Rude Pundit: Moving the Overton window on "Terrorism"

[I hate liars]

Amen to this:

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?

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. To put the Hammonds in the same category as someone who tries to blow up a plane makes the word "terrorist" 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.

I have no more sympathy for the misguided "patriots" in Oregon than the least sympathetic readers of this forum. They deserve to stand trial for what they have done. But I do believe the Rude One makes an important point. Thanks to the fascists and bed-wetters in Congress, our Federal law enforcement agencies can apply the "Terrorist!" label to protesters, environmentalists, and yes, gun nuts when normal legal remedies are ample, available, and far more appropriate.

Like the unconscionable shootings, tasings, beatings, no-knock raids, property seizures, and other abuses of police powers we've witnessed in our towns and cities, applying terrorism laws to the Oregon "seige" is a manifestation of the "rule of law" dementia that has sapped our country of its core values since Reagan came to office.