Quote:
Originally Posted by Cybermat47
(Post 2371017)
Okay, I did overreact. Sorry about that.
I don't have any problem with them protesting. But when they move in there with guns, and post videos to YouTube about being willing to kill and die to defend the rights of two arsonists, I honestly can't say that they're doing a good thing. But yes, they should be taken alive.
If being in Cadets taught me one thing, it's that we have rules for a reason. And these people are breaking laws for no justifiable reason. If the Government was marching people off the land and killing anyone who didn't go, then this reaction would be justified. As it is, two arsonists are being jailed for 5 years. I'd say that the protests were as far as anyone needed to go.
I hated the government that was in power in Australia a couple of months ago. It was a government that moved Australia backwards, cut the Defence Force's pay for no reason, got rid of gay marriage after just a few days of it being legal, and had a terrible immigration policy that led to Australia being labeled as racist.
But that's still no reason for me to have gotten a gun, upload threatening videos to YouTube, and taken over a government building. Especially seeing as that governemnt was soon to be replaced... just like the government these people are upset with. The Obama government literally only has a few more months before becoming a footnote in the history books.
And there is absolutely nothing that justifies them putting their kids there. Frankly, that just screams 'Human shields' to me.
Frankly, I just want this situation over. And as I mentioned earlier, I overreacted in my previous post. Now that I've calmed down, I just want this thing over peacefully.
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The difference between the US and...well...most other nations in the world is that the US has a distinct distrust of authority of any kind. I think it dates back to the revolution where the British authorities abused their power to levy excess tax upon the colonials.
So where other nations have a slight form of trust with the government, most Americans don't and in fact they see government as a challenge to their civil liberties and baulk at any attempt by the government, be it local or national, to extend its powers or take over anything.
Obviously not every American is as reactionary as the Bundy bunch, they're not likely to take up arms, not unless the government really does overreach itself, but they will in some instances sympathise with the sentiment of the Bundys, that the government has no right to do x, y or z. Most of the time this sentiment just expresses itself in voting Republican who always vow to fight 'big government', but of late there's been a split in the Republican party between those who think that the Republicans aren't doing enough to defend American rights against the big government and those who are part of the traditional Republican group, it's a sort of a demand to remove the career politicians from the Republican party and restore it to what these people believe is the proper grass-roots. Of course, other people believe that these people are extremists and that they're derailing the party, and both sides have spent the last two US elections both fighting the election and fighting each other. I think that this is one of the reasons that Trump has been so popular with a certain part of the Republican electorate, he's not part of the political machine, he's an outsider and he's not PC, he speaks his mind, no matter who it offends. To a certain set of people that's an appealing thing, but there's no telling how much damage it's doing to the Republican partys standing in the US and in the world.
Of course, such a thing is not restricted to the US, history has shown us that in times of economic crisis, people turn away from the usual political parties and go to the extremes, left and right. Take Poland for example, recently voted in some rather questionable people who are now trying to take apart its constitution, and Greece, people like Syrizas would have been laughed out of Athens twenty years ago, and few would have dreamed that the neo-Nazi Golden Dawn would be the third largest party in the country.
This can lead to...problems, one only has to look at Europe in the late 1920s to see how much of a problem it can lead to. One can only hope that we've learnt enough from history to avoid such things.
But getting back to the subject at hand, it's difficult for non-Americans to understand Americans, especially Americans like Bundy who have an almost paranoid fear of the American government. You can perhaps ponder if Bundy has any idea what a real tyrannical government is like, and if he had tried something like this in the PRC or DPRK whether he'd still have his Doritos...but equally, one could say that people like Bundy are there to make sure the US government doesn't become like the PRC or DPRK, by fighting each step of Washington attempts to take and keep power.
In short, there are no easy answers, there never have been, and that's why we are where we are.
At least, that's how this limey sees it. :03:
