Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.
Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy?
What these people did was a serious crime and it should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but no it was never going to destroy the country or end democracy. This is hyperbole people are using to grab and consolidate power.
Democracy is not a single person that can be killed and taken over. It's all of us acting in concert to uphold those values. It doesn't end by this person or that person being killed, it ends by all of us collectively agreeing to give up the values that make it work. That's the real threat here.
I'm no historian, so was there ever a time the killing was instigated by a sitting politician who then was not punished? (Yes, the Senate has yet to decide, but chances are they won't vote for removal or banning from office).
Because politicians trying to have their political opponents harmed or killed is basically all one needs to have fake democracy.
I don't follow this logic. Assume for the sake of argument that politician A attempts to have politician B killed (also not a historian, but I feel there has to be at least one instance of this happening somewhere, at some point in US history). Based on this event, we now conclude that the entire democracy is fake? How? All of the votes for all other politicians are now invalid? The electoral process (largely out of the control of any single politician) just ... goes away? How do you figure? What's the cause and effect mechanism there?
The vice president presides over the counting of electoral college votes. Tradition says this role is largely ceremonial. Trump disagrees. What would a conservative Supreme Court, with 3 justices appointed by Trump, say about this?
What were to happen if the VP was murdered by a mob while the president is arguing in bad faith that he won the election and the VP is needed to certify the true winner?
Can the president pro tempore take the place of the VP in counting votes? We would likely be back in the Supreme Court to decide. What if they say only the VP can serve this role? Would Trump and Congress be able to agree on a new VP?
If no VP is in place, would the election end up in the House? Would they have time to vote before 1/20? Who would they vote for?
If we don't have a clear president by 1/20, the line of succession passes to the speaker of the House. What happens if she was murdered too? Would the House vote on a new speaker quick enough or would the line of succession go to the 4th person, the president pro tempore of the Senate?
Would this create perverse incentives for the the president pro tempore to reject EC votes if the Supreme Court decided in his favor several steps back in this hypothetical?
There are obviously a lot of hypotheticals there, but what they are meant to show is there are a lot of ways for this to go wrong and for the next president to be in doubt. Do you see how this is bad for a healthy democracy? Would you be confident that Trump would sit idly by and wait for this situation to play out without putting his fingers on the scale, inciting more violence, or potentially something even more drastic?
Don't forget that Alexander Hamilton was fatally shot in a duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804 [0].
> Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.
[0]: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/burr-slays-hamil...
Can you point to a place where he specifically encouraged trespassing or violence in a way that is more egregious than the ways in which various Congresspeople encouraged violence in Kenosha or Minneapolis?
> Can you point to a place where he specifically encouraged trespassing or violence in a way that is more egregious than the ways in which various Congresspeople encouraged violence in Kenosha or Minneapolis?
This seems like a weird statement to me. Does it matter what other Congresspeople said or not said? I had a quick read of the speech you linked. Its clear that the whole speech is priming the crowd that their vote has been stolen, and that they need to go their and fight for their votes.
> Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
> Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down 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.
This bit right here is clearly indicating that the people need to walk to the Capitol, to "confront" the egregious assault, to show strength, to "not going to be cheering so much for some of them". Granted yes, he also does state that they will be marching over "peacefully" and "patriotically" but spending paragraphs telling an audience that their votes are stolen, and they must fight those who stole their vote and then throwing in a few words about peacefully doesn't absolve you when that mob does basically what you said.
Near the end :
> And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
> So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.
Again, clearly indicating that they need to go to the Capitol, to "fight like hell" and ensure that Republicans vote in a certain way. I think anyone reading between the lines can clearly see how a group of people who believe this man quite a bit would get an indication that they need to walk to and into the Capitol.
Why don't then tell us which nationality you are from?
I thought the disclaimer would help to ensure that I don't accused of being a dem or rep or whatever else.
and then I read the speech, and quoted exactly what was "inciting" or could be considered such.
I am sorry if I offended you.
https://www.justsecurity.org/74138/incitement-timeline-year-...
https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2021/january/trump-language-cap...
