When I was far too young to be told this, in modern terms, my father, who had won multiple free trips to Asia from the US gubmint explained the recipe for homemade napalm.
Imagine the maximum sentence for someone who wanted to napalm the US Capitol for reasons other than white rage.
This is the thing we choose to soft play.
There is a youtube video of a young woman expressing her utter shock and dismay at being maced as she literally tried to storm congress and disrupt the national democratic process. It is amazing to watch, just for how weirdly naive and entitled she is while right up saying they were trying for a revolution. What the hell did you think was going to happen?
Anyway, for another example of "they also didn't seem to understand it was serious," the quote from the feet-up-on-the-desk guy:
> "I'll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail," Mr. Barnett said.
He's glib about it the same way you might be about spending a night in the drunk tank after getting a little too crazy at Mardi Gras.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-knoxville-onion-...
Reality comes at you fast.
WTF...
It's not clear that you should bring such a mitigation with you, though, as that might help make the case that what you were doing that got you gassed was premeditated, which can up the seriousness of what you might be charged with and the potential penalties.
People are more shocked about the *reason* they stormed the Capitol than the violence. If women in pink hats stormed the Capitol during the Kavanaugh confirmation vote (well they did, but not in enough numbers to overwhelm security), the parties would be having polar opposite reactions. GOP saying it was a coup and democrats saying it was justified outrage.
These people don't realize they were pawns in Trump's bad faith attempt to steal the election. They believe they are doing the right thing. *That doesn't justify their actions, but it explains their actions.*
Ayers being famous for admitting he doesn’t regret setting the bomb. Instead of being labeled a terrorist, he was made a professor and launched a lot of the social justice movement in education.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/a-...
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign...
So... to say counterproductive isn’t taking into account history and possibility. Ayers and Obama didn’t suffer from association to each other or this domestic terrorism.
Now, obviously, Trump Supporters (notice I didn’t say GOP) will find this to all have been counterproductive, agreed there in this specific case. My point about Ayers is that this is all a matter of who writes the history.
It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency or that Ayers in any way influenced Obama to regard violence as the correct path for social change.
In fact, considering the ridiculous guilt-by-association he was subject to, it's more accurate to say Obama became president despite that limited connection, not because of it.
In short, the overblown Ayers-Obama link doesn't contradict my statement regarding peaceful protest.
I wasn’t trying to refute your point. Only offering a recent historical perspective where an actual terrorist organization was considered as... not that. Where the perspective is set by who is in charge.
>It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency
I also didn’t imply that at all.
Perhaps you are just too used to arguing with people on the internet?
There are many people who stand up for what they belive in. What is clear, to me at least, is a group of people that belive they are protected from their actions because of what they are or what the belive in
They think of themselves as patriots, as John Wilkes Booth did:
> He had spent so much time among like-minded people who hated Lincoln, and he had read so many accounts denouncing Lincoln as a tyrant bent on destroying the Constitution and "personal liberty" that he expected to be hailed as a hero.
> Instead he was stunned to learn that he was being hunted down like a beast, while Lincoln was held up throughout much of the nation as a martyred saint.
> Source for this: The bibliography in my biography of Lincoln.
* https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/134722988063564595...
> “This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”
* https://archive.is/tZVFs (for paywall)
* https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/capitol-trump-ins...
There is no plan.
EDIT: Thank you! I didn't mean to spawn a big subthread, but I'm happy to have learned that today. I somehow missed that there were multiple sections.
> No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.
Derrick Evans was a member of a State legislature when he participated in what Congressional leadership has labeled as an insurrection. So the 14th amendment prohibits him from being a state legislator or holding any other state or federal office ever again, unless Congress decides otherwise. This constitutionally-imposed restriction is separate from any statutory restriction that could be imposed through criminal prosecution, and removed by a presidential pardon.
"No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
> Anarchists, Agitators or Protestors who vandalize or damage our Federal Courthouse in Portland, or any Federal Buildings in any of our Cities or States, will be prosecuted under our recently re-enacted Statues & Monuments Act. MINIMUM TEN YEARS IN PRISON. Don’t do it! @DHSgov
..I doubt that a Presidential Pardon is in the cards. But maybe I'm missing something. I thought those "Qanon" folks were really obsessed with following everything Trump tweets?
That tweet is from July 2020, and was aimed at BLM protestors. To say the least, the president has never demonstrated any special concern for philosophical consistency.
>The video shows a crowd surging through a Capitol door, past security, while an alarm repeatedly blares. As Evans enters an area called National Statuary Hall he celebrates and states his own name: “We’re in! We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
https://wvmetronews.com/2021/01/09/derrick-evans-resigns-w-v...