> You say this after the president of the United States has incited a seditious, violet mob to attack the Capitol because he's a sore loser.

By this logic pro-BLM democrats (including some high level pro-BLM politicians) incited numerous violent mobs over the course of 2020 to attack Seattle and Portland and usurp rule-of-law. But when it happened then the protests were "fiery but mostly peaceful" because "collateral damage is okay if it is done in the name of grappling with racism". Now that the other side has gathered to protest what they see as injustices, it's "a coup" and "terrorism" because of the bad actors who postponed congress for a few hours despite the fact that the vast majority of the people at the protest were peacefully protesting.

You say these things as if they are not facts.

BLM was protesting the injustice of systematic oppression that results in black people bejng murdered by police. 93% of the protests were entirely peaceful. In the other 7%, it is not clear if the violence was instigated by citizens or police.

On the right, you have people who storm the US fucking Capitol building while they are confirming the next POTUS. They were trying to disrupt the federal government. Some of them had zip tie handcuffs and were reportedly looking for VP Pence.

If you cannot see the clear daylight between those two things, and insist on reducing it to “violence on both sides”, then I simply don’t know what to say to you except to please re-examine your humanity as well as your critical thinking skills.

> On the right, you have people who storm the US fucking Capitol building while they are confirming the next POTUS.

Could you directly address that time back in June when armed BLM protestors stormed Capitol Hill in Seattle and kicked out all the police for a month?[0] Why does that event get a pass in the context of this conversation?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone

It's not the most important government building in the entire nation. Don't be stupid, this is not at all comparable.

Why should we consider it a tragedy that people were occupying this building? I certainly don't see any reason to, just like I didn't see any reason to consider the occupation of the two police stations (and destruction of one) a tragedy.

The symbolism is what's important. This building, the largest and tallest and most ornate of all the government buildings in DC, is the beating heart of the US government. To take it over is to strike at the very heart of the government, and to have one branch taken over by instigation by the other branch, it is horrific. Because the consequences are a collapse of this society. With no functioning US Government, the United States cease to be united. It's an existential symbol, and that's why terrorists attempted to target it on 9/11 and why terrorists targeted it this week.

CHAZ was awful, a complete failure for everyone involved. Police escalated during protests, then when it got too hot, they pulled a LA Riots style retreat. Protesters became violent and undercut the moral fiber of their message, going from patriots to criminals very quickly.

My understanding was the police decided to withdraw from the area due to the intensity. It looks like the Seattle people rejected law enforcement, but weren't trying to overthrow the government.

Not all violence is equal. Overthrowing the US federal government because you didn't win is very different than CHAZ. Both can be disgusting while acknowledging that FEDERAL INSURRECTION AND ATTACKING DEMOCRACY IS WORSE THAN CHAZ.

I was in agreement with you until the final paragraph in which you basically attempt to rationalize why protestors breaking into the congress building are somehow much worse than the protestor behavior during CHAZ. A bunch of protestors kicking police out of your city block for a month is an affront to democracy every bit as much as protestors disrupting a congressional meeting for a few hours. In a democracy we obey laws and protest peacefully if we don't like something. Breaking down rule of law is never acceptable.

The reason they are different was in original intent, and what outside factors influenced the transition. They both turned into shitshows. The DC shitshow was 100% the fault of the people present and the strongman authoritarians who incited them. The CHAZ shitshow must be blamed on a number of actors, including the protesters, police who were present, etc.

Aren't white people more likely to die by police? (seriously asking, I remember this data point but it's not in front of me).

Not quite. More white people die by far in total, but as a percentage of the demographic more non-white people die.

This is largely attributed to systemic racism, but also to poverty.

> This is largely attributed to systemic racism

Citation needed

I didn't say it was 100% because of systemic racism, just largely attributed to systemic racism. If you need a citation for that, just look at BLM movement in 2020.

I mean citation needed from the people attributing this to systemic racism.

I’m willing to believe them, frankly, if there’s any data or responsible analysis to back it up.

There are thousands of sociology and history faculty around the country who study this for a living, publishing hundreds of peer reviewed books on the topic annually in top university presses. The research has been ongoing and clear for decades.

This is a bit like saying "citation needed" for "the mitochondria is the workhorse of the cell". You just sort of gesture broadly at literally an entire field that studies this stuff.

It takes almost no effort to look up some faculty member at your alma mater who studies crime, race, and policing, look up one of their books, and check it out.