That being said, the speech itself certainly didn't help.
> they rigged an election.
> They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before.
> All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats
> You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.
> We will not take it any more
> We will not let them silence your voices.
> Although with this administration, if this happens, it could happen. You’ll see some really bad things happen. They’ll knock out Lincoln too, by the way.
> we’re going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed
> some of these guys. They’re out there fighting the House. Guys are fighting, but it’s incredible
> Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft. There’s never been anything like this.
> 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
> Our country has been under siege for a long time
> You will have an illegitimate president, that’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.
Probably a waste of my effort, but it's quite disingenuous to claim that not saying the word "trespass" in this speech after years of messaging that the Democrats are the enemy of Trump and Trump's followers proves it wasn't yet another piece of incitement. He absolutely encouraged "fighting." So either you believe he's a complete imbecile who does not understand what happens if you get a bunch of armed citizens to believe their favorite rights will be lost if they allow a fraudulent election of a Democratic President to come to fruition, or you understand that he was intentional with his language over time.
This did not happen. Trump asked his supporters to march on the capitol, and then when shit got out of hand, he asked them to go home. Anything else regarding his words is a "reading between the lines" that's going to involve a lot of loaded, partisan-biased, and worst of all unfalsifiable claims.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-incitement-vi...
Snopes is here holding up the president saying he'd punch someone who rushed onto the stage as "encouraging violence at his rallies", which is such a willfully disingenuous attempt at poisoning the well it calls the entire article into question.
That is not the same thing, not what we're talking about here, and it is not honest to equate them. People who disrupt rallies absolutely deserve to be removed from those rallies with appropriate force.
Had you actually watched the videos: no, every single one of those people did not attempt to rush the stage, that happened exactly once. And in that occurrence he didn't even call for violence until the NEXT DAY, when a normal Presidential candidate would've had time to gather themselves and act like an adult... No, every single one was not arrested by secret service.
He spent MONTHS telling his supporters that the election was "stolen from them" and that they need to "fight like real patriots", but again, because you support him that's not a call for violence. Nevermind the end result: the violence he called for - you just don't agree that's what he wanted. Which of course is why he refused to condemn it while it was happening, and took a full day to say anything meaningful after every one of his political allies condemned him.
This is a lie by omission. He "called for violence" against people who attempted to physically disrupt his rallies, and I would go so far as to call the "violence" that ensued in all of those cases (forcible removal from the venue) justified.
Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.
>Which of course is why he refused to condemn it while it was happening,
He literally told the people assembled there to go home.
You keep moving the goal posts to try to justify abhorrent behavior. First he didn't call for violence, until I provided proof he did. Then the violence was justified because "they rushed the stage" - which they didn't. Now it's OK to advocate assault because someone is peacefully protesting?
I'll be honest: it's pretty sad the lengths you're going to in order to justify actions that wouldn't be tolerated in a kindergarten classroom.
>Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.
No, you really couldn't without the same mental gymnastics you've been going through to ignore reality. The Capitol "protestors" physically assaulted badged police officers while breaking into a federal building. The protestors at Trump's rally paid for a ticket to enter a place they were lawfully allowed to be - peacefully spoke out in protest, and then left when they were told to. In the process they were assaulted.
The fact you'd try to equate the too shows a complete lack of honesty and integrity on your part.
>He literally told the people assembled there to go home.
Hours and HOURS after the damage had been done, and the police had the situation back under control, he issued a taped message telling the rioters that he loved them but they needed to go home.
At some point it's obvious you condone physical violence against people that have different political views than you do, and you should just own it. But you also should take a long, hard look at history. The founding fathers didn't agree with your point of view. The constitution doesn't agree with your point of view. The majority of Americans don't agree with your point of view. Our Democracy is founded on a peaceful transition of power, and intelligent thoughtful discourse on policy. Your violence has no place in America.
You are outright lying about what I said. I said that the "violence" called for in the article linked wasn't any more than kicking disruptors out of a private event with force (something justified in that case), and the exact words I used were *IN ONE CASE* regarding the stage-rushing incident. It's up thread for all to see.
