"Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other." - James Madison
As those were spoken over 200 years ago I think we can forgive the phrasing and understand the meaning of "moral and religious." And though at the time I'm sure these intelligent people thought that morality and religiosity were positively correlated, today I'm almost tempted to say that in my own relationships I see an inverse correlation, and I say that as a deeply religious person.
Plus, police can be more or less corrupt, but you never get 0 corrupt cops. You have always proportion of those who are work with criminals - helping or being direct members. You occasionally even have gangs composed of cops only.
I read replies from another thread before writing that (asking why people haven't been shot etc.) so I was on a different track here.
No injured guards/ officers/ staff/ journalists reported (afaik). I cannot help but think that this is a comparatively! good outcome when dealing with armed right-wingers.
EDIT: Heard on C-SPAN now: 5 reported injured now, 1 law enforcement. At least some of them gas related. I still stand by my opinion but I don't know for how long.
As a disclaimer, I'm not American, so take my feelings with a grain of salt.
[1] https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/13469023580061040...
During the BLM protests the police wasn't late at showing up fully armed.
- those “bad apples” being almost universally exempt from meaningful accountability proportional to their power and actions
- those “good apples” being unwilling to lead those accountability efforts, or even to just distance themselves from the “bad apples” to set a better example
- the clear and consistent bias overall in favor of these far right/fascist actors, including numerous times being caught on camera actively coordinating and ample video evidence of such bias in plain view
If “the police” don’t want to be viewed as a homogeneous pro-fascist force, they need to not act like one.
Ah yes this looks like that
Because that would have caused a bloodpath? Even the CCP didn't do that in Hong Kong, they let the protesters invade the local legislature and that was that, what are they going to do in there, anyway?
Maybe the next effective version will be hacking Facebook and Twitter, simultaneously...
(Not supporting this horrible company that's responsible for so much suffering over the past two decades.)
I guess they need to get talking points straight.
edit: One of hosts broke the silence. He compared it to BLM and called on CNN to call it fiery, but mostly peaceful. I could not help but to chuckle.
edit2: Even Trump got cold feet. He asked people to calm down. You can only play with fire for so long ( https://mobile.twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1346928882... ).
At the time I looked, 4 hours ago now, this was correct.
Edit: well apparently one women was shot.
Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.
Treason and insurrection are serious matters.
> Treason and insurrection are serious matters.
They are, but this is no different than people claiming Snowden should be “tried, convicted, and executed”. It’s just lipstick on calling for his murder because there is no actual presumption of innocence.
No, it doesn't, nor does anything upthread back to the one that was originally mischaracterized as calling for murder, which says: “Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed.”
> It seems like gaslighting to say "Why haven't the protesters been shot" and then pretend like what was meant was "After they've been legally tried and convicted."
It also seems like gaslighting to invent a quote that was never posted, and then accuse someone of gaslighting based on that quote.
Gaslighting and intentionally misunderstanding strike me as trolling behaviors.
And its not a post by the person who you were accusing, but by someone else, far upthread, whose position the person you are attacking never endorsed.
If you want to criticize the person who advocated summary execution for doing so, fine.
But its ludicrous to attack someone who explicitly advocated arrest, trial and punishment based on criminal conviction for “gaslighting” for merely saying in a later comment that they were advocating exactly what they advocated earlier in the discussion, and not what someone else had advocated.
"Summary execution" refers, not only, to police shooting protesters on sight, but also to sham trials with extreme and unlawful sentences.
I am criticizing the people who called for summary execution. It's immoral and unlawful.
There is an extreme version of a sham trial that could possibly qualify, but they were calling for a normal trial. They were very clearly not calling for summary execution with the phrase "arrested, tried, and if convicted"
It doesn't matter if the punishment fits the crime either. If I say convicted jaywalkers should get the death penalty, I am not calling for summary execution. It doesn't matter if I accuse them of the wrong crime either.
Yes, there was and is:
“Everyone identified and involved in this should be arrested, tried, and if convicted executed” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661918
To which you responded:
“You are calling for murder, that’s not appropriate on this forum.” https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25661942
Why lie about something so easy to verify?
