Even our "equivalent", the Murdoch owned Sky News channel is nowhere near as bad as Fox news
They can decide that a person is not "fit and proper" to hold a broadcast license, but that's a fairly large hurdle to overcome (and it is, of course, judicially reviewable).
To be honest, this is how it should be. A presumption in favour of broadcasting, but with the ability to shut a broadcast down for repeated and/or egregious violations.
Id worry that polarizing people would take no time at all.
If you go to conservative forums, you'll find the same biased clips of CNN/MSNBC that portray those networks as heavily propagandized.
Fortunately there are some decent conservative leaning news sites, such as The Federalist and National Review, but Fox News does seem to dominate. Even though I often find myself disagreeing with what the leftier US news organisations say as opinion, they're much better at actually delivering facts and presenting differing opinions with useful context.
To be fair, we have the Daily Mail over here. It's not as bad a Fox generally, but it depends on the topic. The BBC does definitely have a left bias, but it's pretty mild and they're really good on informative content. We do have The Economist though, which is our jewel in the crown of news and opinion IMHO.
The bottom line is though I even can go to the Guardian web site, and I might think they're off the rails a bit and missing context. Some of their opinion pieces are ridiculous, but I can generally trust their factual information. I can't trust Fox or the Daily Mail on facts. That really worries me because a movement based on or informed with extensive misunderstanding of basic facts, or worse with a disregard for the truth, is doomed long term.
I mean these are the people who happily pushed and continue to push creationism because evolution (science) is a problem for them.
People are aghast today by how there’s a separate reality, but the human trials were done in public.
Creationism was the writing on the wall.
Lumping Fox in the same breath as both sides is not true.
The other side doesn’t include just “leftist” content, it includes the BBC, NYT, and apparently Jstor papers and Darwin.
Fox also actively prevents content that undoes its narratives. They argument is that “the other side does it.”
There’s no doubt that there is motivated reasoning and bad arguments in the normal news.
But Fox uses that as an excuse to give up altogether and just double down.
America is where it is because Fox News paved the way. You couldn’t give them enough credit for what they achieved.
Should Fox News have their licenses removed, and be taken off the air & internet?
[0] https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/fox-news-stops-airing...
That said, given the increasing irrelevance of broadcast TV, I don't see how removing their licence would achieve much.
A rallying call like that simply doesn’t work on Democrats, but god does it work on Republicans. I just don’t see any of this dying down at all, and the Republicans are always prepared to tap into this demo around election time (in two years time at the mid terms). They live for this.
Banning them just validated their world view. This is all going to get even bigger now, and they will head into the catacombs.
Rail all you like about it, but the republicans under Trump had both houses, got two judges, defunded a vast number of programs, won multiple issues in their identity wars, and donald trump got more voters to come out and vote for him in the second election
He got more votes, despite having a 40-45(?) approval rating (what I remember from 538)
The only “mistake” was riling up democrats enough to make them come out and vote more.
What are the repercussions?
There will be political roadblocks to see how much damage can be offloaded or dumped into a heat sink.
The republicans will regroup and then prepare for the Biden presidency.
So yes, you are right - madness was/is the superior political tactic. The better tactic survives.
The Democrats lack physical presence. It’s been an ongoing issue for us for a very long time. We had extreme issues with getting our youth vote out, getting our minority votes out. It literally took a black President to get that demo to show up, and for some reason they stopped showing up right after he was gone (for Hilary). The kids don’t turn out at all for decades now. Many could argue if we didn’t literally send out mail in ballots, the turn out would have been lower. Republicans don’t have this problem, so no, I don’t think a warcry works on the Democrats because we have been very weak on physical presence for decades now.
But in terms of madness, of course, all mobs are susceptible to this. Virtual turn out on the left is disproportionately high. The #metoo and BLM movements are clear examples of this. But again, the physical presence is lacking. The riots last summer were a blip and not coordinated, and led to zero legislation. I’ll concede #metoo inevitably entered into madness territory.
The Republican tea-party people have been practicing for years protesting in DC, and they have their physical turnout covered in almost every election.
If anything, I envy the right-wing’s ability to rally, and do not fear rally-calls on the left because we can barely show up for an election.
Also a quick google search showed that 75% of the Tea Party were 45 or older (back in 2012).
My take is that there’s a desperation behind the last 20 years or so.
Haven’t you wondered what would cause an entire segment of the population to take a deep dive with thinly-disguised racists and Russian trolls?
Even having a balanced budget hasn't worked out for "the right". When they've been in power, the budget deficit hasn't really decreased.
Perhaps this has made "the right" more desperate? Maybe they need to rethink their principles instead?
(I use quotation marks for the sides, because these really aren't issues that fit on a one dimensional scale. A libertarian could fall on the right, but still support "the left" on most of the above issues. Also, this is mostly US specific.)
The Democratic establishment is in danger of this fate in the long term as well. They are sure taking the easy money from the progressive talk, but if they don’t deliver, it’s going to backfire in 2-3 elections from within.
In my opinion that is a good property in general, just no for elections.
Sanders coalition is about the only grassroots group that came from the left and was swiftly rejected (twice).
The grass roots movements of the tea party took the Obama era super majority away, and fortified a Trump outsider run.
The boots on the ground every-man on the left is harder to rally, and thus far have not shown any ability to even dominate their own party (their platforms don’t even get taken up by the broader party, just parroted). Plus, if it were possible, there would be a voice in the mainstream media stoking this contingent (as in business has identified an obvious market).
Sounds like a good start. They have been involved in laundering terrorist rhetoric and incitement to mass attacks. Take the case of Fox employing Tucker Carlson.
Tucker owns Daily Caller.
Daily Caller published an article extolling the virtues of ISIS-style ramming attacks against protestors.
Fox News republished this article. The result was a spike in ramming attacks against protestors.
Fox gracefully pulled the article after complaints, no blow back since it wasn't their own article anyways. Nothing to see here, just entities paying each other and relaying each other's incitement.
