I just caught a good documentary on TV about the history of the Bundy standoff in Burns, Oregon. Fortunately the documentary, “American Standoff,” is available on YouTube…
Basically, it all comes down to an over-reaching, power-mad Federal government that owns too much land out here in the west and likes to screw people over. Shocking, I know. A lot of the main figures in the story acted unwisely but were massively and disproportionately mistreated for it both by the judicial system and the media; a lot of the narrative around them is about as accurate as Gamergate, the Pink Tax and the Wage Gap. In other words: not at all accurate, but instead outright dishonesty in the form of insults and slander.
This story helps make plain some of the major political divides in the US. The two guys who basically started the whole thing, Dwight and Steven Hammond, were pardoned by President Trump a bit less than a month ago. There was considerable outrage by the professionally outraged class, because these two were nothing more than arsonists… but if you actually live in this part of the country, what they did – burning off fields – is standard agricultural practice. The way they were screwed over by the courts is why people were so upset…and why Obama (who did nothing) is so unpopular and Trump (who pardoned them) is seen as damn near a hero.