> a bunch of talking heads on TV and Twitter that told them there was an "insurrection" (nothing of the sort happened of course)
It didn't succeed, and in retrospect, it didn't look very effective. Many (but by no means all) of the participants were clowns.
However, it was absolutely an attempt. People died in an attempt to storm a seat of government and install a different regime. People were chanting "hang Mike Pence", constructed an actual gallows, and then went looking for him. And they did this, let's reiterate, in an attempt to overturn the election. The people trying to track him down had specific objectives in mind (however realistic or otherwise they may have been) and they weren't "giving him a bouquet of flowers and a hearty thank you for performing his entirely ceremonial role in the election process".
We can argue about how incompetent the insurrection was (clearly, very), and how close it came to achieving any of its objectives (still quite unclear). And we can certainly argue about whether a single failed insurrection attempt justifies the response; I think a very valid case can be made for the "no" argument. But words have meaning, and the word "insurrection" means precisely this.
How can anybody believe such nonsense? Sorry, but simply taking over the capitol doesn't automatically make you the ruler of a new regime. It's not a video game were you get made king when you conquer the target zone.
Because the intelligentsia aligned with the “retain power for Trump at all costs” faction represetned in the insurrection announced various mechanisms by which that ccould be done (which may be Constitutionally dubious, but that’s irrelevant here), because the President openly endorsed those theories, and because the actions the members of the mob openly stated they wanted to take were consistent with enabling those routes to be taken by removing actors who were impeding them, notably the VP.
To believe it was an attempt doesn't mean that you must believe it was likely to succeed, only that there is sufficient reason to believe that that's what the actors involved wanted to have happen. And there's plenty of reason to believe that they did want to impose a different leadership than the actual election winner, and that they had specific reason to believe that attacking the capitol when they did would present a means to achieve that objective.
> Sorry, but simply taking over the capitol doesn’t automatically make you the ruler of a new regime.
Nor was that the plan, but the escape of the VP and members caused the plan to fail.
Angry protesters are a dime a dozen, it's the letting them into the main government building that makes it a coup.
Attempt at what? Takeover of the power in the US? B-u-l-l-s-h-i-t.
> People were chanting "hang Mike Pence",
People chant a lot of shit. People were chanting "hang Trump" for four years, nobody ever called it an insurrection. Before that, they were chanting against Obama, Bush, Clinton, etc. Nobody ever has been hanged. Pretending not to understand the difference between chanting slogans and actually hanging somebody is silly.
> And they did this, let's reiterate, in an attempt to overturn the election.
There's no possible way of overturning any election this way. It's like I point a finger at you and say "bang!" and you'd claim I tried to murder you with a gun. It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress. It was an act of protest, that went out of the way and grew violent, but it is no more insurrection than pointing a finger is gun violence. Let's not mimic an idiot school principal that calls the police on a elementary schooler that shows the other kid a finger gun and complain about "gun violence". There were no attempt to overthrow anything because it's not possible to overthrow anything this way.
> But words have meaning, and the word "insurrection" means precisely this.
Nope, the word "insurrection" means armed violent action in order to overtake the government, and this is no more insurrection than finger gun is a mass shooting.
The mob I see here is clearly armed with liberated riot shields, flag poles, sticks and billy clubs, and pepper spray / bear spray, and they are attempting to forcibly push their way into the congress building via mass mob shoving.
https://youtu.be/cJOgGsC0G9U?t=748 (30 minutes, probably NSFW) timestamp links to a coup attempt participant deploying bear spray against the police.
I would call that an armed violent action, if unorganized. Could they have overtaken the government (congress)? Maybe with a bit more time, weapons, violence or energy, yes.
> It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress.
And if the coup attempt participants had managed to take 20 or more congresspeople hostage and beaten them with sticks until they passed a law that made Trump's term in office infinitely long? Sure, it wouldn't pass the sniff test or the Supreme Court, but it would be an attempt to overthrow the functioning of government.
You can't say it "wasn't an attempt" because they didn't succeed. I can say it was an attempt because a mob broke into the congress building, with some of the members intent on forcibly stopping the election results from being accepted (as has been seen in other arrested individuals and those who had zip tie cuffs).