The fact that you have to lie to make your point means that this conversation is over. I stand by my original point that the original march was legitimate, and that Trump told the crowd to go home. Trump DID NOT tell any of those assembled to storm the capitol, violently or otherwise, and to insist that he did is a further lie.
You edited your post after being called out, and that's now your scapegoat.
It is literally never justified for a politician to ask his supporters to physically assault a peaceful protestor. Full stop. You can squirm, gyrate, and try to justify it, but it's not OK.
> I stand by my original point that the original march was legitimate, and that Trump told the crowd to go home.
You can stand by whatever you want. Trump released a pre-recorded video that "we love you, but go home" - 6 HOURS after the Capitol was stormed. HOURS. At that point it didn't matter, reinforcements had arrived and the building was already cleared. Furthermore, telling violent insurrectionists you "love them"??? Really?
Again you lie, because HN won't let you edit a post more than 2 hours old. Those words were there when the post you reply to was originally made. Stop lying.
But saying that punching a peaceful rally attendee is "very, very appropriate" and the kind of action "we need a little bit more of" is not.
And asking police to be more violent when handling suspects is encouraging violence ("when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice.")
On Greg Gianforte, the Montana Governer who assaulted a reporter ("Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.")
Then he joked about shooting immigrants:
> In his remarks, he asked, “How do you stop these people?” A woman at the rally reportedly yelled “shoot them” in response. Trump then joked, “That’s only in the Panhandle, you can get away with that statement.”
Then there's the pattern of statements by trump that predict violence against the groups the attacks are aimed at:
- Trump calls Covid the "Chinese virus" and plays up its origin to stoke anti-Chinese sentiment. A random Asian family is attacked in a Texas Walmart because they're "infecting people with the coronavirus".
- Trump attacks "the Squad" (congresswomen AOC and co), they see an uptick in racist attacks and threats
- Trump says "Liberate Michigan" and criticizes the governor for her coronavirus lockdown. Months later, a group of militia members is uncovered with a conspiracy to kidnap and kill her.
- "You also had some very fine people on both sides."
- "Stand back and stand by"
etc.
He has a pattern of tacitly encouraging violence and then making halfhearted condemnations when the violence actually happens. It's why when so many people commit violence, they think Trump is asking them to.
The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much.
Note that the factual crimes are already plenty bad--they don't need to be exaggerated.
> Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency
There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists.
> Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.
There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
What are you basing the obviousness of the failure on? The mob was seemingly a few dozen feet away from numerous politicians with the only thigs between them being a barricaded door and seemingly less than a half dozen security people.
>There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists.
How many murders were committed by the millions of BLM protester in the dozens of cities they protested in over the months they protested? Because these thousands of people in DC were able to murder one and get multiple of their own killed? The violence rate of the two isn't comparable.
>There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
What happened on 1/6 was a direct result of those first two. This is part of the danger to democracy manifesting itself.
There were lots of LARPers. There were also some groups moving in organised fashion with less expensive and more useful equipment. There were people with bombs. There were some people ready to inflict harm on LE and luckily they didn't carry on to other people.
It was not a homogeneous group with same ideas and goals. That idea is just distracting from what happened.
This 5 deaths stat is one of the most mealy mouthed details being repeated. 1 police officer was killed, 1 rioter was killed. 2 people died of health related issues (1 stroke, 1 heart attack) while standing around. 1 died in the press of the crowd when people started panicking.
2 deaths were medical issues. 1 was a sad accident. 1 was a tragedy of someone being killed in the line of duty, and 1 was a trespasser paying the price for their actions. Playing it up like 5 innocent people were murdered by violent rioters is disrespectful to the one person who actually was, and is blatant politically motivated propaganda.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu...
Because Puerto Rico already had the Ley de la Mordaza since 1948. Also Pedro Albizu Campos had his pardoned revoked.
I am interested in reading other people's thoughtfully formed opinions. Using words like "lots of" without clarifying further seems likely to lead to people talking past each other. That's why I commented.
