They are not yet being charged as such (and I’d be surprised if insurrection was a charge, though “seditious conspiracy” seems likely a fairly easy case to make).

Mostly, the charges are much simpler (which is unsurprising; its easy to survive a probable cause hearing for “unlawful entry to a restricted building or grounds”, it takes a lot more evidence for seditious conspiracy, treason, insurrection, conspiracy to impede or injure an officer of the united states, or any of the myriad of less simple but more serious crimes they might end up charged with as further investigation occurs.)

I don't think it's fair to say I have been using "HN primarily for political battle". When I do post on political threads, I try to do so with reasonable counter-points, logical debate, and appeal to avoid hyperbole and flame wars. I am certainly not perfect, but that is my aim. I'll try to do better.

Over the last 2 weeks I've posted 48 threads, 30 of which were non-political. Some of the highlights;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25684154 (+128) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25585764 (+31) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25697136 (+30) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25589742 (+6 posted late, underrated)

Of my rare political post, which of course have been +3 sigma more frequent since the 6th, here are some that I fully stand behind;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25695844 (+21) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25688330 (+10) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25691821 (+9) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711604 (+4) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25711572 (+1, was in fact disinformation)

And in full disclosure, some that were less substantive;

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25677651 (+3) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25680846 (+1) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25710688 (-2) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693504 (-4)

I'm not sure if you took issue with this particular post, which is currently (+12) and a totally fair point to question an incorrect factual claim by throw_m239339, who by the way I usually agree with.

EDIT: I see that you posted a ton of these warnings throughout the site on many profiles, which helps me feel less singled out. Again, I'll try to do better. You have an impossible task the last 6 days.

I take your point that you've been participating in other sorts of discussion too. I look through account histories fairly quickly—that's all there's time for. It's a pattern matching game. If I matched you to the wrong pattern, I'm sorry, but if you'd please err on the side of avoiding political battle and sticking to intellectual curiosity, we'd appreciate it.

https://www.revolt.tv/news/2021/1/8/22221070/woman-trump-sup...

If it was a heart issue there was a bit more to it than simple heart attack.

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/rosanne-boyland-died-capitol-ri...

The Onionesque headline is apparently too good to fact check though, because lots of media outlets are running with it for laughs.

I assume you feel the same way about the antifa and BLM protesters who stormed the houses of the mayor of Seattle, the governor of Washington, and the mayor of Portland?

https://drive.google.com/file/d/13YZiZXv6votoHh_CjhxEUhgth_Z...

"Using her official position to lead a march to my home, despite the fact that it was publicly known I was not there, and she and organizers knew that my address was protected under the state confidentiality program because of threats against me due largely to my work as U.S. Attorney. All of us have joined hundreds of demonstrations across the City, but Councilmember Sawant and her followers chose to do so with reckless disregard of the safety of my family and children. In addition, during or after Councilmember Sawant’s speech at that rally, her followers vandalized my home by spray-painting obscenities. (Photo attached)"

If you took the beliefs of the people involved in the insurrection to be true, you probably would join an insurrection as well. They believe that an election was stolen and that democracy has been destroyed in the United States and replaced with some form of a deep state dictatorship.

Trump supporters believe this because they have been lied to repeatedly for years without corrections they found to be believable. How do we correct these firmly held (but false) beliefs?

We need to hold people who lie accountable. If a talk show host makes a claim that an election was fraudulently stolen, that host needs to be able to provide real evidence to support that claim in a court of law or face civil / criminal penalties for disseminating false information.

Many people on HN hate the removal of Trump from Twitter and Facebook, and the removal of Parler from AWS... but private companies always have the right to choose who they do business with, barring a very limited set of protected classes. "Big Tech" are private businesses that most conservatives would support being able to exercise their freedom to choose who to do business with, and Big Tech made the right decision in removing people and organizations from their platforms who have repeatedly tried to promote harmful lies.

Beyond holding liars accountable, we do need to do a better job of making the truth more easily accessed. Perhaps holding elections in some sort of open source / public format would help... then you could look up your own vote and the votes of your friends to confirm, and also double check the counts across the nation.

