jimm
3d ago
Just the opposite. "I can carry a gun and get in their way, and they wouldn't dare shoot me!" is banking on ICE playing by rules that they weren't playing by. Debate over whether they "should have been" aside, they demonstrably did not.
In contrast, Bundys brought a lot of men with rifles and willingness to use them. That's what you do when you're serious about enforcing rules that the other side wouldn't ordinarily abide by.
It's because "they shouldn't be shooting me, dammit!". They're modeling ICE as if they'll do what they should, then getting angry when they don't. They're trying to use their righteous anger to force ICE to do the right thing, so that they don't have to update their expectations.
If instead they'd update on the fact that ICE isn't gonna do what they think ICE should do, they wouldn't be able to feel outrage anymore, because it'd just be "What do you expect? They're fascists". And then they'd have to sit soberly with the question of whether this is a hill they're willing to die on. And if so, whether they want to die a martyr for their beliefs or try to martyr the fascists for theirs.
Showing up with a holstered pistol and getting in physical confrontations where you don't use it shows that he hadn't thought things through and made a serious decision. It's like coming up to a fork in the road, and unsure whether to drive left or right, splitting the difference and driving straight.
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