CSotD: … and we’re back. (Sort of)
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Between some repeats, some un-updated sites and a continuing trickle of late-arriving New Year's gags, it seems apparent that having a major holiday fall on Friday means Monday doesn't exactly hit the ground running, particularly when it's New Years and we've just had an entire week of nobody doing anything.
However, at least the crazies worked over the weekend, hence our
Juxtaposition of the Day
It may well be that having most of media management off for the holidays explains the disjointed reporting of the seizure and occupation of the wildlife refuge building, in which an apparently ragtag group of armed angry people were being described as a "militia" and numbered at 150 or perhaps a dozen.
For my part, I'm willing to let the copy editors sit around a table for a day or two obsessing over terminology (it's what they do best, after all), but, if they do decide "militia" is an accurate term, I'd like to know how they come up with it, because I don't think these folks are affiliated with any state or local government and it's not even clear how many of them are affiliated with each other.
Though I wouldn't expect much more of an explanation of the language decisions of copy editors than their patron saint offered Alice:
'I don't know what you mean by "glory,"' Alice said.
Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. 'Of course you don't—till I tell you. I meant "there's a nice knock-down argument for you!"'
'But "glory" doesn't mean "a nice knock-down argument,"' Alice objected.
'When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.'
'The question is,' said Alice, 'whether you can make words mean so many different things.'
'The question is,' said Humpty Dumpty, 'which is to be master—that's all.'
In any case, the wise guys of the Internet have already started coming up with their own terminology – Y'all Qaeda, Vanilla ISIS and so forth — and Clay Jones joins in the mockery with an apt and funny line.
Bagley also ridicules the occupiers, but with less merriment and more of a sense of dismissal. He portrays them as ridiculous, pot-bellied buffoons, but his most telling critique is in Uncle Sam's dubious sideglance at their high-sounding, absurd rhetoric.
I suppose that, as the rest of the media shakes off its holiday torpor and gets back on task, we'll see more about this, and it will be interesting to see the dialogue unfold, particularly among the GOP candidates, who dearly want the votes of angry white men but have to demonstrate some grasp of civilized behavior.
Or maybe they don't: After all, they're appealing to a demographic that is furious over their deluded belief that kids don't say the Pledge of Allegiance in school each day while being equally furious over the notion that they should themselves show allegiance to the nation for which it stands, and that denounces Bernie Sanders as a socialist but is unfazed by a bromance between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.
In any case, while we wait for the grownups to get back in the office, some thoughts:
Cartoonists have been mocking the Tea Party ever since it emerged, and yet it appears to still be a robust movement, perhaps because the laughter was coming from people who already held them in contempt.
Similarly, Bob Hope and Al Capp got plenty of laughs from Archie and Edith at the expense of the left wing a generation or two ago, but the war ended, LBJ declined to seek a second term and the voting age came down to 18.
I doubt rightwing crazies are looking for support from the left side of the aisle in the first place, but I've certainly heard people on both sides proudly flaunt the contempt of their enemies as a sign they're having an impact.
I'd also like to see some better history brought to bear on this specific situation.
People are saying that, if the occupiers were black, they'd be dead by now, but there's a substantial difference between what is happening in Oregon and what happened in Ferguson. If we see hundreds of undisciplined people turn out in Oregon, defying not only the police but the organizers of the occupation, you may find your parallel, but it's not there now.
And I may be forgetting something, but I had to go back 30 years to find a case of authorities using deadly force against a minority occupation, and, as NPR discovered, the bombing of MOVE is barely a blip on the national consciousness today. The more prominent, more recent, examples are Ruby Ridge and Waco, which have a fair amount in common with the Oregon situation.
In fact, those examples aside, waiting out an occupation is the default.
In my time reporting on the border, there were two armed standoffs between government forces and militant Mohawk groups, and both were eventually resolved — to the extent that they were — through time, not through violence. The only fatality in either was at Oka, the result of an ill-considered assault by Quebec police that was condemned by all sides and led to their eventually being replaced by the Canadian Army.
The other stemmed from the downing of a medical helicopter which, having gotten lost, circled over the militant community of Ganienkeh, where its military markings drew fire that wounded a doctor and cut a hydraulic line, forcing it to land nearby. If that wasn't incentive for an armed response, I'm not sure what might be, but the New York State Police simply surrounded the place and the two sides stared at each other over the barricades for two weeks.
So, for the moment, let's not panic.
I don't know if any cooler heads are really going to come into play over the next few days, but I'm pretty sure adding more foolishness won't help. We've already got all the foolishness we need.
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