With that being said, you cannot take it lightly. The FBI should take it very seriously. We all remember Timothy Mcveigh. I really hope the next few weeks will pass quietly.
It also seems to me that "race" isn't the only pertinent difference with respect to the differing police response between the two riots. Even if the police simply leaned right, that would provide a non-racial explanation. Of course, we can't have a politicized police force, but that's a non-racial explanation. Similarly, BLM spent the entire summer campaigning aggressively against the police (whether or not their campaign was righteous is immaterial for this conversation) while MAGA was consistently "Back The Blue" right up until the Capitol Hill riots. Again, it's not acceptable for police to act on such biases, but it's a very different problem with a very different solution than a racial motive.
> Some people don't want peace, just wars.
Sadly, I agree. I get the distinct feeling that people want to crush their political opponents these days, and they're happy to use any post-facto reasoning to rationalize their anger, hatred, etc. It seems like we as a society no longer value peace, mercy, forgiveness, or grace; there is only vindictiveness masquerading as "justice".
They came very close to having members in the hands of the mob; I think you very much overestimate what was required for this to succeed. Even if the mob itself was disavowed, simply getting a presiding officer more that would be more sympathetic to the President’s interests int he circumstances (which probably would have taken at least one more removal than “Hang Mike Pence”, but may not have been impractical) would potentially have provided a sufficient pretext for a process in which the Congress would have ended up declaring Trump the winner.
But even if it was “obviously going to fail”, that doesn’t make it not-dangerous (even if the intended violence didn’t have the intended political effects, it still would have been horrific) or not-insurrection.
> If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country’s government, that’s insurrection.
No, its a (covert) invasion.
> If it’s the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much.
How about if it is the retired Air Force Lt. Col. with zip ties who was directing action, including efforts at intelligence gathering on members, in the Senate chamber?
Just because the unusual outfits get disproportionate media attention doesn’t mean they were the dominant factor in the insurrection.
To your point though, this forum does occasionally flirt with violence. Over the summer, some were waxing poetic about how "riots are the language of the oppressed" and arguing that burning someone's business to the ground isn't violence but rather "just property damage". Some were arguing that antifa and other violent groups were "freedom fighters" and so on. So yes, it does get pretty toxic here, but this thread isn't it.
When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Property can be replaced. Businesses can have insurance. The murdered police officer and the 4 other dead people aren't coming back.
People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.
Right, thankfully no one is doing that (I've seen you around other threads and straw man arguments like this one are beneath your usual high standard of discourse). Everyone here agrees that the people responsible for murdering the police officer ought to be held criminally accountable for murder but not for treason. But this was almost certainly a small number of people and its reprehensible to hold the entire mob responsible, and certainly not for treason. We don't hold every BLM protester accountable for the BLM riots and we don't hold every BLM rioter accountable for the murders that took place during the riots, and we should hold the same standard here.
Elsewhere you remarked that 1 murder constitutes a larger proportion than the BLM murders, but of course you can't extrapolate anything from a sample of 1.
> People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.
They aren't the same, but they're not so different that we can justify glorifying violence for one and exaggerating it for the other.
FWIW, I personally think the Capitol Hill riots were worse in the sense that they were incited by a sitting President and that the security was concerningly inadequate. The President should be held responsible for insurrection, there should be accountability among the police as well (although I don't know enough to venture into details about what kind or degree of accountability), but the rank and file rioters are only guilty of rioting, trespassing, etc (those who assaulted need to be held accountable for assault, those who murdered for murder, those who planted bombs for planting bombs, etc). But this isn't "a coup" nor were the rioters "traitors". They were misled into believing their candidate lost the election and they were angry, but I can't imagine they seriously expected to break into the capitol and forcibly reinstate Trump (apart perhaps for the mentally ill).
So yes, the Capitol Hill riots were worse, but not so much that the BLM rioters (including those who assaulted people or killed people) deserve to escape justice nor that the media should be forgiven for their incitement and later apologetics of the violence. Nor does it merit exaggerating the violence on Capitol Hill.
