big chemistry set of ideas and they start playing with them, combining them, hoping for one result, often getting another. Mostly, nothing happens; sometimes someone loses a finger, but, historically, their enquiry advances us. And if there's one group deserving of some indulgence, surely it's this young, half-formed one?
Certainly not the equally bearded, also beer-drinking set, the one in the woods, who are all but calling their appropriated cabin a "constitutional safe space" and complaining of federal "microaggressions," and are armed.