Comments on: Fifteen years ago today

By: jacqueline

jacqueline — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:56:22 +0000

My daughter was 5 – and we were in California – it wasn’t even on my radar. It wasn’t until we moved to a commune in Missouri three years later that the impact of Waco and Oklahoma came into my view. Interesting – where you find yourself during time.

By: ogre

ogre — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 16:57:47 +0000

Yet.

Given the raging incoherency of the Teabaggers, I have my doubts. They’re parading armed. They’re talking a violent future (“unarmed, this time” and “Reload!”). They are raw material just begging for their Franco, their Mussolini.

By: chutney

chutney — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 00:09:50 +0000

@CC: He’s right about McVeigh unwittingly changing the subject. One of the first aims of any government is to exercise a monopoly on violence, and the 90s were a series of case studies on who will seek to break that monopoly and how the government will respond. McVeigh effectively ended the Patriot movement, or at least drove it very far underground. The Tea Party, for all its noise and bluster, doesn’t have any armed compounds that I’ve heard of.

By: CC

CC — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:31:27 +0000

Radley Balko addressed the Waco issue today on his blog: And even if one were depraved enough to find some moral justification in Oklahoma City, think of what it did for McVeigh’s cause: Instead of April 19 being the day we remember and lament the Clinton’s administration’s monumental fuck-up, and possibly reflect on massive power of government to simply eliminate people it deems weird or fringe or threatening, Clinton, armed with moral rectitude provided by McVeigh, now gets to take to the pages of the New York Times to celebrate government, and to denounce and marginalize the people who dare to criticize it. Radley's blog

By: Mickbic

Mickbic — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 17:10:59 +0000

Gore Vidal has written favorably of McVeigh, in large part probably due to the monstrous screw up at Waco two years before at the Branch Davidian Compound.

By: ogre

ogre — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:25:26 +0000

Yep. Evil bastard. But the execution was a mistake–not “undeserved,” but a) it was what he wanted, b) it gave some of the lunatic fringe a martyr, c) the capital trial gave him more limelight, and d) it didn’t solve anything.

His trial was when all the lights finally went on for me and my limited acceptance/support for capital punishment ended. It’s better to just lock such folks up for life, without parole. And it avoids the problem of executing innocents–something Texas proves happens.

By: CC

CC — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 16:19:18 +0000

Fifteen years ago today, I was in Mrs. Stephan’s AP US history class. When we heard about the explosion, some of the jocks argued that we should turn on the TV because history was unfolding. Also, because they wanted to watch TV for class.

Mrs. Stephan agreed with the nerds and class went on as usual. I was among the nerds then and agreed that we should have class. In retrospect, I think the jocks were right, not because the bombing was, in itself, that significant to the country as a whole long-term, but because it was the beginning of terrorism and threats from within being something Americans worried about, or even thought about.