You seemed to do that further up this thread. When confronted with questions about the violence on 1/6 you responded with references to the violence perpetuated by BLM protesters. However I can't find a single instance of collective violence at the BLM protests that comes close to a mob beating a police officer to death like happened in DC.
As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders". In a previous comment a few posts up I directly asked you how many murders occurred at these BLM protests and you didn't respond. Is that because you know that the person to person violence that occurred at these events was routinely instigated by the police, other right leaning people, or people using deadly force in response to looting?
And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side.
I appreciate the complement and agree with most of the second half of your post, but it isn't just the origins or motivations for these two groups that differentiate them. One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.
Correct, I was comparing the violence in general. This is different than your original claim that I was comparing BLM property damage to the Capitol Hill murder.
> As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders".
I'm thinking of incidents like Michael Forest Reinoehl (Antifa). He murdered a right-wing activist and was very explicit that he did it because he believed the right-wing was a threat to Black lives. In any case, we're not going to learn much by looking at the outlier instances of violence; in both cases there are much more uniform trends of lesser degrees of violence spanning from trespassing to property damage to assault. All I'm asking (indeed, all anyone is asking) is that we hold BLM rioters to the same standard as MAGA rioters, BLM assailants to the same standard as MAGA assailants, etc.
> protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them
To be quite clear, I'm distinguishing between the protesters (and protests) who are by definition peaceful and rioters (and riots) who are by definition violent.
> And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side.
The murder is an outlier, you can't conclude on the basis of this single event that the broader group is uniformly more dangerous. I don't know what value there is in even trying to compare how dangerous either group is; what's important is that we're holding violence to the same standard and not glorifying some violence and condemning others on political grounds.
> One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.
What? How do you get there? There were tons of assaults recorded on camera during the BLM protests going back to probably 2014 including many unprovoked assaults. In ~2016 one guy went on a killing spree, explicitly targeting white police officers (and as I recall, WaPo or someone released a sympathetic portrait article rationalizing the mass murder). I don't have tremendous sympathy for MAGA folks, but there's half a decade of clips of people getting the shit beat out of them for wearing a MAGA hat in the wrong place, virtually none of which featured prominently in the media.
Again, this isn't about which group is more violent, it's about consistency. Even if MAGA folks are more violent, it doesn't justify us completely letting BLM violence off scot free. If you (universal) failed to condemn years of BLM violence, you have very little credibility to demand justice for an afternoon of MAGA violence.
I guess I simply don't like the "in general" part as it inherently equates the two. Like I said, I believe there is a fundamental difference between violence against property and violence against people and categorizing them all as "violence" sets up a false equivalency.
>I'm thinking of incidents like Michael Forest Reinoehl (Antifa). He murdered a right-wing activist and was very explicit that he did it because he believed the right-wing was a threat to Black lives. In any case, we're not going to learn much by looking at the outlier instances of violence; in both cases there are much more uniform trends of lesser degrees of violence spanning from trespassing to property damage to assault. All I'm asking (indeed, all anyone is asking) is that we hold BLM rioters to the same standard as MAGA rioters, BLM assailants to the same standard as MAGA assailants, etc.
That was a violent confrontation that happened because armed alt-right counter protesters showed up to the BLM protests to start some shit. We have no clear picture of how the confrontation started, in part because Reinoehl was also killed by police under suspicious circumstances. The same type of confrontation happened with Kyle Rittenhouse except it was people on opposite sides that ended up dead. If we are going to blame BLM for Reinoehl than it only seems fair to start a tally of extreme right violence that includes Rittenhouse and runs through the riots in DC. That extreme right violence would have a much higher body count.
>The murder is an outlier, you can't conclude on the basis of this single event that the broader group is uniformly more dangerous. I don't know what value there is in even trying to compare how dangerous either group is; what's important is that we're holding violence to the same standard and not glorifying some violence and condemning others on political grounds.