'Giuliani tells Tuberville that McConnell wants to narrow the objections to just three states and explains that the Trump team wants to object to 10. “So if you could object to every state and, along with a congressman, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, particularly after what McConnell did today.”'
https://thedispatch.com/p/giuliani-to-senator-try-to-just-sl...
It's not a huge leap to imagine a deadlock on certification leading to Trump declaring he'd just hold on to the presidency. That's basically been the whole game plan for months.
Most people who chant performative calls for violence don't normally, build a gallows and then go looking for the target. But sure, no doubt they had no intention of using violence, other than, you know, against all the police officers who were seriously injured or killed.
But fine, let the record show that it's remotely possible they were merely trying to overthrow a government by the threat of violence against Congress and the VP, and not actual violence.
> There's no possible way of overturning any election this way [...] It is literally impossible to change result of the election by jumping on a desk in a Congress.
The people involved were acting on the belief that Congress has the power to change the result of the election, and they were trying to force Congress to use that power. That's also why they were after Mike Pence.
And were they wrong? As a matter of strict constitutional interpretation, I think so, but as practical matter, there's no particular reason to think it couldn't work. They wanted to get a resolution out of Congress announcing that Congress had counted the electoral votes and Trump had won (or failing that, some sort of resolution purporting to delay the inauguration, re-run the election, etc.) How the nation would have responded to that I couldn't say. I don't think it would have worked, but who knows?
In any case, yes, this is one of the ways you can overturn an election. It's happened before; no doubt it will again. It didn't happen this time, but it's absurd to pretend it wasn't an attempt, however inept it may have been.
> means armed violent action
And how did Sicknick die again?
Can there be a free speech social platform that isn’t a cesspool? If so, how? Is it inevitable that a free platform will be used to recruit, radicalize, and organize for violence? Or is there a way to prevent that?
Ignore these questions and you let them fester.
> “insurrection”
Here’s a definition from Merriam-Webster: “an act or instance of revolting against civil authority or an established government”. Seems to fit what happened at the Capitol pretty well, doesn’t it?
Should we let the Michigan militia that was going to murder the governor off, since they just talked about it but didn't actually do it... Because they were caught.
Anybody who supports democracy should be against everything that Trump has said and done as well as the riots and those who support it. Those are the most direct attacks on our way of life since the civil war. But they won't because Trump does what they like - it's bad faith, and always has been. It's not about free speech and never has been. Just more projection and attacks from the typical actors.
Even if Pence had been killed, American democracy would not be in danger. Presidents have been killed and democracy survived intact.
This has always been the great lie behind the American concept of "freedom". At some point, one group's freedom starts to impinge on on another group's freedon, and you have to decide who gets the freedom and who doesnt. Unrestricted freedom for everybody is a fallacy that sounds good on campaign posters but ends up with somebody's freedom being ignored.
Do you think the freedom to say whatever you want on Twitter is more important? Or is a private companies' freedom to define how their platforms are used more important?
I completely agree with you. But the point I was trying to make wasn't what the limits on freedom should be, just that people need to accept that there will be limits on freedom and agree on what those limits should be ahead of time, rather than pretending freedom is a thing that can be unlimited and then after we get into a situation where it can't be, trying to roll back freedoms we thought we had.
Let's say there were people who support violently overthrowing US government (I personally don't think there were many at Capitol on Jan 6, but I am willing to entertain your point and even go much further than that). In fact, we know such people existed, long before today, but let's say there are more of them. How that changes anything? There always were hundreds of millions of people who would like nothing better than US government to fall. There were many governments actually falling, including as a result of violent - or non-violent - revolutions. Most of us who are out of elementary school probably could remember several examples they witnessed (hopefully not in person, but at least via the news). Somehow it didn't cause people to say "well, if that could happen, probably free speech is stupid, we just need to let our betters on Facebook/Twitter rule us now, people are clearly too stupid to handle free speech".