There has to be at least a dozen people at Fox News that need to be imprisoned for their role in pursuing death and violence against political and cultural opponents. So yes lets do the steps you mentioned then move on to discovery so we can find out how execs at Fox measured success when publishing incitement.
US District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil agreed with Fox's premise, adding that the network "persuasively argues" that "given Mr. Carlson's reputation, any reasonable viewer 'arrive[s] with an appropriate amount of skepticism' about the statements he makes."
https://www.businessinsider.com/fox-news-karen-mcdougal-case...
It's the "any reasonable viewer arrives with an appropriate amount of skepticism" part that seems to be the problem.
Something you would have expected from the "liberal" media pre 2010.
Of course, 1% of trump voters may be giving the 99% a bad name.
https://thehill.com/homenews/news/533452-poll-18-percent-of-...
More data needed, but it could be an example of folks not realizing how hot the potato was in the first poll. And dropped it by the second poll.
Edit: this post itself has swung between 3 and -1 over just an hour!
That's actually very common these days. The mainstream has no control over the fringe. In a similar vein, when anarchists in Portland tried to burn down the Federal courthouse, there was silence from much of the Democrat political establishment.
To be clear I don't ever want to see guns or explosives at a protest, nor do I want to see riots, but I also understood the anger last summer and found it difficult to condemn it when the people most affected were at their wit's end. I get the sense that last week's protestors were in a similar mindset, but their reasoning was highly flawed and easily debunked.
I'm sure anyone coming at this from a different perspective would see my view as hypocritical and I recognize that, but there's a feeling in my heart I can't shake about what happened last summer when it came to police brutality, one that can't easily be broken by a whataboutism.
No degree of injustice gives people ethical license to destroy the livelihoods of people who had no role in said injustices.
I found the media silence on the violence and destruction over the summer, as a means to further their political objectives, absolutely repugnant.
I equally condemn the Capitol Hill rioters and hope they all face long prison sentences.
Do not allow violence to be partisan. Whether it's attempting to burn down a courthouse in Portland, or trashing the capital building, laws and gov't are all that keep civilization together.
Remember NPR's puff piece justifying looting? Or (I think) CNN's reporter standing in front of a burning building while saying that the BLM protests were mostly peaceful? (They were, but the not-peaceful bits were downplayed in an obviously biased way). There was another interview I saw where some guy was talking about the change they wanted to see, and peace and justice and so on, and was interrupted when in the background the crowd cheered when they finally managed to topple a traffic light (that traffic light never hurt anyone)
Also, the post-George-Floyd looting/rioting persisted for far more than a day. An example is the CHOP zone in Seattle, which lasted for 3 weeks before protesters were forcibly removed.
This doesn't absolve the Capitol Hill rioters either, but simply describing the BLM looting "looting commercial districts" downplays the amount of damage done. In my opinion, I think reasonable questions to ask are: over what period of time did the violence persist, what amount of value was destroyed, and how many lives were claimed during the looting.
According to BLM the violence against them has persisted since the founding of the country.
Rioting against being systemically killed for generations and destroying property because nothing else you do changes the system is absolutely fundamentally different than storming Congress because your cult leader and GOP officials have lied to you, you're dumb enough to believe it, and cause you to commit insurrection.
There is no comparing the two no matter how many times people try and draw up this false equivalence.
https://www.rubio.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2020/8/rubio-s...
The fact that Russian operation was much smaller that either candidate's political campaigns.
Also, just the general lack of evidence that it was a decisive factor.[1]
[1]https://time.com/5573537/mueller-report-russia-election-inte...
> [D]id those Russian efforts actually swing the outcome of the 2016 contest? ... Mueller's report does not attempt to answer this politically charged issue.
Indeed, that article explains quite clearly how it's not possible to say with certainty ("nowhere near enough") whether the outcome of the election was changed or not. You can't compare the impact of the stolen DNC and Podesta emails with campaign expenditures.
It is worth pointing out that, prior to this, right wing protests have actually been very peaceful. Protesting tax rates really isnt enough to rile up the radical elements. "Stop the Steal" apparently was, and definitely caught them flat footed.
If you can claim the BLM looting, rioting and violence (and murders) which has been ongoing for months are based on "legitimate political grievances", you need to substantiate that.
The right wing fringes can equally claim to have legitimate political grievances with how they have been systematically dismissed, villified and represented in national media for the last four years.
Anything else is going to be a double standard.
So, “Whoopsie! I accidentally entered the Capitol through that broken window and got peer pressured right into the Senate?”
Maybe the same standard should be applied to people who decide to join a mob, if we're assuming they're not dumb already before joining one.
This is the section about marching to the Capitol.
“ And we're going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women 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.
We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated. Lawfully slated.
I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard. Today, we will see whether Republicans stand strong for integrity of our elections. But whether or not they stand strong for our country, our country. Our country has been under siege for a long time. Far longer than this four year period.”
“
Full text of his speech (rambling and painful to read, but there was no advocating for violence: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-told-supporters-storme...
Trump: The entirety of this speech, but specifically the "fight like hell" part: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjYh4tIhVi4
Trump: "Be there, it will be wild": https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/06/us/politics/capitol-mob-t...
This article covers a lot of it too. It's been stoked for a while: https://fortune.com/2021/01/07/trump-speech-capitol-attack-r...
Joe Biden literally expressed a desire to physically harm the President, and dramatic, ecstatic portrayals of his death have been shared for his entire presidency.
Comparing what you're saying about democrats and Biden to what the president has been saying for years and all of the talk on facebook, twitter, r/thedonald, Parler, and Gab is being willfully ignorant. The results speak for themselves.
You are engaging in the most disingenuous interpretations of his words.
And there is no willful ingorance here. I know the things said by randos on r/thedonald can often be pretty horrendous. There are horrendous randos everywhere. Just look at r/politics.
The things people in power have said about Trump and his supporters is also quite terrible, and the fact that they have power makes it worse.
The ignorance is yours.
