@Bastethotep #43477
Yeah it’s one of the things the shooting of Michael Brown brought to light in Ferguson.
To add to your point the right wing sure didn’t want attention drawn to the collective rap sheets of everyone who violently took over and occupied that wildlife refuge. Not the decades of unpaid fines from illegally grazing on government land - which Cliven Bundy is right back to doing thanks to Trump BTW - not resisting arrest, not assaulting police officers, not assaulting representatives of the county who asked them to vacate, not the multiple arsons of the Hammonds and the threats they issued to law enforcement to get them to drop an investigation into a fire they set that almost killed four firefighters, not further threats to a sheriff to get him to give legal immunity to two people (names and specific reason they were about to be arrested escape me at the moment though I think they were relatives) involving 1,500 armed men coming to bust the people he wanted protected out of jail and not-so-subtly implying they would indiscriminately gun down anyone in the general vicinity after they’re done killing everyone guarding the jail which was a much more explicit threat… and it did not matter in the slightest that their demands amounted to holding their hand out to the government and saying “gibsmedat” claiming the federal government does not have the right to own land and should turn it over to them or to the state whom they expected to allow them to continue to graze their cattle freely on public lands they assumed all responsibility and costs of maintaining while preventing it from being developed in other ways rather than land they actually owned themselves. You know, like a “welfare entitlement” but since it’s for white people I guess they call that a constitutional right instead.
And they certainly paid no mind to how gleefully those “protesters” said on camera that they were looking forward to killing police if it came down to shots being fired and how they planned to put women and children up front as meat shields to make cops look bad, constantly implying they thought the cops would be the ones firing the first shots because they had the paranoid fantasy that cops were insane murderers looking for any excuse to assassinate them. An insane delusion repeated and legitimized in right wing media rather than painted as the mindless hatred of legitimate authority espoused by criminals and supporters of criminals looking to destabilize the country or any other slander they would later apply to Black Lives Matter.
And following this trend supporters did not think police were trustworthy enough to just accept that the shooting of Bundy associate LaVoy Finicium was justified on the basis alone of police having shot him as is usually the case when black men die. It certainly wasn’t some kind of insult to the very concept of the law and authority to demand answers then like it has been for the thousands of times the black community did so only to get beaten down in response and called animals that don’t know how to behave. Mouthpieces like Tucker Carlson even started with a “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative which they would later scoff at for Michael Brown… coincidentally enough. When that turned out to be horsecrap the fact that LaVoy turned tail and ran when the police stopped him wasn’t the end of the discussion despite being an automatic justification for lethal force the moment a black man shows his back. The fact that he came full speed at a second roadblock almost running over several people apparently didn’t justify the shots into the radiator, either. LaVoy explicitly telling the police they weren’t going to take him alive and that they would have to shoot him was somehow neither an indication of his intentions or state of mind and could not prove he wouldn’t come quietly if given a sixth chance even though a black man “giving lip” is usually enough for beatings and chokeholds to commence. And while a black man having a gun or just “potentially” having a gun is the ironclad justification for unloading several clips into them from behind before saying a word video of LaVoy Finicium actually going for his gun when shot still was apparently not enough for the right wing to stop calling it murder.
And in contrast to how the surviving family of black men are treated we’re supposed to feel sorry for Finicium’s widow instead of brutally mocking her and her demand that the government compensate her for her late husband’s death. To the tune of five million dollars apiece for her and the twelve children LaVoy fathered. Another thing viewed differently by race, having that many kids. Especially with more than one woman.
Edit: Oh right, and the agent who shot LaVoy Finicium was charged with a series of crimes and lost his job despite the shooting ultimately being concluded as lawful and justified. He supposedly misrepresented something about the events leading up to the shooting - details are unclear - which was evidently enough even though that charge against him was actually dropped. Yet another couple of contrasts: First of all charges being laid with zero fuss. Secondly constantly misrepresenting facts and changing stories typically doesn’t mean mouse flatulence for anyone who shot a black person in “self-defense” no matter how overtly bullshit the circumstances and doesn’t warrant the same inescapable punishment for recklessly shooting a white man with a gun after he storms government property with a gun, threatens to kill cops, assaults police, tries to run you over, runs away, and reaches for a gun he loudly states he will use.