One bit of feedback - your response comes off as a little aggressive. Even though I agree with you, I felt a little defensive when I read your comment. Maybe something like "this is pretty well studied, with lots of publications. Here's an overview that I think is particularly good and representative of the consensus. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-cap..."

This is a good resource. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-cap...

Nate silver is the laughing stock of that entire community, including many of who repeatedly beat his predictions over and over and over. Anything that clown puts out is a joke.

This is... not true? I listen to some of his podcasts, and he seems to be pretty grounded in his approach. Do you have a specific criticism of his process?

(Also, this article was not written by him. That kind of diminishes your point, unless you argue that all authors on 538 deserve your disdain by association?)

It's literally on his website, and yes it's true (about him, no idea about the other people on his site). There's a lot of drama and such in that entire space, and I've spent many months following it all and listening to many different viewpoints from different people in that space. Each election/primaries cycle it's the same story over and over, Nate silver is cringingly wrong, states the opposite of truth as fact. On the other hand, you have other groups of people/companies who are like an order of magnitude quantifiably/verifiably more accurate, and they all make jokes about his "predictions." Basically he made a baseball algorithm, sold out, and now uses his influence to do what he's paid to do, support an agenda, just like CNN/Fox and other super biased news sources.

Yes I've wanted to say this, that in legal terms systemic racism can't be proven, but I've already kicked the bee hive enough. PS not saying racism isn't real, only that it's not as clear of an issue as everyone acts like it is.

Ask yourself honestly. If BLM or an Islamic American group had done the same thing yesterday. How many deaths would there have been? I'm guessing we'd be counting in percentages not fingers...something like 75% dead, 25% captured/in prison.

For doing the SAME thing in the SAME location.

I know, it's hard to prove, here say, but you know it's true. Snipers would've been out in force. Cops were high fiving and letting these people in. National Guard was told to stand down. Police were taking selfies with confederates holding flags in the People's building.

This was a desecration of democracy and the rule of law in America. Everyone responsible needs at least 20 years in prison. No exceptions. Trying to disrupt our republic should have some consequences, no?

It is not a clear issue, because it involves very subtle but crucial changes in attitudes from authorities to people of different categories.

However, from my understanding, the research all seems to be pretty directionally consistent - minorities in the US receive worse treatment from the justice system. Here's a good overview of why the statistics might be under-reporting the size of the impact: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-cap...

I see, thanks for explaining.

There may be more white people killed by police (in sheer volume) but that’s not the same as white people being more likely to die by police.

I think a black person is about 2x as likely to die in an encounter with the police. I'm not sure if that's normalized for the type of encounter.

Also, there are more white people than black people. So? Black people are something like 5x more likely to be arrested in a traffic stop. It's not the same at all.

Here's some data analysis that addresses your general concerns, by digging in to the data. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dont-cap...

There's a difference between attacking the Capitol and attacking a Pizza Hut. There's also a difference between a protestor throwing a firework at a courthouse and taking tactical gear and weapons with a couple hundred buddies into a legislature.

This equivalence between BLM and the mobbing of the Capitol is confusing to be because it's so obviously a false one.

> There's a difference between attacking the Capitol and attacking a Pizza Hut

What's the difference? In both cases the stated goal of the protests was not to "break stuff" so if that ends up happening, is that the protest's fault?

> There's also a difference between a protestor throwing a firework at a courthouse and taking tactical gear and weapons with a couple hundred buddies into a legislature.

What about armed protestors forcibly ejecting police from a section of the city and setting up a police-free zone?

> This equivalence between BLM and the mobbing of the Capitol is confusing to be because it's so obviously a false one.

It's not equivalent, just similar. In both cases peaceful protesting of perceived injustice is the stated goal, and in both cases bad actors go renegade and break down rule-of-law.

The Pizza Hut isn't in the process of processing Electoral College votes for the next president of the United States. Disrupting the delivery of pizzas is not in the same category as disrupting the selection of the president.

This wasn't just a riot. It wasn't just a protest. Wasn't just an attack on a building. It wasn't just some vandalism. It was an attack on the last step of the presidential election process.

The purpose of the protest was not to breach congress and stop the processing of the Electoral College votes. A small minority of protestors decided to do that. If we are going to do that and say the entire protest is bad if contained a few bad actors, then in order to not be hypocritical we need to condemn any BLM protest that had bad actors, including the one that resulted in CHAZ.

Or, you can recognize the right to assemble and protest while condemning non-peaceful protesting. I personally unequivocally condemn the violence that occurred in both BLM and Trump protests. I also support the right to gather and peacefully protest, for both BLM and Pro-Trump supporters.