"the Democrats are hopeless, they are never voting for anything, not even one vote"
I beg to differ. Any time protests turn into riots, there are many who will jump at labelling the entire movement as being full of thugs and criminals. Your own words could be used to describe exactly how the BLM protests were viewed by the right. And actually, you yourself only mentioned "riots" without any acknowledgement of how there were far more peaceful protesters in that movement. Hint: the peaceful protests aren't as exciting, so they're not on the news as much.
So now am I supposed to feel sorry for the peaceful Trump protesters who are being mislabeled unfairly? Please. I didn't see a whole lot of diversity in those crowds, and somehow I think they are still going to be represented pretty well by their elected leaders going forward. Cry me a river.
These people look real "caught up in the moment".
https://teddit.net/r/PublicFreakout/comments/kucaz0/the_mome...
We’re necessarily talking about an absolutely insane and unhinged group of people. It doesn’t mean that you can go around encouraging and feeding that level of crazy and not expect bad things to happen.
Maybe the profit would make up for the pain - or one could indulge in a fantasy that the destruction would ultimately improve the human condition.
If my illusions were broken - even for a second - I would certainly die of shame.
Its hard to think about such dreadful things when you're on your yacht or golf course.
What about CNN? They are as biased as Fox News.
I don't know anyone who feels this way and if I did I'd suspect they had some underlying unresolved misogyny.
BLM supports violence and looting, if the target of said action is white.
BLM is about black supremacy.
BLM is absolutely not about equality.
Yes. Failing that let's do what was done to the cigarette industry -- figure out how to make them legally liable for the death they cause.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”
ref: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/66643-he-who-knows-only-his...
I don’t have a magic-wand solution to this (and I’d be surprised if such a solution exists), but we’ve just witnessed what happens if you let people argue endlessly in bad faith without consequence, and what happened was not good.
Perhaps your way is the least-bad outcome overall? I wouldn’t know, but you do not appear to have made that argument.
You are absolutely right that CNN is biased. They clearly are not trying to make it seem as though they aren't. The same with Fox, who are equally biased. However, only only of those outlets lets their reporters outright lie.
Now, it may be that I'm looking in the wrong places, but if I were to see lies on CNN in the same way as I see it on Fox, I'll be happy to change my mind, but right now I think it's pretty clear which one needs to be curbed.
Fox also allows comments on their stories. A lot of the real hateful stuff can be found there, and section 230 allows Fox to wash their hands of that. Perhaps Trump was on to something when he was campaigning to have it revoked? (the last part is sarcasm, of course).
Edit note: (this post has been downvoted into oblivion. I honestly have no idea which "side" have been doing the downvoting. I wonder if it's because the downvoters misunderstood what I was saying, or if they did understand and simply disagree)
The Mueller Report didn't "find nothing." If you're unaware of this, you can read about it here: https://www.commoncause.org/resource/read-the-mueller-report...
It only didn't end in legal action against Trump because of the procedural issues related to bringing charges against a sitting president. Barr made that decision, and chose to protect Trump.
Your video (apparently) shows a CNN producer who apparently believed the story was "fake", but that's not consistent with the actual facts we know.
Furthermore Bidens dealings are relevant to the US geopolitical ambitions and the censorship of it was a disgrace for the press. It keeps people uninformed, even if presentation of these issues is difficult for any news network.
What's the standard here? Reagan arming Contra rebels by selling arms to Iran?
Or are you comparing to the presidential campaigns for President? Are you claiming that Obama and Romney and Clinton colluded way more with foreign powers?
Or are you comparing with Biden, who profited in no way from his dealings in Ukraine?
Trump is as guilty of executive overreach, no questions asked, but the criticism is very selective.
If there had been something, we would have heard about it non-stop.
So what he does in his spare time is frankly irrelevant.
Biden is in the politics for decades, there is more then plenty of pretty damning evidence to show that, at the very best, he doesn't believe in anything he says.
Your claim is also invalid on its face—the election theft narrative is being spoken about endlessly. Trump's claims are headline news every single day. A significant fraction of the population believe it. So to claim that the story is being "censored" is simply wrong on the facts.
Hate to be the person to point that out, but let's be honest with ourselves, if it was Trump Jr. who was taking pictures of him putting his dick into a pizza while smoking crack with random hookers, it would be probably retweeted by @jack himself lol.
See, isn't this fun?
Sometimes, there just aren't two sides to a story, or more accurately one side is true and the other believes they had the biggest inauguration crowd ever.
The rest of the world clearly sees this. I'll openly admit to being a left-leaning liberal, but even my friends who vote right wing think that Trump is an embarrassment.
They can all do this to each other because they are all guilty of it. Cable news is a tower of partisan propaganda.
Traditional media definitely has flaws, but rejecting them in favor of social media because of it is an absurd and incredibly destructive reaction.
There seems to be some kind of law that the larger a media outlet is, the more partisan it gets. Which is why social media is like the Exxon Valdez crashed into Deepwater Horizon and caught on fire.
On any given day, two different perspectives agreeing to intellectually consider why the other side is objectively incorrect (as in, not just agreeing they are simply different) is a serious undertaking. If you casually take any topic, every single day, and allow people to do the thought experiment that one argument is more valid in a casual manner, you will 100% have to cut corners because you did not seriously approach the task. The most obvious way is you paint an enemy, or the notion of the other, an idea of a threat.
The average person in NYC really has no business having a dinner time objective discussion with someone from Missouri about gun ownership. Really the discussion should come down to ‘we have a lot space and gun culture in Missouri and it’s something we enjoy’, followed by ‘Interesting, it’s not the biggest thing here in NYC actually’. That’s about it.
But if there is an institution, I don’t know, let’s call it a fight club (the media), that says ‘you two at dinner, get ready to fight’, the two contestants will fight in an inexperienced way. Hair pulling, throwing rocks, no real jabs, conditioning, submissions, no fight experience.
It is not a casual ordeal to debate, and this is what the media is making people do.
