2100 businesses damaged or ransacked in Chicago. https://www.chicagotribune.com/investigations/ct-chicago-202...

700 buildings damaged, burnt, or destroyed in Minneapolis. https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/minnesota/news/minneapolis-issue...

The scale of destructive rioting was massive and underreported at the time it was happening.

Why is this truth so painful for many to hear?

It's not painful, and everyone's been hearing it since it was ongoing. But the extent and severity of it was also greatly exaggerated for political purposes.

I didn't realize we were talking about January 6th.

I think extent and severity are relative to the expectations of the individual. EG What do you think is extensive and severe?

There are many course of Metro cities where businesses are still damaged and boarded up 3 years later.

I lived near one of the areas that got a ton of media attention. Comparing what a certain breed of pundits were saying about it with what I could plainly see with my own two eyes showed that the pundits were mostly talking nonsense.

I'm not saying that there was no property damage or unrest. There most certainly was. but it was far more limited in area, and far less intense, than many were describing.

"Cities are burning" is one of those absurd things. Nothing even close to that happened.

I think some people have an incentive to exaggerate it for political reasons.

My father believes that the entire country is embroiled in an unmitigated crime wave because he gets his news from Fox and Youtube. Every time I talk to him he whines about how "the country isn't the same as how I grew up anymore."

This is a man who lives closer to the country than the city. It gives him a justification for turning his brain off and voting the way that he does, because in his mind, he's protecting the nation by preventing what he believes to be the liberal dream: allowing young, black men to run around and commit crimes with reckless abandon to bring about the end of capitalism.

Allenrb above is disputing you.

As an independent voter, it's obvious why. When you become a member of one of these two parties, you're part of the team, and generally you're going to assume the best of your team's intentions, their media coverage and so on. And you'll think the worst of the other side's intentions, media, and so on. I think plenty of both sides' positions are valid and others completely fucking insane.

I own property in some of the “rougher” areas of Chicago. Yes, the pandemic was hard and yes, it had some effects. But “burned down”? Come on, not in the ballpark, not even in the same sport.

Context beyond the headline for the MSP article where 700 buildings were damaged, burnt or destroyed:

"cosmetic damage, minor damage, major damage, and wholly destroyed, which included 12 structures"

Map: https://assets1.cbsnewsstatic.com/i/cbslocal/wp-content/uplo...

Our house should meet that standard, by what the kids have done to it.

> 700 buildings damaged, burnt, or destroyed in Minneapolis.

Classic "how to lie with numbers". 698 buildings with a broken window, one with a minor fire, and one "destroyed" (whatever that means) would satisfy this description.

Not to say that there wasn't damage done; but the stats you give are clearly designed to look bad rather than to be informative.

Same source says 71 buildings set on fire. Does not mention if any were completely burned. Criteria for damage seems to be any damage at all. Saying the city was "sacked" might be more accurate, but even then that is wrong. There are tens of thousands if not hundreds if thousands of buildings in Chicago, 71 (less than 0.01%) having had any fire does not seem to really qualify as "the city was burned down"

Further, the damage seemingly was concentrated in poor neighborhoods. Hence, citation should be provided that fear post George Floyd backlash is a major reason for tech workers to leave Chicago. From the same reference:

" They missed signals that the killing of Floyd, captured on video and played millions of times by horrified Americans, could touch off looting. And to this day, they face resentment that the city prioritized the protection of downtown at the expense of residential neighborhoods inhabited mostly by people of color."

On the other hand, the reference does say the backlash and riots caused more damage than following MLK Jr's assassination does provide reasonable context to the scale of the event. Yet, with higher numbers of businesses, it might be there is more stuff to be damaged that lead to a larger figure of monetary damage (but that is still to say that both back-lashes were seemingly at least on par)

They are overcorrecting for the news media that downplayed the riots. Mostly peaceful was how CNN famously described it while literally standing in front of burning wreckage.