I note the delicious irony of saying "a small minority of protestors", though I suspect that the irony will be lost on those who would benefit from thinking about it.

Still, I see a difference that matters between a small minority trying to take over a police station or destroy a Pizza Hut (bad enough, and worthy of condemnation) and a small minority trying to interfere with the presidential succession (much worse).

There is no difference. Both groups are rioters.

There is also plain hypocrisy in both camps, when one camp riots, the other camp pretends not to understand that there is festering anger from injustice.

But every time, whenever one camps riots, they feel justified and righteous, and the opposing camp, feels enlightened as to and justified in retaliation.

WOKE is bad. EXTREME privilege is bad.

Finding common ground and coming back to our senses might save us all.

Both camps are just a bunch of babies...

Were both houses of Congress and the VP certifying the vote of the next PoTUS at the Pizza Hut? No? Then there's a big difference.

Maybe if they'd do their meetings at Pizza Hut, at least they would start coming closer to common folk.

the irony is that your parent post comment just described you

When you use words such as seditious and mob, I want to remind you that words have power and that those words don’t unify but rather tend to divide and amplify hatred on both sides.

There were many instances where protests got out of hand this summer and courthouses and police stations were destroyed; entire city blocks were taken over and those responsible enacted and enforced their own laws. The actions weren’t referred to as sedition and most media outlets avoided words like mob, treason, etc.

Of course, don’t take my statement to mean I condone ANY case of violence, rioting, property damage, etc. (And in all cases those responsible and those inciting violence should be held accountable) but being consistent and avoiding charged language when depicting civil unrest would go a long way to heal the country rather than to divide it.

I don't disagree the problem is the left has so many examples that this hypocrisy is just excruciating to me. You literally have people creating lists to blackball anyone who supports trump, praised and lauded by some political people high up on the food chain. I rarely ever see the left actively support an ACTUAL view of "unity," and believe me, I truly look for it by looking at all opposing views on my social media, on people I disagree with, etc.

> You literally have people creating lists to blackball anyone who supports trump

Like the way Clarence Thomas's wife made lists of people not loyal to Trump to be fired?

"Axios first reported that a "well-connected network of conservative activists" is drawing up lists of officials they perceive to be anti-Trump, who are then flagged to be fired and replaced with Trump loyalists."

https://www.axios.com/trump-memos-deep-state-white-house-ce5...

https://www.businessinsider.com/ginni-thomas-wife-supreme-co...

Seems to me a certain leader followed this same playbook circa 1939.

> The actions weren’t referred to as sedition and most media outlets avoided words like mob, treason, etc.

"Barr Told Prosecutors to Consider Sedition Charges for Protest Violence"

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/16/us/politics/william-barr-...

This is about the protests over the summer, not the recent insurrection. Yes, I'm calling it that. I think functionally it matters a bit more if the USAG is using words like "sedition" compared to media outlets or internet posters.

> There were many instances where protests got out of hand this summer and courthouses and police stations were destroyed;

The white supremacist terrorists's goal yesterday was to prevent a formal certification process that's central to the transition of executive power. Many people were armed and prepared for violence: multiple IEDs were found, multiple people had body armor, multiple people had loaded firearms & extra ammunition, people brought a guillitine, people were shouting chants about killing senators & reps, multiple people had zip-ties or handcuffs. That is sedition.

Unlike BLM protestors, the terrorist's intent was a coup: they wanted to undermine a democracy's most important legal process. BLM wants to use legal means to revolutionize the country's public safety, primarily via re-allocating city and state police budgets to programs that have effective track records of increasing public safety and not ending in the murder of Black people.

yes, because they didn't literally overrun the seat of power and threaten to topple the government. Seditious is spot on.

> words have power

Words start out with power - until they're overused to the point of banality and lose it.

> When you use words such as seditious and mob

The seditious mob injured 50 officers and killed one of them.

You should quit defending them. Stop with the "both-sidesisms". We can clearly point out which group is evil here.

You're either being willfully ignorant, or arguing in bad faith.

Calling for your people to all organize outside of the capitol building, claiming that the election was fraudulent without providing evidence, and then telling the active terrorists "we love you" should be sufficient evidence for you.

Don’t forget the calls for Total War and Trial by Combat from his son and lawyer.

Or for the execution of Pence by Lin Wood (targeting Pence specifically is something I've also seen in several quotes from the insurrectionists.)

