… Really Not Fair
At first I found it nearly impossible to comprehend why various governmental agencies and private security firms have sicced guard dogs on those Standing Rock Sioux protesters at the site of the Dakota Access Pipeline not even ten months after other agencies allowed all those Bundy-ists to take over the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge and let them occupy it for nearly six weeks.
Who Let The Dogs Out?
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To be fair, one of the Bundy blowhards was shot dead late in the Oregon standoff, an incident that inspired within me neither sympathy nor grief. Of course, LaVoy Finicum had to attempt to run down an FBI agent at a roadblock and then reach for a semi-automatic pistol in his jacket pocket before anybody opened fire on him. I suppose those acts might be deemed a tad more dangerous than a ragtag band of Sioux waving placards and shouting slogans, even by FBI agents.
Hell, the original Bundy boneheads and their sympathizers aimed high-powered rifles and automatic weapons at law enforcement officials the first time they threw a tantrum, in southeastern Nevada back in 2014. It’s no wonder someone got an itchy trigger finger toward the end of the Malheur episode.
Bundy Supporter LaVoy Finicum Packs Heat At Malheur
[Photo: Rick Bowmer/AP]
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Sioux adults and children are being gnawed bloody by the guard dogs even though, for pity’s sake, the protesters aren’t armed. Did I neglect to mention all the pepper spraying going on?
Shockingly, law officers allowed the Malheur occupiers to come and go as they pleased throughout much of the standoff. And, boy, when the fracas was finished, Refuge officials found that the occupiers had vandalized much of the property because…, well, just because.
The Sioux figure they’ve got the good word of the US Gov’t to back up their case. This holy land had long ago entered into a pact with these particular Sioux guaranteeing no one would ever mess with their natural resources at Standing Rock. Then again, all such pacts between the feds and various aboriginal American groups were packs of lies, so what did the Sioux expect anyway?
Still, there’s the fact that each of the protesting groups is claiming the freedom to commit civil disobedience in response to government overreach. So, why aren’t the two groups being treated equitably?
The only difference I can make out is the Standing Rock Sioux were short-sighted enough to be born into a racial lineage that had suffered a federally-sanctioned genocide. The Bundy gang and their ilk had the good fortune to be born into the racial lineage that did the genociding.
It’s enough to make me want to sit down during the national anthem.
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