“Four ATF agents and five Davidians died in the initial gunfight [outside Waco] and another Davidian was killed later that day [25 years ago]. After a 51-day siege, 76 Davidians [including women and children] died when the compound went up in flames on April 19.”
They weren’t spared because of those four dead ATF agents. I was a reporter on the picket line at the time and so I know that it was widely understood (if rarely spoken) by the news media as well as most everyone else that if you killed a cop you paid with your life. Today it’s pretty much open season on cops.
Via Instapundit
Stanley,
I’ve often wondered if you view things now differently than you did in the past while plying your former trade. I know everyone sees things of the past differently as they get older, but I wonder if anything jumps out at you?
I’m much more conservative, much less a go-along to get-along fellow now. Mostly I despise what the news media does, particularly its focus on tragedy and celebrities. And its perpetual sheep-like following of the NYTimes and the WaPo. Just the anti-Trump hysteria in general is pathetic. They constantly push liberal causes such as “diversity” but have very little of it themselves. That’s why I call myself a “recovering journalist.”
If it’s not prying, when and what changed you, or was it gradual?
It was gradual, but Waco played a role. Fart, Barf & Itch was out for revenge and the burning of the compound may not have been an accident.
I think it was gradual for me too, but I don’t know. It just seems one day when I woke up in the morning I was a conservative.
Thinking this over I realize that the turning point was 9/11 when the Dims and their waterboys in the news media pummeled W for everything he did in response. I quickly got fed up with it and I still had five years to go before retirement.
To enlarge on my own state. It seemed that for many years (since the early 70’s) I was arguing with myself not to “see” and understand what was right in front of me. Perhaps I gave up that effort I don’t know, but every thing seems so obvious now.