You are making assumptions on what was in President Trump's brain from a few short tweets. The white house is on the opposite side of the mall as the congress building. How do you know he wasn't saying "we love you" to the huge turnout of people gathered around the Washington monument right near the white house? How do you know he was specifically praising the tiny minority of the protestors that broke into congress?

The President is responsible for his words and actions, not solely his feelings and thoughts. If he can't effectively communicate his intention to the point he 'accidentally' whips is supporters into a seditious frenzy that makes him unfit for office.

He literally gave an hour long speech minutes before they attacked our nation's capitol.

Did you mean to post that link? It's not a link to the hour-long speech. Does anyone have a link to it? I would be interested to hear what he said.

Not sure what THAT video is "showing", but let's look at the actual speech...

You can see/hear/read (via transcript) starting about here: https://youtu.be/ht20eDYmLXU?t=10186

Romney, American Elections, Press "enemy of the people", American 3rd world country, Republicans Fighting/Boxing, Fight Bad People, Pence and Constitution, Congress addressing assault on country, Walk down to Capitol with me, Show strength and be strong, Demand congress do the right thing lawfully, March over peacefully and patriotically make voices heard, Integrity of elections and country, Country under siege, blah blah

Get up to the final incite: https://youtu.be/ht20eDYmLXU?t=13513

and it's had a tremendous impact that we got rid of catch and release we got rid of all of the stuff that we had to live with but now the caravans they think biden's getting in the caravans are forming again they want to come in again and rip off our country can't let it happen as this enormous crowd shows we have truth and justice on our side we have a deep and enduring love for america in our hearts we love our country we have overwhelming pride in this great country and we have it deep in our souls together we are determined to defend and preserve government of the people by the people and for the people our brightest days are before us our greatest achievements still wait i think one of our great achievements will be election security because nobody until i came along had any idea how corrupt our elections were and again most people would stand there at nine o'clock in the evening and say i want to thank you very much and they go off to some other life but i said something's wrong here something's really wrong can't have happened and we fight we fight like hell and if you don't fight like hell you're not gonna have a country anymore our exciting adventures and boldest endeavors have not yet begun my fellow americans for our movement for our children and for our beloved country and i say this despite all that's happened the best is yet to come so we're going to we're going to walk down pennsylvania avenue i love pennsylvania and we're going to the capitol and we're going to try and give the democrats are hopeless they're never voting for anything not even one vote but we're going to try and give our republicans the weak ones because the strong ones don't need any of our help we're going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country so let's walk down pennsylvania avenue i want to thank you all god bless you and god bless america thank you all for being here this is incredible thank you very much

“Will be wild” was a little sketchy.

But you are more right than wrong, he could easily have channeled all that energy into something truly horrible just by saying “It’s the Socialists! Let’s get the bastards!”

This is like people who think judges are dumb and apply the law mechanically and strictly as written without any room for context or nuance.

The fact is there is a history of Trump supporters turning violent after Trump rallies and speeches. It’s an established pattern that requires willfully ignoring to contend he has plausible deniability.

It's no different than BLM members burning down cities. There's this sort of thing on both sides which don't represent the larger group.

Also, FWIW, I don't support anything remotely close to storming building, but people on the left certainly are quick to blame when I've watched exact same thing happen over the last year or two.

Tu quoque doesn’t change what Trump did.

The beauty (and horror) of a lot of Trump's incitement is he always does it implicitly as opposed to explicitly. It's not about quotes and verbage as much as meaning and intent.

That being said, his incitement Wednesday was actually pretty explicit. From the Times: Trump said "If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore" before urging supporters to go to the capital. Sounds like a pretty powerful incitement from a sitting President.

Urging supporters to go to the capital “peacefully” using that explicit qualifier. You still have a point, but be transparent about it.

Just because he followed up with "peacefully" later doesn't negate him saying 'fight like hell'. I mean, most of the problematic things Trump has said have been followed/preceded by things intended to make them look less problematic.

I wasn't intentionally leaving anything out though, I took that quote directly from the Times.

The Times intentionally left that out. Notwithstanding earlier inflammatory language, this is the exact quote:

“I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard today.”

You may believe that the word “patriotically” was a dog-whistle, but none of the headlines characterized the statement correctly.

> Please cite me tweets/descriptions of where he incited anything.

It's not gonna happen, because it didn't happen. I've asked everyone I know to cite the same thing, and no one has been able to. Of course, that won't stop the narrative, because truth has become irrelevant.

