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Real DAPL victims? Look in the mirror

Victimization is all the rage these days around the nation. In today’s world of polarized identity politics, things like “victimhood” and “outrage” are the new “successful” or “heroic.” While that may seem a bit Orwellian, it is nonetheless a fact of life – and one not changing anytime soon despite the average citizen’s abhorrence of it.

Look no further than North Dakota and the Dakota Access Pipeline saga for an example. Using alternative facts and buoyed by fake news, the array of anti-pipeline and anti-capitalist activists broke countless laws, terrorized actual N.D. residents and otherwise went wilding for months – all under the banner of having been victimized by the lawful regulatory process.

But just who has been the victim in this affair? Is it the protester whose complaints are built on a foundation of misinformation and propaganda? Is it the pipeline developer who played by the rules and still got caught up in the partisan political machinations of the previous administration?

No and no. If you want to see the victims here, have a look in the mirror or in the faces of your neighbors. North Dakota taxpayers are the real victims of the DAPL protest.

Whether it’s the bill for protecting protesters, cleaning up after them or Gov. Doug Burgum’s dubious effort to pay for bus tickets to ship professional protesters back to their home states, it all adds up to a bill for the state. It’s questionable, to say the least, that the state will ever recoup any of its costs related to a series of events that had little to do with state policy. More likely, North Dakota taxpayers will have ended up footing most of the bill.

And for what? Yes, law enforcement and National Guardsmen did a terrific job at tapping down violence that could have been much worse, and they did an even better job at restraint in the face of organized provocation. But while we might know that here, it won’t be part of the national story. The national story has been and will remain a one-sided effort in manufactured propaganda.

So, DAPL protesters move on to their next outrage, DAPL gets built anyway, and North Dakota gets left with the bill and a black eye from national press.

Maybe it’s time taxpayers played the victim card.

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