We are not ready amongst ourselves to debate constitutional law and the rights of man, and the compromises needed to maintain society. It’s a serious thing to enter into that discussion.
The only take away I see in all of this is that there is a market for the un-serious, and there are some serious people (media) interested in that market.
Fox (to say nothing of the absolute swamp that is OANN or Newsmax) are an order of magnitude worse than the so called "left" channels (only in the US would CNN be considered a left wing news channel).
The reason that CNN, etc are "biased" against Trump is because reality is bisaed against Trump. He's just a terrible president, a lousy business man and an awful human.
Again, only in the US would that be considered a controversial statement.
And yes, all the news channels are equally terrible. This is not at all hard to find, but it may be hard to accept.
And only in the US would someone be so insular as to make such a statement :)
The US is still the largest economy in the world. As much as the rest of us would love to turn a blind eye when they elect an incompetent sociopath, unfortunately, we have to deal with his bullshit.
The rest of the world is not a single monolithic group either so I don't see the point of your sweeping generalizations.
signed,
A Brit.
Nonsense. Of course, people’s opinion of internal politics is relevant. If it wasn’t, we’d still have apartheid in South Africa, for example.
And no, the rest of the world is not a single monolithic group, but the vast majority of it (especially in comparable western democracies) thinks trump is a laughing stock.
The good news is that your cognitive function is not permanently lost, it can be quickly recovered by just turning off the TV and reading a book, playing with the dog or going on a long walk.
Yes, keeping up with current events is an important part of being a good citizen but there are quickly diminishing returns on that and it’s never worth sacrificing parts of your life and livelihood for.
I’d encourage speaking for yourself
Kind regards (Part of) The rest of the world
Ahh, the "both sides" argument. No, Fox News and CNN are not the same. The fact that you believe this... I'm not going to try to dissuade you. I don't have that much free time.
You can't very well let the fickle populace decide such important things without a little nudging.
They spent a week on how much diet soda he drank. They had experts on saying why it could cause mental problems and that they should use the 25th on him.
They spent several days when he had 2 scoops of ice cream at a White House dinner, while his guests only got one scoop. I wish I was joking about this, but I am not. I sometimes wonder what Wolf Blitzer thinks as he’s commenting on some of these stories. Such a name, wasted.
Those are the two most comical, but the scary thing is all news is biased. Two sides of the same coin. If you don’t think so, I suggest you search out other sources. Why wouldn’t they be biased? News today is about making money, and cnn and others cashed in on the hate for trump.
This is why I say both sides hide skeletons in their closet.
Its ketchup... ketchup on burgers is a faux pas.
Mayo & mustard goes on burgers, ketchup belongs in the garbage can. /r/KetchupHate users rise up!
Some examples... Clinton Server Controversy Concluded years later nothing illegal took place https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillary_Clinton_email_controve...
Mueller Report Concluded years later collusion did not take place (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/24/attorney-general-william-bar...)
I'm sure millions still believe everything they let these outlets of their choice pump in their brain and get them revved up. For me it's all garbage (political drama) ... not to waste my time on.
In Germany, we have the section §130 StGB in our criminal code: incitement to hatred. While it would be extremely hard if not impossible to get a TV station such as Fox News to be banned here, its hosts/mouthpieces/guests could certainly be sanctioned - up to actual jail time.
Also, our core media codex ("Medienstaatsvertrag") binds all broadcasting stations - radio, TV, streaming - to journalistic integrity and truthful reporting (§§6, 19, 51 MStV).
> What about CNN? They are as biased as Fox News.
I have yet to see a report that CNN broadcasts people that claim that the election was "stolen" or "manipulated". There is a massive difference between biased reporting and openly distributing lies.
Oftentimes that's all it takes. Pick the facts you report. You aren't reporting anything "false", but the truth isn't being depicted.
From what I've heard Fox reports that millions believe there was fraud. Not that there was actual fraud. I haven't fact checked this, because it came from a left leaning source and I believed it.
Not without risking violating the part about "journalistic integrity". Of course there was and will always be some sort of bias (e.g. the tabloid BILD is famous for being on the right wing), but it's nowhere near the scale of Fox News.
You may have missed it being in Germany, but for 3 years CNN, NYT, MSNBC, et al reported 24/7 that Trump colluded with the Russians to win the election. The Justice Dept spent millions thoroughly investigaing that claim and it turned out to be all lies.
The bipartisan senate intelligence report clearly lays out connections between Trump's campaign and Russian intelligence, see page 27, 178, 527, among many many others:
https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
You are correct in that the justice department's investigation was flawed, it did not force Trump to answer questions under oath. However, we have Trump's own words: "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you find Hillary's emails."
> The Justice Dept spent millions thoroughly investigaing that claim and it turned out to be all lies.
The Mueller investigation paid for itself in civil forfeiture ($42-46m) after convicting Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager of tax fraud, wire fraud and other financial crimes and got convictions of ten defendants. The only reason they did not indict Trump was in deference to a memo that the Justice department cannot indict a sitting president.
This led to the legendary response of ramen guy pointing out that the first amendment says exactly that.
Claiming such protests are "violent mobs" is nothing new: https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p...
Also note that some of the violence was instigated by the police: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p...
OTOH mobs in DC, Michigan were motivated by "masks=slavery" & "election fraud" both of which are completely imaginary, and EXACTLY one "leader" has been promoting it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-c...
Some of the protests that happened in the civil rights movement were indeed violent although this has been rather aggressively whitewashed in government approved public school classes meant to teach students the way to affect real change is to stand around with signs and sing songs and have racist white police officers beat you until you win (Kings flirting with communism and advocacy of reparations doesn't get much mention either). Ever hear of this guy called Malcolm X who wrote quite a bit about violence, he's definitely not somebody who could be allowed on social media. Race riots happened, people got beaten, some were killed largely by the police (just like in this most recent protest) but also by protesters (just like in this most recent protest). Did this delegitimize the civil rights movement? No, it was a noble movement, people just whitewash and dramatize it instead to prevent any degree of cognitive dissonance, and then compare modern day movements to the whitewashing to whitewash the modern day equivalents.
