Take the latest spectacle in Oregon, for example.
Armed activists led by brothers Ryan and Ammon Bundy have occupied a federal wildlife refuge. The Bundys (infamous for their 2014 standoff with the Bureau of Land Management over grazing rights on federal land in Nevada) are protesting the government's prosecution of two ranchers, Dwight and Steven Hammond, who have been sentenced to five years in prison for allegedly setting back fires on government-owned land in Oregon. (Mind you, the government owns more than half the land in Oregon.)
Few conflicts are ever black and white, and this situation involving the Bundys, the Hammonds and the BLM is no exception. Yet the issue is not whether the Hammonds are arsonists as the government claims, or whether the Bundys are anti-government extremists as the government claims, or even whether ranchers should have their access to government-owned lands regulated as the BLM claims.
No, as I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the larger question at play here is who owns--or controls--the government: is it "we the people" or private corporations?
Are American citizens shareholders of the government's vast repositories, or are we merely serfs and tenant farmers in bondage to corporate overlords?
Do we have a say in how the government is run, or are we merely on the receiving end of the government's dictates?
What recourse do we have if we don't approve of the government's actions?
Almost every struggle between the citizenry and the government is, at its core, about whether we are masters or slaves in this constantly evolving relationship with the government.
It doesn't matter what the issue is--whether it's parents wanting to let their children to play outside alone, homeowners wanting to manage their private property as they see fit, activists having the right to freely associate with one another, assemble in public, and voice their opinions publicly or privately, or residents of a community having to obey whatever a police officer says, lawful or not--these are the building blocks of a political powder keg.
Much like the heated protests that arose after the police shootings in Ferguson and Baltimore, there's a subtext to the Oregon incident that must not be ignored, and it is simply this: America is a pressure cooker with no steam valve, and things are about to blow.
This is what happens when people get desperate, when citizens lose hope, and when lawful, nonviolent alternatives appear pointless.
Whether the parties involved are blameless or not, whether they're using the wrong tactics or not, whether their agendas are selfless or not, this is the face of a nation undergoing a nervous breakdown on all fronts.
Now all that remains is a spark, and it need not be a very big one, to set the whole powder keg aflame. Indeed, the government has been anticipating and preparing for such an explosion for years.
Yet when all is said and done, what we're grappling with is a double standard in what the government metes out to the citizenry, and how the citizenry is supposed to treat the government.
SWAT teams can crash through our doors without impunity, but if we dare to defend ourselves against unknown government assailants, we'll be shot or jailed.
Government agents can confiscate our homes, impound our cars and seize our bank accounts on the slightest suspicion of wrongdoing, but we'll face jail time and fines for refusing to pay taxes in support of government programs with which we might disagree.
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