“Trespassing in the Capitol” is hardly the only offense committed here, and while it may be the fact that none of them are capital offenses (I don’t actually think they are), its not unreasonable for someone who has a layman's familiarity with the general principles of criminal law in the US but not the specific mess that is the federal criminal code to that felony murder rule along with participation as a principal in an inherently violent group felony which did, in fact, result in deaths would make the principals guilty of first-degree murder.
> Calling trespass and vandalism treason and sedition and saying that these minor crimes merit the death penalty is egregiously immoral and dishonest.
The acts clearly aren’t treason, but they equally clearly are seditious conspiracy (18 USC Sec. 2384; in relevant part: “If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire […] by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States, or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.”)
So, no, its neither “egregiously immoral” nor “dishonest” to call them sedition.
Even if one ignores that they are a seditious conspiracy (which one should not), the federal crimes are not minor, and include, among others:
Assaulting or impeding federal officers (18 USC Sec. 111)
Conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the United States (18 USC Sec. 372: “If two or more persons in any State, Territory, Possession, or District conspire to prevent, by force, intimidation, or threat, any person from accepting or holding any office, trust, or place of confidence under the United States, or from discharging any duties thereof, or to induce by like means any officer of the United States to leave the place, where his duties as an officer are required to be performed, or to injure him in his person or property on account of his lawful discharge of the duties of his office, or while engaged in the lawful discharge thereof, or to injure his property so as to molest, interrupt, hinder, or impede him in the discharge of his official duties, each of such persons shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than six years, or both.”)
Theft of federal property (18 USC Sec. 641)
Interstate travel for purposes of riot (18 USC Sec. 2101)
Intrusion on buildings or grounds restricted because of the presence of Secret Service protected persons (18 USC 1752, in relevant part: “(a)Whoever— (1) knowingly enters or remains in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority to do so; [or] (2) knowingly, and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions, engages in disorderly or disruptive conduct in, or within such proximity to, any restricted building or grounds when, or so that, such conduct, in fact, impedes or disrupts the orderly conduct of Government business or official functions; […] or attempts or conspires to do so, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b). […] (c) In this section— (1)the term “restricted buildings or grounds” means any posted, cordoned off, or otherwise restricted area— […] (B)of a building or grounds where the President or other person protected by the Secret Service is or will be temporarily visiting”)
At the end, he literally calls for an unruly mob of armed insurrectionists to march down Penn Ave to the Capitol. Sure, he never used the words "break down the doors" or anything like that but what did he think was going to happen? He's been using dog whistles that hint at this for a month and here we are. Particularly given the armed stand-off at the Michigan statehouse earlier this year.
That's it? No calls to illegally seize power, nothing. Just to march down a road and show support to a subset of politicians in the hope that they do technically legal things that are helpful to his cause.
and on Twitter:
> I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!
If this really constitutes a "coup", it's the worst, weakest coup I've ever seen.
That's how incompetent Trump is. Can't even coup properly.
Especially when the specific goal is to use threats of violence to induce officials to overturn the election in which the inciting politician was defeated.
This is an act of terrorism meant to effect an auto-coup.
Nobody serious is under any illusion that Biden will not assume the Presidency. In a way, I think this kind of rhetoric empowers these kinds of protests and inspires people into thinking these actions might actually work.
In reality, the long term impact of these actions is only going to hurt Republicans. As per The Economist [1], in 2000 the election was decided by only ~600 votes in Florida but still only 36% of Gore supporters felt the election was fraudulent. Only 23% of Clinton voters felt the same in 2016. Yet now, with an election decided by margins an order of magnitude larger than in 2016 and three orders of magnitude larger than in 2000 a staggering 88% of Trump supporters surveyed said they believed the election was fraudulent. This kind of brazen hypocrisy, and now coupled by the actions today, are going to stick with the Republican party for a long time. Most of the Republicans I know are aghast. I'm sure the set of Republicans I talk to are not representative (mostly college educated professionals), and that they'll alter how they communicate with an outwardly liberal person like me (deliberately or instinctively). But I think the Republican party is going to recognize Trump as a catastrophe that is leaving a deep scar in the party.
1. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2020/11/21/donald-tr...
It's really nice for left wing types to talk about Republicans doing the right thing and going to all out war with Trump for the health of the democracy, I want him gone too. But the Realpolitik for Republicans on that one is a bunch of self sacrifice while the Democrats enjoy their endless summer. I don't really blame them for taking the path they did, even though I abjectly hate it.