Back then like today, the degree of violence was greatly exaggerated, disproportionately by the media and by racist segregationist's. Protests are mostly a dull affair filled overwhelmingly with non-violent people and only the exciting bits hit the front pages. The extent of violence by Trump supporters too is greatly exaggerated, mostly by media and their political opponents. If one police officer dies and 4 protestors, the only reasonable reaction is a speech crackdown against those who blame this incident on democrats dubiously. Since obviously cracking down on the free non-violent exchange of ideas and advocacy of peaceful protest is what prevents violence from happening.
Point I'm driving at is that if the entire argument is based around the idea that any violence, or even violent mobs, delegitimizes a large movement than virtually all movements from BLM to the Civil rights movements to... whatever this is.... are delegitimized. Really the issue people have with the Trump supporters, above all, is that they're wrong and unpopular. As such they're a good test for exactly how much people REALLY support freedom of speech and the right to protest a cause that isn't broadly supported.
But you can't compare people committing act of violence to perpatuate a lie at the greater expense of society to people protesting for civil rights. And no the people that stormed the Capitol building, which hasn't happened since the war of 1812 and was committed by a hostile foreign nation, were not 'protesting'. Sedition is not a right.
I've been seeing lots of people write things like this very recently. But honestly, when did you start using the word "sedition" and when did the word acquire emotional weight to you, as a dastardly crime? When and how do you think other people got familiar with the word?
If I'm being honest, my association with the word sedition before pretty recently was almost entirely a very dim memory of the Alien and Sedition Acts being mentioned in grade school. And an even dimmer memory that they were unpopular and probably unconstitutional.
It's not that I think it's necessarily wrong to use it, I just feel suddenly surrounded by people who are pretending that we all are used to using it and viscerally being outraged by people who commit it. Which feels weird since I can't remember seeing it in normal conversation in like 30+ years.
Maybe it sounds better than treason, perhaps because treason is a word right wing types like to use?
Is sedition illegal? Should it be? When did the consensus arise, if it did? The historical laws against sedition are not generally presented in a good light, in school, from what I can tell.
I'm not questioning whether the attack on the Capitol was problematic, but why sedition is the go-to term. I feel like there's an echo of the awkward term "collusion" that eventually allowed people to say there was nobody charged with collusion.
Here is the law against seditious conspiracy https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2384
> If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States, conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States, or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or 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.
All my life, "sedition" has meant, as far as I knew, criticism of the government, possibly false criticism. Nor did I know of laws against it since around a hundred years ago or more.
Here is something saying sedition is:
"The federal crime of advocating insurrection against the government through speeches and publications."
https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/sedition
Here is a part of the law that sounds like it's outlawing sedition even though it doesn't actually include the word: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/2385
The significance, ultimately, is I'm suspicious that someone is pushing this term because they want to turn around and outlaw criticizing the government and say Democrats asked for it. Or, even if nobody has that plan yet, that using the term carelessly could invite it.
How are we defining sedition though? Rebelling against society is one thing. I'm an old punk rocker. Did I break laws I didn't agree with? Yes, repeatedly. But I also accepted that, right or wrong, it was my personal choice, I made those decisions myself and if I faced consequences for it they were my consequences to face, not someone else's. There's a difference between sending a message and killing the messenger. I get the over all point you're making but damn what do we call it? This is way past protesting or rebelling against the government and society. We poked the bear but we didn't burn down the entire forest just to spite the bear.
Lies and fraud implies bad faith, riots and coup being end goal.
The intent is different, so it is false equivalence.
Sure, if it were real.
I mean, if the Presidency was indeed stolen by election fraud, protests and rioting would be justified. But unlike the BLM protests, they were based on lies. Those lies did real damage, and they haven't stopped, so publishers are cutting ties with them to avoid further crime and terrorism.
https://www.npr.org/2015/03/17/393646640/hands-up-dont-shoot...
Police response to violence in both cases is justified
[0] https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271
[1] https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=gr...
Explaining everything by race is also a dead end.
I am sympathetic to those who have been impacted economically. But, many of those who are despairing do end up blaming "outsiders" for their problems.
They are angry because they lost and they are being told that they didn't lose. If you can be told that anything you don't like is the case then you will always be "unheard."
MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence.
You can't just live in unreality and pretend you're a victim. Either you can't see it for some reason or you do see it and you're pretending you don't.
The anger is what got Trump elected in the first place.
> MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence.
No, but it's a reflection of a common symptom, not a justification. Silencing begets violence _because_ it's all that's left.
The pen is mightier than the sword, but when you take the pen away, what are they left with?
Jobs. Opioid deaths. Suicides. Life expectancy. Standards of living. Manufacturing erosion. Lack of a future. Lack of wealth creation. Rural and middle class erosion. Education costs. Healthcare costs. Endless war. Shitty rotting infrastructure. Mismanagement of the US fiscal house by worthless political elites obsessed with their own petty bubbles in DC. A mediocre social safety net despite enormous government spending. Corporate-government-lobby coordination to endlessly pillage the people (eg per capita healthcare costs in the US being 2x what they should be). Being lied to for generations by the elite political class while things haven't gotten better for half the country for 50 years.
Everyone is starting to look around and ask good questions. Like, why do US taxpayers & citizens fork over $8.2 trillion (directly or through debt/inflation) every year, equal to ~40% of the economy, and have so little to show for it? Why is there no money in Social Security? What did they do with what should be the world's largest sovereign wealth fund? Why does nobody call them out on the lie that is the non-existent Social Security lockbox? Why do we keep burning trillions of dollars in the Middle East? Insert 487 other lies from the political class.
Trump got their attention because he brought up some of these lies - including the endless war aspect - and was one of the first leading candidates to ever do so. It's a similar reason why Bernie Sanders came so close to the Presidency twice, a large group of people on both sides are very angry and have had enough of the same old status quo (which the elites in power have an interest in perpetuating forever). Those trillions of dollars wasted in the Middle East should have been in a Social Security wealth fund, and some of it should have been put toward infrastructure.