To be clear, I am not claiming those violent people are right or not supporting them. I am just surprised that existence of such people - which shouldn't be any news for anyone - suddenly makes somebody to give up on such core ideals as free speech, and not as a result of some civilization-shattering catastrophic event with millions of deaths but as a result of a TV picture.
Society apparently has little defense against this sort of viral, distributed cult and people are scrambling. I'm pretty sure that ad-hoc ostracism effected by large social media companies isn't the best approach, but the cost of not doing anything is terrible.
You mean, like set up an autonomous zone in a center of the city and kick the police out? Burn down a federal court? Destroy the police station? Take over capitol building and occupy it for several weeks? Attack an elected official's family at their own home because you don't like their policies? Yeah, that happened, but not sure how immersed in QAnon belief system (whatever it is) that was. All I know the democracy survived all that.
Neither side sees themselves as terrorist, they see themselves as freedom fighters. Both groups are idiots and damaging the country. If you support either, you're adding fuel to the fire. Big Tech stepping in and shutting a group off the internet may see correct today, but all political tides wane and a new wave comes in, how sure are you that it will be the wave you want and not one where you're the dangerous one we have to silence?
Successful in killing/hold hostage those elected officials they deemed against their cause. This could have ended so much worse than it did.
For example, what do you think would've happened if AOC or one of the other congresswomen maligned by Trump ended up in front of these maniacs? Do you think they would have stopped at stealing podiums/laptops?
Why is this not viewed in the same way? It's a complete attack on our country and government, but was somehow sanctioned?
I was 100% onboard with reformation of policing, increasing training, and the likes. When rioters attacked small business, used strong arm tactics to establish autonomous zones in us Cities, burned down police stations, attacked innocent bystanders.. etc.. you lost my empathy.
I'm 100% for equality, I'm 100% for people loving whome ever they want. You have my support. But when the demonization of anyone that doesn't 100% toe the line becomes standard you lose me and a large portion of America.
Both sides are going crazy and until both sides acknowledge that, it's only going to get worse. Media and big tech taking these actions will escalate not de-escalate.
This is what you think but they do not. They believed that they were protecting the integrity of the elections.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity...
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/self-described-member-boo...
http://stmedia.startribune.com/documents/Hunter_complaint_af...
The depressing thing is that while you may share some beliefs with that side of the political spectrum, these are not the kind of people who will be reasonable when they come for 'nonbelievers' in the night. That shifts the terrain considerably as far as the security situation is concerned. Even if I agree with some of the tenets of their politics.
Frankly that goes for the extremists on the other side of the political spectrum as well. These extremists have just shown tendencies that are way too dangerous.
"Safer" in what respects? Personal safety?
The US is 94/230 for countries with highest intentional murders per capita.[0] St. Louis and Baltimore rank 9 and 11 as highest murders per capita by cities across the entire world.[1] US ranks 14/116 with the highest rapes per capita.[2]
There are plenty of governments and societies safer than the US with regards to personal safety.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intention... [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cities_by_murder_rate [2] https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violen...
> Tell me you criterion of safety and your example, let's see if I need to be corrected.
You are aware you're the one who made the argument that the US is the "most safe civilization ever existed on the face of the planet", and you are not specifying what the criteria you used to evaluate that?
This is completely off-base and devalues the rest of your comment.
The capitol was stormed which delayed the process for the peaceful transfer of power, and people on here are still OK with it because of their politics. This is wrong. Do not accept this response. We will not accept it.
Anybody who doesn't view this as a direct attack on our way of life is just wrong - they don't want to believe, because your politics.
I must say, it's reassuring to read someone else saying this. This whole ordeal is perhaps the largest tempest in a teapot in history, and it's shocking to me how many people are buying it.
The ability for politically motivated coordinated propaganda to control the zeitgeist in the modern world is, however, quite horrifying.
Sorry, but that wasn't all that easily, and there are still plenty of people for whom the coin hasn't dropped. Ideals are easy to keep when they aren't being challenged. Then, when they are being challenged and suddenly all those absolute positions don't look so comfortable anymore what are you going to do?