Ultimately who knows - Trump might actually live up to his promise to run in 2024. But I am dubious that Trumpism will be anything but an aberration in the party. He managed to lose as an incumbent. That's a substantial failure, and one I think Republicans will remember.
I agree, we need to take these events seriously. And the ones talking about a coup aren't taking them seriously. The staggeringly high rate of belief in a fraudulent election, and agitators like the ones we're seeing today are very serious indicators in their own right. Resorting to embellishment and hyperbole ultimately diminishes is not being serious.
If this is a coup, it's the shittest coup ever, being done by the least competent coup conspirators I've ever seen.
This seems a bit spur of the moment. Also, didn't President Trump say he was going to lead them to the Capitol building in his speech? Where is he?
Enjoy your cognitive dissonance if you will though
It's obvious watching things unfold, but also easy to find many news articles on it: https://newrepublic.com/article/157981/police-take-side-whit...
No, this is a key difference between the sides of this issue. The people in DC aren’t looking for a response on social media - they’re looking for a response in real life, with arms if necessary. I think they may well get it this time, too.
The Left doesn’t seem to realize the table stakes are different with this.
Everything else going on is a show. And it is working insofar as Trump's sore loser supporters have sent him more money after the election than before the election. They love the lies. They hate the truth. They lack the coping skill to deal with truth, so they sign up for the lies. They purchase lies as a product, that is what Trump sells. It's who he has always been and always will be.
Trump right now: we had an election, that was stolen from us, it was a landslide election, and everyone knows it, especially the other side...but you have to go home now, we have to have peace.
they took it away from me, from you, from our country
this was a fraudulent election...so many are treated with evil...go home in peace
Translation: We won, but you gotta go home. They stole from me, from you, from the country, but you gotta go home. They are evil, but you gotta go home.
He is unfit for office. He's ill. The proper thing to do is wrap up the counting of ascertained Electoral College votes, declare Biden the winner. And then the House should immediately impeach Trump. And then the Senators can choose to remove him from office and ban him from ever holding public office again. That is the proper way to end this.
If congress wants to meet on zoom, they can
Whether they are delusional or they want an autocracy, I can't assess and it doesn't even matter. I'd consider both example of mental illness, but this is a country with a culture that persists in not taking mental illness seriously. Including the one manifested by the sitting president. The solution is to remove him from office without any delay beyond the certification of the Electoral College.
If countries weren't afraid of other gasses being used in war, they'd use tear gas on the battlefield
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/01/06/us/washington-dc-pro...
The week before the CHOP started was full the sounds of helicopters overhead, flashbang explosions, and "less lethal" rounds being fired. The week after CHOP started was quiet. Comparing the shift from yesterday to today in DC's Capitol Hill against the shift from June 7 to June 8 in Seattle's Capitol Hill, the CHOP was extraordinarily peaceful. That's mostly the comparison I was making by initially saying it was "quite peaceful": the day before and the day after in those two locations.
But even then, the CHOP compared to the same location today (for example) is honestly pretty similarly peaceful. It was certainly a relatively violent time for that street, but I didn't feel at all at risk walking through it. I also didn't have any problem living 3 blocks away from a place that many news agencies tried to construe as violent anarchy.
CHOP wasn't significantly different
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone#S...
I don't know what the murder rate in the neighborhood was prior to the occupation, but I'm pretty confident it wasn't nearly that high.
1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate
and also quite illegal and a complete breakdown of rule of law
So the murder rate is 2/24=0.0833_
Somalia had a murder rate of 599 deaths in 2015. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention...
599/365=1.641
That being said, at least 1 of the killings at the CHAZ/CHOP was by the self proclaimed security forces. As far as I know no one has ever been identified or held accountable. If the idea is that you do not need police/ want to hold them to greater accountability because they are violent and kill innocent people but your replacement does the same thing...then what is the point?
Siri is reporting CHAZ had a population of 80(??) and Somolia a population of 15MM. The respective per capita rates would be 0.025 and ~3.99e-5
I am not sure how I misread that.
Compare it to what you see today.
They couldn’t prevent Gucci stores from being vandalized but they have preserved one of the iconic buildings of the US. At least they have their priorities straight.
https://twitter.com/jazmineulloa/status/1346898566703435779
Edit: for example: https://twitter.com/RedR1dngHood/status/1346908557560537091