Tens of millions of white people - those core Trump voters - are getting increasingly angry about all of it. Most of them probably have no idea what to do, so they're flailing for something different (if you're not an experienced fighter and you get hit in the face, your only capable reaction may be to flail). Those voters are not supposed to be upset about anything (so goes the fantasy social theory), because of their privilege. How is their privilege looking compared to a white person in Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, France, the Netherlands or Sweden? I'd say many of them are increasingly worse off and they know it when they look around. Those standards are what white people in the US look at to compare their well-being, and that's where they start to get increasingly upset.
Michael Moore was right about what he said about Trump voters prior to the 2016 election, why they were seeking to elect him. Those voters wanted to throw a molotov cocktail at the system. And they were not thinking particularly rationally, angry people rarely do.
People tend to vote for radical options when they're desperate. One can think less of them for voting for Trump, say they chose wrong, shit all over them, call them stupid, mock them, call for their arrest or purging, call for them to be blacklisted, try to suppress their speech and so on. One can shake one's head and proclaim that if they only voted Democrat they could have all of those things they want (which also begs the question on how the Democrats screwed up so badly that they lost the poor and lower class white voter that they used to have). Those voters feel attention-abandoned by the Democrats - which is an ongoing mistake by the Dems - and Trump scooped them up by paying attention to them. They're angry regardless of anyone's thoughts about them, they're increasingly lost regardless, and they're going to get more so as time goes on and as things fail to improve, as their lot in life fails to improve. They're angry because their point of comparison isn't what some people think it should be, it's what they think it should be. White lower & middle class people are never going to bounce around happy because they're better off than a poor black person in the US (which is what the premise of throwing white privilege statements at them is meant to accomplish), that is never going to be their point of comparison no matter what anybody says to them; their point of comparison is going to be other affluent white people around the world (that is not a politically correct thing to say, of course, it's the actual truth of their perspective and what's really going on).
Telling people that they shouldn't be angry does not work, particularly when they've been dealing with decades of standard of living erosion and have little hope for the future being better. The elites have been conspiring against their interests forever at this point, it's little wonder they're staggering around in a daze with little clue as to what direction to go. It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future. The Democrats have power again (narrowly), and they need to deliver a lot better than they did in 2009-2010 with their mostly squandered super majority.
> It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future.
What if there simply isn't a better path? Between automation and foreign competition, it might simply not be possible to return to an economy like the one we had post-WWII.
This is where everyone comes along to tell me about UBI, but I think this is not addressing the problem. A lot of people don't want to be handed free money, they want opportunities to work and improve their lives. A slower treadmill is still a treadmill. I wonder if it is simply impossible to provide that, and maybe the current reality is close to the best this is going to get.
I think maybe the best possible future is one where many (and eventually most) people live out their lives hooked up to an opiate IV and a VR headset.
We also simply are too efficient to have multiple of a field any more too. We end up having one department store chain instead of four or five in an area; every market seems to solidify into 2 or 3 companies. Many jobs are virtualized to where those companies hire a fraction of humanity and have weak supply chains.
I think what will happen is just over time we will have less people. People will stop reproducing in sort of an equilibrium until we reach a point where we balance out to the economy's needs. I don't think it will be top down, but people simply cannot afford to have kids in a part time gig economy.
I'm all for tariffs when there is some other goal that makes sense (for example I think tariffs should bake in the cost of environmental or other regulatory compliance we have that the foreign trading partner does not).
China’s not free trade anyways (not in terms of tariffs, but in terms of foreign businesses operating locally, and in terms of manipulating currency) so there’s only so much they can retaliate...
The Trump supporters who I am talking about have spent the last 4 years alienating their friends and family, bragging about their success, and making fun of those who are less fortunate than themselves. The Trump supporters who I am talking about have spent the last 4 years running people over with their cars, pointing guns(and shooting) at people that disagree with them, and now attempted to overthrow a democratic election.
Whatever filter bubble you think I am in is not as tiny as you might think. I have lived all over the country. I am from rural Michigan. I personally know conservatives and have close family that I deeply care about that are fully absorbed into the Trump cult. These are people who were upper middle class by the time the Bush and Obama administrations had come to pass; these are people that have destroyed lifelong relationships to maintain their allegiance with Trump.
I know the hardship is out there, and that I can agree with you on. However, the Trump supporters I know have more property and wealth than I could dream of.
And he did take a few steps to fix issues, including on criminal justice reform and eg his executive order on healthcare pricing (how was something like that not in the ACA?). A pittance for sure. However if you're drowning and grasping at straws, those will do. The way the system attacked Trump for four years also makes them believe even more so that he represents the anti-establishment, that he would tear down the existing system.
Trump voters also liked his economy until the pandemic crashed it. They think he was at least partially responsible for it. Wages for the bottom 2/3 were rising at the fastest pace in two decades. That wasn't courtesy of Trump (it was due to a very tight labor market, which would have happened in that term regardless), however as President he gets the credit for it, that's how it always works politically. Absent the pandemic, Trump would have easily sailed to a second term via the electoral college.
Why did Bernie Sanders voters come back and vote for him so voraciously again after he (maybe) lost last time vs Hillary Clinton? Because they reject the Hillary Clinton & Joe Biden status quo, the never-ending cycle of sticking to the types of candidates and policies of the recent past that have failed.
