DA BONEYARD

southpol:

lawful:

think4yourself:

apsies:

ericmortensen:

thecurvature:

amandaw:

hearshot:

whole bunch of words

I removed a hastily-worded post on this yesterday, because I felt that I was jumping to some rather grave conclusions. This commenter at Pandagon has a point:

I’d be wary before jumping to conclusions on this: the Daniel Boone National Forest is a hotbed for pot growers and meth labs and archaeological looters (Harper’s—subscribers only, alas) and there’s a distrust of anyone considered connected to the federal government, including Forest Rangers and local cops.

This is the roughest part of Appalachia—48% illiteracy rate, below-poverty incomes, high morbidity rates. A common attitude is that the government has abandoned the people while spending its money on the drug war.

So I’d be more comfortable seeing it as what happens when you have a poor-as-dirt local community that’s already set up to see the federal government as the enemy, in a climate where Census workers are being cast as Obama stormtroopers.

Not good.

This doesn’t mean that we aren’t right to raise awareness of a climate of intolerance when we see it.

I would bet against this being drug production guys for the simple reason that they tend not to want to draw attention to their operations. It’s tough to think of a bigger way to blow up your spot than hanging a federal employee. But who the fuck knows, at this point.

It’s also worth noting that ‘drug producers’ and ‘militiamen’ are not mutually exclusive groups, so maybe we’re both right.