People wouldn't mind risking terrorism, childporn and ordinary crime. But what if the price of free speech absolutism was democracy itself?
We don't know how to deal with such a fully connected social network, but we jumped right into it and are dealing with the fallout.
Should we place limits on global megaphones? I think so. But how to do it in the most utilitarian way? I dunno.
Even if this was an insurrection, I don't see how that means you need to clamp down on freedom of speech.
What is the argument that free speech is an ideal? That it promotes a more vibrant discourse? That it permits political positions that the powerful dislike to be communicated? That we can drive out bad speech with more speech? That the court of public opinion decides well? That it ensures everyone can participate in matters of public debate?
Has it done so? Again, I'm not talking about the insurrection at all, so let's set aside the debate over whether your comments about it are factual. Look at the last several decades. Do you think that the social norm - the ideal - of freedom of speech has improved our society? Can you concretely describe an example?
I believe in the right to freedom of speech as a limitation on government power. I don't want the government throwing anyone in prison for what they said. I don't believe in it as an ideal, as an aspiration for either individual communities or our society as a whole.
Or, bluntly: Do you believe HN would be a better community without downvotes and moderation?
Private platform moderation is in a sense the ideal solution if platforms are actually willing to do it. The Constitution protects their first amendment rights too, and that is the right to decide who can and can't use your platform. The tradeoff is that the state for the most part can't force you to carry messages you don't want to carry, in exchange the state also can't easily force you to act as their auxiliary in enforcing only content that the state likes. It's not really a matter of speech in itself in a philosophical sense but rather, appropriate ways to actually prevent things like violent insurrections or lynchings or agitprop being spread in a world where outside of the few and already prohibited forms there's some room for interpretation, and also, some room for bad faith from either side. It's less about how much free speech has quantifiably benefitted our society - which one can certainly make an argument for - but rather, the consequence of giving reins to a moderator that has the power to literally deny one's liberty and ruin someone's life in an officially sanctioned and prolonged fashion when there's no guarantee that the moderator would be able or willing to act in a way that isn't arbitrary but still effective. Every other platform is built on the basis of consent - as in one joins it at their will and one gets removed from it at the will of the moderators. The law works through coercion. The stakes are quite different.
And speech itself is only the most immediate manifestation of bigger problems in society anyway. The underlying sentiments don't go away, they just become clandestine and fester. It's not something punitive punishment can readily solve. Prohibition didn't work here, the war on drugs is an abject failure, the myriads of exclusionary laws congress passed from the 1880s to the 1940s both failed to actually stop people of different ethnic backgrounds from having relationships and at the same time contributed to a particularly cruel handling of refugees that added to the holocaust death tolls. In more authoritarian countries, China's porn ban, which is actively enforced with sites being taken down constantly, does almost nothing to actually prevent access (nor did it bring the moral salubriousness that it was supposed to bring). Internal passports didn't stop people from seeking work elsewhere and becoming second class citizens. Our own immigration system becomes more disastrous in every possible way as soon as we decided to actively enforce it. The DMCA and CFAA, both with punitive criminal and civil liabilities, have failed to stop piracy or computer intrusion (especially since that part of the CFAA was a response to a pre-WWW Matthew Broderick movie) but did encourage a lot of companies that sell ineffective solutions backed with FUD and hamper effective open disclosure and penetration testing for quite some time. The underlying incentives haven't changed. Banning the symptoms is easy and possibly even politically expedient but represents a bandaid over a gashing bleeding wound. Good speech can make bad speech irrelevant in some cases but it's neither reliable nor address the underlying problems. There's a far right nationalist movement in Germany again. Mere censorship can only go so far.
Unless you can come up with a way to, without resorting to mass coercion, create a system that can fairly act as this moderator and be accepted as fair across the board, it's almost certainly worse, not better, to allow active state interference.The deplatforming case is actually about exercising one (comapny)'s free speech rights, AWS can't violate the 1st amendment rights of Parler. And if they can't find some sketchier but less takedown-happy bulletproof-ish server overseas to host their shit, it's their own fault, they're not entitled for official promotion of their viewpoints. Allowing government regulation of speech will allow that.