Imagine an alternative election without Trump as a Republican: vote for system status quo conservative candidate (Jeb Bush clones at best, maybe we'll get some more war out of it), or vote for Joe Biden, one of the guys that put us into Iraq & Afghanistan for two decades, represents everything wrong with the past 50 years of American politics (which he was an important part of), is a pure establishment candidate, represents the entrenched political elites, and sponsored the human rights smashing 1990s crime bill. One helluva choice Americans get. Death by this, or death by that. Besides, people largely vote by partisanship (which is how you get prominent Democrat Congresspersons that will say Biden is guilty of sexual assault, and they still support him for President; or how you get his VP calling him a racist one minute and then gleefully joining forces with him and pretending he's not a racist the next minute; that's the nature of being a partisan). The vast majority of voters on each side will stay on their Republican / Democrat side; so if you're a Republican, your choice is Trump or a likely return to something akin to Bush's various terrible policies (the Bush money machine likely would have handed Jeb the Republican nomination in 2016, absent Trump). So as I said, flail it is.
I'd gladly take Jeb Bush over Trump. Not that I'd actually vote for either one, but, at least Bush seemed competent.
These people have been told that their trouble is caused by brown people coming to take their jobs, by affirmative action. They are told that the government is the problem, when in reality so many poor people in the South rely on government assistance just to survive. They look for a cause for their troubles and the right wing media hands them a false narrative.
How did white privilege allow them access?
I assume you have noticed how the majority of the people in the 1/6 "protests" were white, didn't you?
This was supposed to be a group of people who "backed the blue" and stood for law and order. Perhaps their guard was let down because of this?
Perhaps it was because the police response to mass gatherings has changed and become more lenient since the beginning of the BLM protests.
Interesting that you posted this link with the image of national guard members on the Lincoln Memorial steps this summer. I had read the an official, maybe Mayor Bowser didn't want this exact scene pictured to happen again because it looked bad.
Anyway, here is the tweet from the Mayor Bowser officially declining additional federal law enforcement to help MPD and their partners.
I don't think that Mayor Bowser refused to get additional law enforcment because of white privilege.
Are you actually trying to make that claim or just arguing for the sake of arguing?
That's fine, obviously we don't have to agree.
I do ask that you be a bit more civil though in our discussion.
All I'm saying is that if you're going to disagree with Occam's Razor, given the history of racial relations in this country, including the fact that there's an entire protest movement about police violence against non-white people, you've gotta bring something besides "could it be," and "perhaps."
If you can't deal with that, I'd suggest you avoid internet discussions entirely.
"I assume you have noticed how the majority of the people in the 1/6 "protests" were white, didn't you? "
"You're gonna have to provide more than "could it be," and "perhaps," if you want me to swallow that line."
"Are you actually trying to make that claim or just arguing for the sake of arguing?"
"If you can't deal with that, I'd suggest you avoid internet discussions entirely."
So I don't think you're arguing in good faith.
I'm not certain the context of why she begins her statement "To be clear". I looked at her previous tweets from the day and day before and this matter wasn't specifically addressed. The only thing I could think of is that a federal law enforcement authority wanted to get involved and she didn't feel the need?
https://twitter.com/MayorBowser/status/1346530358674792466
"To be clear, the District of Columbia is not requesting other federal law enforcement personnel and discourages any additional deployment without immediate notification to, and consultation with, MPD if such plans are underway."
I think she would have been a really decent president, even though I think she has an unpleasant media personality.
It couldn't be that the "tech cartel" is concerned about a specific subset of speech designed to insight violence.
What I’m saying is both actions didn’t end with a good look and they both should be condemned
Edit: I seemed to have touched a nerve. I was rewatching video from people storming the capitol. They were not armed and they were all milling about without a plan. Even the lady that was shot was unarmed
Edit2: I think we are being hoodwinked. We saw lots of angry people storming the capitol out of frustration, provoked by false information fed to them. I don’t think the disinformation campaign stopped at the rally, I think it is continuing now. Everyone is being led to believe that the folks who walked in were acting the same as the Michigan capitol protest earlier last year. It was not like that. It was a bunch of people thinking they were going to make a difference and ended up not having a clue of what they were going to do. The orderly exit of most leaving the capitol building is proof of this.
I just ask before you rage downvote to pause and think is this the division they (those making the narrative of DC burning vs Capitol Siege) are trying to sow? Both actions are heinous and doesn’t look good for America regardless of how you try to spin it.
1) Bombs were left during the invasion. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fbi-50k-reward-pipe-bombs-capit...
2) Weapons were recovered. https://ktla.com/news/nationworld/13-arrested-5-weapons-reco...
That’s weapons recovered. How many more were carrying?
Jake Angeli carried a spear. Several weapons recovered from Eric Munchel.
I honestly cannot tell if you are being sarcastic here.
Causation != correlation. I did not see any overt firearms or weapons on the people storming the capitol building. It will be hard, because it goes against your beliefs.. but I challenge you to find those armed people in the various live streams that captured the event.
Although they certainly did attack police officers. With flag poles, ladders, fire extinguishers, pepper spray.
I’ll leave it there.
Seems like the mob was pretty well armed.
Not only do I not have these opinions, I haven't seen those opinions expressed here.
This thread is about the youtube channel of one of the instigators of this insane action against your elected officials being banned. The BLM riots - which certainly had bad aspects - are off-topic and any attempt to drag them in here is simply whataboutism.
My point is the narrative. Take a step back and observe and claim the wrong done by both parties instead of saying one is right and one is wrong.
But all the people who invaded the capitol? They all invaded the capitol. Let’s be clear about that.
If there was somebody armed during this crime, they should all be held responsible for it
I am not a lawyer, but as I understand it, in some circumstances, a group of people that commit a felony during which someone dies, can all be charged with murder, even if none of them intended to kill and only one of them actually did.
This is kind of controversial and not the case in all jurisdictions.
https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1347011413101998080?s=1...
Further, staying inline with the thread.. This is how we define “mass armed people storming the capitol”? Contrast to the three blazes that were going on around dc in may. Did those controlled fires mean dc was burning down?
I am challenging the narrative. Dc was not burning in may just the same as a large mob of ARMED people didn’t storm the capitol...
> One.
One example is what you asked for. It's not commenting in good faith if you move goalposts like that.
Look, I am currently combing all of the video from the event for faces in a bid to help identify people who were in the capitol. That guy was NOT on any live stream. This the original claim of “saw it from being glued to the TVs and monitors” is a false one and I challenged op to find an example in the stream that he watched. Instead he provided a photo op from Twitter. You yourself even cut off the part where i set the goal posts.