I am not just basing it on the single murder. I am basing it on the video I have seen of how people behaved at the scene. I have not seen that type of mob violence at an BLM protest. That Reinoehl example was a single person getting in a confrontation. That is fundamentally different than the type of collective behavior seen here[1]. The former is an individual that is acting independently of the crowd. The latter is numerous members of the crowd joining together to take a cop to the ground and beat him. I am much more comfortable drawing large scale conclusions about the group based off the second example.
>What? How do you get there? There were tons of assaults recorded on camera during the BLM protests going back to probably 2014 including many unprovoked assaults. In ~2016 one guy went on a killing spree, explicitly targeting white police officers (and as I recall, WaPo or someone released a sympathetic portrait article rationalizing the mass murder). I don't have tremendous sympathy for MAGA folks, but there's half a decade of clips of people getting the shit beat out of them for wearing a MAGA hat in the wrong place, virtually none of which featured prominently in the media.
Once again you are expanding the scope of of what we are considering as BLM violence to basically any extreme left violence and once again I think the violence from the extreme right exceeds violence from the extreme left for basically any time period you want to choose.
>Again, this isn't about which group is more violent, it's about consistency. Even if MAGA folks are more violent, it doesn't justify us completely letting BLM violence off scot free. If you (universal) failed to condemn years of BLM violence, you have very little credibility to demand justice for an afternoon of MAGA violence.
I can't argue against that on principle. However there are numerous parts of this that have lacked consistency. This starts with the preparation for the various protests and how the people in the capital were allowed to leave the scene while numerous peaceful BLM protests ended with police kettling and mass arresting protestors. It also includes how people on the right respond specifically to the violence directed at police. Could you imagine the outrage in right wing circles if the protesters in Portland mobbed police, literally beat one with an American flag like in that previously linked video, and beat another to death with a fire extinguisher? If we are going to ask for consistency, lets be consistent in asking for it.
[1] - https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1348334770103660553
The apologetics for rioting over the summer were also bad.
Being 1 door away from where they were hiding seems a pretty close call imo
https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-anci...
Typical motte and bailey. “They bombed the Capitol building” except they actually didn’t.
edit: to be clear, there were a number of people pictured and arrested carrying firearms.
Second: As others have observed, we got extremely lucky that the rioters didn't actually come in contact with any congress-people or the vice president. What do you think would have happened if, say the crowd has come in contact with AOC, for example? What would have happened if enough Dems were killed or incapacitated to change the balance of votes on certifying the election? The hundred-odd house republicans certainly made a big point of not changing their certification votes after the riots.
Third: When someone fires a gun at your head and the bullet misses, will you make excuses on behalf of the shooter? After all, if they were /really/ a killer, they wouldn't have missed, right? The bullet missed, you continued on your day, nothing should be done...
And then what? Once the mob was cleared out, they would have resumed. There's a chasm between disrupting proceedings and actually taking over a country. The latter also almost always involved having control of the military by the way.
It might've been a short civil war, but if Trump had gone out and marched with the protesters like they thought he would and told them to stay in the Capitol building, you would've immediately created a situation where government business is suspended and the commander in chief is at direct odds with the military's constitutional obligations.
There was, and has been, a soft coup ongoing since that day, since the president at the time refused to issue any direction to the military and situation only started to be resolved when Pence took defacto command of the executive without invoking the 25th amendment. That process has been ongoing since then.
Remember Trump is already commander in chief, so has power 'by default.' He just needs to create a situation where that status quo remains, either by creating a situation whereby the right people are willing to disregard the election results /or/ the constitution directly.
>Maybe you should, then you'd know nothing happened to the democracy.
>>> because of TV picture and a bunch of talking heads on TV and Twitter that told them there was an "insurrection"
Which is it?
A crappy tour of Congress during a key transition of power, where they intended to kill the VP and whoever had displeased them. After action reports are indicating that they got within 60s and 90 feet of the VP, and we're not even done hearing the story of that day.
Coup attempts are always humorous until they actually work. Do not mistake us getting lucky this time with the narrative that nothing could have happened.