Is it the richest and safest? What would you call the event that happened that day?
I feel the opposite from you: I’m amazed that losing one election has been enough to make so-called conservatives start talking about using the government to seize private companies and force them to provide service to everyone whether they want to or not.
There’s plenty of evidence out there for people to make the case that the label of “insurrection” is appropriate. For some reason right wingers (not asserting this is you, I don’t know your affiliation) seem to have an obsession with “sheeple” and can’t comprehend how someone can have a contrary opinion, other than it being due to pure propaganda.
You make light of a violent mob chanting "hang Pence" as they march toward him, and yes, in light of "not being able to overthrow the government", you fail to convince me some would not have tried to capture or kill politicians.
In short, you are waving your hand and claiming persecution as if Truth, Justice and the American Way has been defeated because Trump is off Twitter.
The sky has not fallen.
I'm literally dumbstruck as to how so many intelligent people aren't able to comprehend the importance of the bigger picture here. And if you try to have a rational & zoomed-out conversation, they insist on zooming-in on small-picture partisan details which exist on a foundation of misrepresented/skewed/artificially framed information.
Being depressed or in despair actually makes it easier for the propaganda to work.
Seek out the truth, as the saying goes, the truth is out there.
One thing about people in tech are that they are aware of patterns. Certain patterns seems to work and certain patterns don't seem to work. Ask why certain patterns are pushed by central authorities and mainstream popular media and certain patterns are suppressed.
Of course, we might expect NPR and other media outlets to be sensationalist. Blah blah blah about the digital media environment and its market incentives. But otherwise intelligent people parrot this sort of thing as well, calling them terrorists and insurrectionists (and yeah, I'm sure some technical argument can be made for these things, just like critics of the BLM riots made technical arguments for why those rioters were terrorists, but questionable technicalities don't merit responses in proportion to bonafide terrorism or insurrection).
There's a lot of stuff to actually criticize here: a violent riot incited by the POTUS over false pretenses, directed at the capitol, leaving several dead. It's already bad, but we can't seem to content ourselves with reality, we have to go further. We have to compare a bunch of MAGA rioters with actual insurgents.
Man, I really don't like this sort of race-to-the-bottom-ism, where whatever reprehensible thing the other side does becomes permission for our side to lower our own moral bar ("Why are you criticizing us?! Can't you see that what they're doing is worse?!"--never mind that I'm criticizing 'them' as well, and in proportion). At some point we have to come up from our outrage binger and realize that we can't just steamroll half the country; we have to figure out how to get along (and if you find yourself about to type, "get along with literal Nazis?!", you've missed the point).
1) The American conception of free-speech absolutism is unique and an extreme point compared to the rest of the world. For example, Germany forbids Nazi symbols and India forbids speech that may rile up religious/communal violence and Britain has stronger libel laws than in the US. These are codified in the laws of these countries. Even in the US, there has always been a tension between the absolutist wording of the First Amendment, the law as interpreted by federal and state courts, and ground-reality enforcement. It's hard to argue against some restrictions on free speech - most everyone agrees you shouldn't be able to say "fire" in a crowded theater. And practically-speaking, the speech of leftists and Black civil rights agitators has been policed, literally. We've been able to forget the "paradox of tolerance" since we haven't been in a "post-truth" society until recently (for a sizable segment of the population anyway.) But now, we're having to deal with that issue. The questions have lurked beneath the surface.
2) The conception of individual rights is an Enlightenment idea. There are other ways to base a society - for example, starting from justice as the primary concern instead of rights, or starting from proper conduct according to some religious authority. Of course, we in America are heavily biased toward the Enlightenment approach to founding a political order. In a multi-valent world, we are having to confront these other political philosophies. So, I'd urge you to look at the "rights" discourse from other angles from the one that's "authorized" by the founders. In a way, little holds together America except the repeated affirmation that we are Americans and that we believe in the sacred principles of the Constitution. This, of course, makes it hard to question these fundamentals.
So, in summary, I'm trying to note that American free-speech values exist in a continuum and are historically contingent. They aren't fixed, and we might move to alternate interpretations and approaches over time.