Regardless when I release my project this week you will see that no one was “clearly armed” as they walked through those doors. This was a travesty, but it is IMHO just one big false narrative like DC burning in May (the original goal post I replied to)
The link you posted before is a selection of the protests away from the building. I skipped through it and could not find any view of storming the building at all.
Is this what you were looking for? Or are you specifically looking for people who had their weapons in the open and visible to cameras and staff before even getting in? Because I don't think they would be that stupid.
And no, I don't believe the majority had any serious weapons with them. There is a decent number of people with padded gloves though - not something you normally take with you.
Abraham Lincoln said that all controversies are about minorities and majorities, and that one of them must submit, or the government ceases. There is no alternative. And that if the losing states of the 1860 election were permitted to secede, it would be the end of self-rule, the end of democracy. And he decided that could not be permitted.
In the 2016 election, a majority of voters elected Clinton. They submitted to the minority because that is what the Constitution required. And they did it peacefully. Clinton conceded the day after the election.
Fast forward to 2020, Trump has gotten 2/3rds of the Republicans in the House to debase themselves. They are now a sedition caucus, selling these lies too. As well as several Republicans in the Senate. The lie that they are not the minority. And the lie that they do not have to submit. They can fight instead.
This is a non-insurable proposition, because the majority was never going to submit this time.
The message being broadcast for two months is: cease the government. That is why violence broke out in 1861, that's why it broke out last week, in the first violent transfer of power since then.
BLM riots vs capitol attack? Not at all the same thing. Not at all the same risk. And the whataboutism? Sounds like white nationalist nonsense to me.
These people are pissed off, simply because theyre being told to be pissed off. There is no nuance, culture is what we are told at scale. Its why everyones pissed off. Anger is the easiet engagement to bait and advertising based businesses at scale are powered by engagement.
You're seeing the fruits of 70+ years of conservatives telling their audience "Everything sucks now, and everything will suck more in the future, and those people over there are to blame for all of it".
This is the reason you're seeing so many educated, affluent people among those who stormed the Capitol - they're just really, REALLY pissed off.
Yes, the rules are the same regardless of which side an account is battling for. There's nothing worse for HN than accounts which have abandoned curiosity and entered here.
Just like Komsomolskaya Pravda. People who thought they were biased were clearly indoctrinated by capitalist lies.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-ratings
The issue is people only ever consuming one side.
Both sides is a way to make yourself feel smart without critically examining on a deeper level what those biases are, how widely they’re consumed, and how seriously they’re taken.
Anyone making the claim that his side is the side of truth and justice and the other side is the one of delusions and falsehoods is not looking for healing or reconciliation. He is in search of either total domination of the other side, or divorce, or worse.
The question is: do you think your side will be able to totally dominate the other side? Is it possible to totally dominate 75 million Americans who view your domination as something evil to be opposed, possibly violently?
It seems you're betting it is, and your side will pull it off.
Though I wonder: what is this confidence based upon?
Your side controls the institutions and the cities. What happens when the people outside the cities simply stop listening to what the cities and the institutions say? What happens when the media and academies and federal government can say whatever they like, but everyone outside the metropolises simply starts to ignore them and make their own rules?
This is the real problem with Balkanization: once the dialogue breaks down, everything else starts to break down after it.
Easiest illustration is that Rittenhouse fellow, a brave-ish kid standing for himself in one reality and a cold-blooded murderer in another.
Here is a really good summary from someone with two degress in criminal justice: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfAz851P8p4
The fact you used the "carried a weapon across state lines" line suggests that you may be consuming biased reports. It's not a crime to carry a weapoon across state lines. He also lived right on the state line and worked in Kenosha. It's not like he drove miles to shoot protestors in some city he has no affiliation to and portraying it like this is dishonest.
He also probably acted within self-defense as is covered in this part of the video I shared: https://www.youtube.com/watch?t=648&v=dfAz851P8p4
For the record, I think what he did was reckless and dangerous, but the catalyst to this was the riots and looting. Right or wrong you'll find some people will react like this when they feel their neighbourhoods are under attack. You can't expect one group to be violent without some kind of push back from another. The same problem exists with antifa and BLM (not that these groups are a direct comparison). My point is these groups don't exist in a vaccum, they appear when they believe law enforcement and those in power are not doing a good enough job. You have to go a level deeper and ask why BLM protestors are on the street, and why are people are feeling the need to form militas in the first place? If you ignore the causes these events will continue to occur and likely escalate.
No, its clear. He was not defending his home or his business, he traveled 90 minutes by car to play soldier. It was not his neighborhood that was "under attack" and this wasn't self defense. He was not going about his life when someone threatened him, he went on a mission. He entered a dangerous area with a gun with full knowledge of the range of outcomes.
On the other hand, we have people that don't.
Clearly we need to listen to the Nazis and debate them in the marketplace of ideas. Is that somewhere in Narnia?
Meanwhile, you'll be hard pressed to find any daylight between the news sources in the "Right" column and Trumpism.
Now I'm sure these ratings aren't perfect, but I believe they're more accurate than most people's hunches.
They describe how they come to a bias rating at https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-rating-method....
This stuff has been thought over very thoroughly, a long time ago. It's not nearly as trivial as y'all seem to think it is.
People were open to evidence for some time, but none emerged. I expect people would react differently to claims backed with evidence.
And if there was any evidence, it would been have presented in one of the ~60 lawsuits that universally got shot down by every single court, appeals court, and the Supreme Court. Because they had no evidence.
While I think, all platforms should have the right to censor whatever content they wish to, it always goes other way, platforms should also be free to have all sort of content including what I might think as a "lie".
All this mess will result into a better internet where people will figure out more "uncacelllable" solutions to propagate what people call "lies".
What do we expect from a population of people that only hear these lies, day in and day out? They're going to react just like they did on 1/6.