re: What was the country’s reaction to the 1993 Waco siege when that was going on?

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For most people old enough to remember it well the Branch Davidians is the first thing that comes to mind when you hear anything about Waco.

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Or how the Government was at fault

I was a teenager at the time and it was on the news constantly with them giving live shots of the siege. Remember, the siege went on for weeks before gunfire and the fire broke out. I remember the government brining in loud speakers and playing loud music to annoy them. Then gunfire broke out one day, and the next thing you saw was government tanks rolling in and demolishing the compound (with people still inside).

As for public opinion, I can only give my perspective living in a red state and it probably isn't accurate for Portland, San Fran or NYC. I think opinions were mixed. A minority of people didn't care if they were shut down and were behind the government, but I think most people felt it was government overreach (though most everyone agreed they were nuts). Remember, Clinton just came into office the year before and people were already suspicious of him since he was the first Dem president since 1980 (and the last Dem president didn't go so well).

I remember most conservatives saw Janet Reno (the AG) as the second coming of Stalin. The World Wide Web was invented in 1991, so very few people were online in 1993, but I remember seeing memes and cartoons in magazines making fun of Reno. People joked that she was a lesbo or a trans man. (Back then you could still make jokes about trans people without being canceled).

That time period was a period when "militias" were the big bogeyman of the left. They would go up to Michigan and show video of like 4 or 5 guys running around in camo shooting AR's. And they would try to portray them as some massive danger to society. Of course, when Tim McVeigh bombed the OKC building in 1994, this only added fuel to the fire (since he had some loose connections with some groups in Arizona, I believe it was). It came out later that McVeigh bombed OKC in retaliation for Waco (this wasn't known at first). In fact, everyone thought OKC was the work of Muslims and fully expected Muslims to get arrested. When two white dudes were arrested it was a surprise, I think.

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We were told that the Branch Davidians were child molesting extremists who set fire to the compound themselves.

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That might be true.

But the government and MSM lie so much that I can never take what they say at face value.

Where I live I think people just dismissed them as a cult and said, “who cares. No more brainwashed people.”

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The government really pushed him to do a horrible thing

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You are insane

Most people prob have zero fricks and didn’t know about it; no smart phones then

We need more people like that than these days.

ATF/FBI etc would prob all be charged with murder in woke 2023. (Maybe not though, Texas is Texas.)

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Where I live I think people just dismissed them as a cult and said, “who cares. No more brainwashed people.”

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This seemed to be the general sentiment in my parts as well.

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I mean, he was doing wicked things with kids. It’s a correct assumption.

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I don't doubt this.

What I do doubt is helping kids having wicked things done to them by burning them alive

When this was going on, I learned that my boss really, really liked to argue. Aggressively. Never gave him the opportunity again after that. He was a GD Yankee.