Heh, most everyone, except for the Supreme Court. That argument was overturned.
https://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2012/11/its-tim...
> TV and Twitter that told them there was an "insurrection"
It meets the definition though. There seems to be a lack of willingness to acknowledge an attempted coup as a coup, or a failed insurrection as an insurrection. And I get why. It's terrifying to acknowledge that. It's uncomfortable to realize how close we came to really bad things (and admittedly, hard to quantify how close we came. Trying to figure out what would have happened if Pence rejected the results, or if he was killed on the 6th is difficult. Many things could have happened).
> it doesn't take Russians or Chinese
Erm, Russians are 100% implicated in stoking civil unrest and conspiracies that built towards the events of the 6th. The Chinese may be, but I don't know. The problem is that people refuse to acknowledge that and take the threat seriously, which is how we got here.
I think insurrection and coups are similar. One you have a toppled government the other you do not.
Things aren't that bad. I really small number of people did something stupid. The country is divided and has some healing to do but it's not over yet.
> Things aren't that bad
I didn't say they were. I said we were very close to them being very bad. There's a big difference.
Seems like mostly just Mike Pence. Who was apparently (if you believe the angry mobs chants) going to be hung by the same people that elected him. Not exactly what I normally think of when I hear "coup" or "violent insurrection".
And at the same time, how different is that from people on the other end of the spectrum erecting a guillotine outside of Jeff Bezos' house?
And that doesn't have a tinge of "coup" to you?
Can you explain your logic, and how often you hang on /pol/?
1. I don't actually believe the VP was at much risk at all of being murdered, just like I don't believe Jeff Bezos was at much risk of being decapitated. This is probably the weakest part of my stance, as obviously I do not psychically know the intentions of the rioters at the capitol – maybe they really did have murder in their hearts. But my gut tells me that none of the people there actually would've hung Mike Pence if they'd gotten their hands on him. I certainly don't believe they would've done so to anyone else.
2. Murder does not a coup make. A coup requires an attempt to seize the levers of power. Usually by the military. AFAICT, there was no evidence of either military support or any plan to actually seize any power. If murdering politicians is a coup, does that mean the assassination of JFK was an attempted coup?
3. I don't disagree that Trump was galvanizing his base with lies.
4. I haven't visited 4chan in nearly a decade.
Right, because he violated the trumpian cult of personality. How is that not scarier: murder someone unless he violated his oath to the constitution in order to keep an authoritarian leaning election-losing person in power.
Killing government officials to result in a transfer of power. It's a sudden, violent, illegal seizure of government power. That's a coup.
It seems like you just disagree with the majority opinion, and are describing the people who hold it as "giving up on their ideals" because they don't share yours.
This is contrary to what some of the people who were in the capitol claimed in advance, and their recorded actions, and their equipment. Seeking out particular officials (Pence and Pelosi), having previously made threats to harm them, with equipment to do so. What about that makes you so certain that no one was going to be killed? So certain that you're willing to reject it outright without even considering the evidence? That rings much more of preconceptions than objective analysis of the evidence.
> but nobody tried to change the constitutional government of the US
The intent of the people who attacked the capitol was to prevent constitutionally mandated transfer of power.
> Pelosi's desk, or steals Pelosi's podium, and now he's the king of the USA and we are all his loyal subjects? There's literally no imaginable way one could perform an actual coup - i.e. take the power into one's own hands
That's not what anyone is suggesting. This wasn't a coup to make baked alaska president, but to keep Trump in power. That's still a coup though. And I think centering your objection to "coup" on that makes it pretty transparent that your argument isn't particularly strong. So yes, stop talking nonsense and get on the same page as everyone else, participate in the discussion others are having, or bow out, but playing semantic games doesn't make you look good, and isn't interesting.
> You mean like being shown a picture of the horned guy in the Capitol, as opposed to actual war
No, but then you knew that already. I'd encourage you to read up on the HN guielines, because you're currently breaking them. And on that I'll disengage, because it's clear you aren't interested in a good faith discussion.