The issue though is in the case where Trump is installed in a second term after members of congress are kidnapped, extorted, or even executed, then the question of what is and is not constitutional becomes moot. The application of force in the political process has a tendency to degrade all guard rails, leaving behind nothing but “largest army diplomacy”, or mob in this case.
To whit: “stop quoting laws to those of us with swords”.
This is awful, and I can't imagine the thought process that leads to this kind of rationalization. MANY members of the crowd are known to have been armed. Five people are dead. Congress had to be evacuated. Had an escape route not existed (many nations don't have cold war fortifications in their legislative buildings!) we could very easily have been looking at a hostage situation.
This is how real governments fall, in the real world. And even failed coups are often repeated successfully. The Beer Hall Putch was about the same size, equally unsuccessful, and yet...
This issue isn't that this is a dispicable situation, it's that the media is treating it as if it's a bunch of fringe right wing people (and lumping all trump voters in the list) when the same far left extremists were and are still using teh same tactics. Lives have been threatened for the past nine months plus.. and yet that was ok because it fell in line with what one group wanted?
It's all insanity on both sides and until people own up to it on the left as well, the country will keep being pushed further. The demonization of anyone not toeing the line of the extreme left these days is CREATING the thing they fear.
How many lives were lost last year, innocent lives? How many injuries? All due to the same actions and tactics.
Guillotines have been present at multiple protests the past year. Breaking of windows of federal, state, and public buildings. Large amounts of citizens storming these same places while staffed. Assaults, shootings, fire bombings, all happened the past year.
How is that different? If your response is because x or y felt a specific way.. Then you get it, it's the same reason these dumb asses did what they did. All of them were wrong and you should admonish all of them equally.
What attempts were there with respect to BLM to violently overthrow elected officials (because violently is the word here, zip ties, firearms, nooses and gallows)?
Setting fire to a police station, though unacceptable, vandalizing a mayor's residence, unacceptable is not remotely the same thing as "trying to overthrow elected officials".
That's not fucking stupid, that's an entirely deliberate and reasoned choice.
Conspiracy theorists would say it was less security to allow for chaos, which in turn gives further justification to pushing legislation / controls that take away freedoms.
All of us will say that it's horrible and just like the rioters, looters, murderers and general agents of chaos of the past year, they made a deliberate and reasoned choice to be a part of the chaos.
What I don't like is that statement that all protestors were part of the incident. Just as all of the BLM protesters weren't a part of the riots, evidence shows the same is true for those that rallied.
The bottom line is based on votes, the U.S. is clearly split on perspectives and each side sees things in a near opposite viewpoint.
Certainly. If you protested and didn't breach the perimeter, you were doing exactly what BLM protestors were doing. Disclaimer: I say this as an objective statement on the action, and not a commentary on the relative merits of either movement.
You breached the perimeter, and entered the Capitol? Now we're somewhere else.
The security forces then get rid of the protesters and the new set of officials move in.
It's just how it works.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-mn/pr/self-described-member-boo...
http://stmedia.startribune.com/documents/Hunter_complaint_af...
A good chunk of those "BLM" protesters actually charged usually aren't necessarily leftists, but often are just anarchists who seem to be taking advantage of the chaos. Hard to be both a radical leftist who wants to have an overbearing regulatory state trying to take away your freedoms and also be an anarchist, those are usually two entirely separate viewpoints.
https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-race-and-ethnicity...
This kind of rhetoric minimizing the attack at the capitol seems very much of a piece with the way the Bavarian establishment treated Nazism in the 20's to my eyes.
Can you expand on this, concretely?
Most democracies in existence - including thr US itself! - emerged from jurisdictions that did not have strong protections on free speech. I would also bet that most current democracies do not have US-strength protections on free speech, either. (Is the UK a democracy? Is Germany? Is Spain?)
That would be a crappy democracy if it could be eroded by a bunch of idiots taking an unauthorized Whitehouse tour. Fortunately, absolutely nothing happened to the democracy and it proceeded on its course. What could actually erode the democracy is nation giving up on free speech. That'd be a real sign of nation in severe distress.
> I don't listen to your news
Maybe you should, then you'd know nothing happened to the democracy.