EDIT: I find it amusing that even the people that have responded to you so far, still haven't actually cited anything yet.

You're either lazy or willfully ignorant, here's him showing support for the protest in some deleted tweets:

https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13450881...

https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13469549...

https://media-cdn.factba.se/realdonaldtrump-twitter/13469004...

Here's a video that he posted after the events at the capitol that was deleted where he keeps suggesting the election was stolen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tcfcTB9-S2s

Terrible examples, the 3rd one was after the event, the first one literally isn't inciting anything unless you have a sheer irrational hatred for trump and only see things through an incredibly one dimensional, emotional POV where he can't even scratch his chin without it upsetting you.

Because I've already done this for so many other people that I'm exhausted. Go f*cking read the speech yourself. What did he think would happen when he asked his supporters to "talk to their representatives" literally as they are voting? Go have a nice cup of tea?

They are sea-lioning. They are going to constantly ask for "evidence", and then when provided for it, act as if it's biased/false/non-existant and then restate the question. The goal is to put all the labor of the conversation and gathering of sources onto you while they just get to reply: "I don't believe that, the MSM is biased, show me another source".

Are you claiming MSM isn't biased?

Are you claiming specifically biased-right-wing <insert journal name> isn't biased? MSM (CNN, CNBC, MSNBC) is 10% as biased (to the left), Fox (probably 50% biased to the right), etc. Least biased is probably Reuters, AP, and PBS, and maybe NPR.

Local news is usually not so biased either.

But Washington Times, Breitbart, Random Youtube Vlogger, etc...none of those can be trusted. That's why they're never linked to on Hackernews, except maybe in comments, I'd imagine.

They're basically tabloids. Good to cross-reference with Snopes or Politifact if you are curious what's true. Personally, I like to read multiple sources and google a topic to get a better picture to see other 'takes'. Only way to not get bubble/group think.

x86_64Ubuntu forgot to add "or they'll change the topic".

“We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue, and we’re going to the Capitol,” said Mr. Trump. “We’re going to try and give our Republicans, the weak ones, because the strong ones don’t need any of our help, we’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

From https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-tells-rioters-i-know-how-...

I'm going to presume the WSJ did their work properly and you can watch him say those words in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8X0KIYInLHc - that's a 70 minute long speech claiming (not in the exact words) "we have been defrauded!" and then saying those words. Make a less-than-intelligent, not-shy-to-use-violence (should I cite the demographics of Trump voters for you?), crowd mad and then tell them "We're going to go there and give them a piece of our mind.", geez, what do you expect was going to happen?

No, he never uttered "I want you to go there and beat up the cops with anything you find, break the windows, vandalize the building, and terrorize those lawmakers so they put me back into power.", he's smart enough to never explicitly say things that will get him in trouble, just like the 11780 phone call or asking Comey to back off from Michael Flynn.

"And after this, we're going to walk down there, and I'll be there with you, we're going to walk down ... to the Capitol and we are going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women," Trump told the crowd. "And we're probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them. Because you'll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong."

He told people to go to the capital, "take back our country", and you can't do it with weakness, you need to do it with strength. That seems pretty straightforward to me. And he did it all while fanning the flames by repeating discredited conspiracy theories that he knows plays to the people in attendance.

Imagine if ISIS had a twitter account or reddit fanpage. How fast would conservatives pass legislation to take it down?

If the terrorists are white, they're treated differently.

ISIS had thousands of Twitter accounts and were selling Rohingya underage girls into sex slavery over Facebook.

That’s Yazidi not rohingya. Two separate groups at two distant places on earth.

ISIS uses twitter a lot. It's one of their main recruitment methods.

https://towardsdatascience.com/how-isis-uses-twitter-1006579...

Or were you talking more of an "official" twitter account for the organization itself (the same way Wendy's has a twitter account)?

“I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be when people realize that this is a policy that they defend"

- Nancy Pelosi

"If you see anybody from that Cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere." - Maxine Waters

Notice how this is advocating the use of free speech? Notice the lack of violent words like "attack" "battle" "combat" "fight" etc? Do you notice just how different this is than the rhetoric employed by Trump, Guiliani, etc. recently?

“I just don’t even know why there aren’t uprisings all over the country, and maybe there will be when people realize that this is a policy that they defend,” Pelosi said during a press conference. “It’s a horrible thing, and I don’t see any prospect for legislation here.” - Nancy Pelosi

Definition of uprising : an act or instance of rising up especially : a usually localized act of popular violence in defiance usually of an established government