Private votes is itself a practice with very strong reasoning behind it, to prevent coercion and such. So I can't really get behind this.

But yes, it points directly at the problem right now: if recounts and audits overseen by agencies run by members of their own political party aren't enough for these people, what would be?

How far should we be asked to go to appease these people?

Could we even reasonably appease them? When others are constantly shouting from their TV that they're being abused?

appeasement should not be the goal. You do not appease people, or they will just push for a mile given an inch.

There needs to be ground rules set, and punishment for crossing the line. I think the line has been crossed. Society, at least, in the majority, will agree that the line has been crossed, and that those who crossed it shall be punished.

You can't do that because visibility causes voting fraud.

By coercion. If votes can be checked by other people, a very large number of people (enough to change the result) will be forced under threat by someone else to "vote correctly".

The same happens if you can check your own vote, because any mechanism that lets you do that can usually be used by someone else - "give me your phone so I can check you voted for X like I told you to" (while holding a gun).

That's why free & fair elections have secret ballots, without personal identification on the ballots. To prevent coercion fraud.

Billions: https://www.thestreet.com/politics/donald-trump-rode-5-billi...

In 2016 most of the left-leaning media saw this as a win-win. Promoting Trump's antics would both boost their ratings and cause the Republican party to lose. Unfortunately they were half right.

Elon Musk used his powerful Twitter account to call a cave diving hero a pedophile last summer. The man lost the libel suit and Musk walked free, ironically with L Lin Wood as acting prosecutor.

This is not an excuse. See below.

> Trump supporters believe this because they have been lied to repeatedly for years without corrections they found to be believable. How do we correct these firmly held (but false) beliefs?

The reason these beliefs don't excuse anything is because they arguably do not believe them in the first place. These people are not stupid -- they do not have a problem thinking things through when it suits them.

The problem here is a culture of impunity. These people thought they could do this and face no consequences. Look no further than their shock and dismay at the (very light) treatment they're getting right now.

Yes, we should hold the liars accountable. But we should be just as harsh on the people who actually stormed the Capitol. We need to break this culture of impunity now -- by meting out harsh consequences -- before they try it again.

Oh the irony

https://people.com/politics/family-member-of-woman-who-died-...

Haven’t found a reference for the other.

These were militia.

If the mob (these weren't protestors, they were a mob) hadn't stormed the Capitol, nobody would have died.

"Maybe they didn't die because of the riot?!"

"It was really only 4 dead not 5 becomes someone might have died in their bathtub."

This is the most insensitive fucked up hairsplitting I've ever read.

I am not in favor of anything that happened, but in order to have any perspective on any of this, accurate information is important.

Rosanne Boyland was trampled. Certainly that's related to the violence. The other two were a stroke and a heart attack, both of which seem almost certain to have had as a proximate cause the stress of mob violence.

Didn’t they die the following day after returning to duty? I don’t recall, does anyone have a link?

Someone in the mob threw a fire extinguisher at Officer Sicknick's head. Later on the 1/6th, Sicknick collapsed due to a stroke (probably related to the beating he received). A day later on the 7th, he succumbed to his injury and died. I don't believe he ever "returned to duty", but now that we have his name, his story is at least more easily searchable.

That is definitely being killed by the mob. They don't get a pass because it took some time before the fatal injury caused death.

In any case, RIP Officer Sicknick.

Stripping a deceased person of their dignity via caricature is really a new low. This truly beggars belief and makes me very very sad. I hope the family finds peace.

But describing it as "a new low" against the background of a violent disruption of Congress, with the intent of interfering with the peaceful transition of power... that's not a phrase I'd have thought to use. The mockery is disgusting and disappointing, as is the gullibility of its spread, but both are very common. The violence, by contrast, is genuinely novel.

The violence is not ‘genuinely novel’. We certainly saw many instances of creative ways of violent destruction in protests by the other side in 2020.

Anyways...my 2c. Ymmv.

However, his social media posts before traveling to DC were enough to strip him of any dignity he may have had.

Its a low, but I don’t think its actually new, and not very uncommon in situations where there are both strongly divisive emotions and people dying.