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Comment by stef25 | Hacker News Reader

It was quite the adventure watching this all on TV from Europe.

One thought that comes to mind is that I'm sure the most heavily armed nation in the world could have gotten rid of these people in no time, but perhaps they didn't because of the symbolism of the location.

Here in Brussels' main court house (a massive imposing building like the Capitol), a guy once just strolled in and shot and killed a judge (correction: a judge and a clerk, in 2010) and then just strolled out.

The minister of justice said they would not improve security because they wanted the place to remain "of the people, for the people" (paraphrased from memory, it doesn't make total sense but you get the jest of it).

I have friends working at the European parliament where at one time was a group of people protesting against the presence of Marine Le Pen, rocks in hands. There were exactly 2 (unarmed) "security guards" present who told my friend they obviously stood no chance if these people decided to charge. On another occasion 100 Kurdish protestors managed to break in to the building. But they just don't want these places to look like Fort Knox.

In the end, a guy in buffalo costume fooling around on the senate floor is better than puddles of blood.

View on HN

This is a very poor take. There is a marked difference between meeting people half way and openness to alternative view points, and allowing a mob to attack and derail the proceedings of Congress with the express purpose of overturning the legal election results.

This was a shameful display by the police charged with defending the rule of law in the USA, and even more than protesters, the police who plainly allowed this to happen must be investigated and tried. Whether those are the boots on the ground or the higher ups I have no idea, but this can't be left to stand.

Given what we've seen tonight, this could have easily turned into a putsch attempt, and it would have been very hard to stop it once the mob was allowed inside the building. They could have taken senators and congressmen hostage, they could have forced them to overturn the elections in a mock session, they could have killed dissenters - it was only by luck that it turned out they were disorganized and essentially there for a stunt.

Capitol police allowed selfies with them as protesters were leaving

Good?

People used to call this “deescalation” and considered it the prime example of how to deal with protesters. When protesters are taking selfies with the cops then something is clearing going right.

On the other hand, an unarmed protestor was shot and killed, but almost certainly there will be no riots or sacking of small town centers in response.

The Federal courthouse was under constant siege for weeks in Portland, but that was “mostly peaceful”. This on the other hand was clearly a “mob” according to NYT.

I just want to see people be consistent with how they describe and respond to protesters regardless of the political affiliation of the protest.

Relative to the scale of rioting throughout 2020 this was objectively pretty tame, minus the fatal shooting. At least you can say it wasn’t a targeted assassination unlike other cases last year.

'Objectively pretty tame'? That's a pretty rich. It's only 'tame' because of the police treated these (mostly white) protestors with kid gloves, and because the barricaded doors allowed a safe retreat of the congresspeople. Your portrayal of the shooting of a woman actively trying to smash into the floor of the senate with the senators and VPOTUS inside as equatable to police brutality is laughable. These people were trying (fruitlessly) to stage a violent subversion of democracy and openly threatened the highest elected officials in the nation.

> Your portrayal of the shooting of a woman actively trying to smash into the floor of the senate with the senators and VPOTUS inside as equatable to police brutality is laughable.

Well, another recent example of "police brutality" was shooting a guy holding a knife who was trying to get into a car with kids, after attempting nonlethal takedowns. I think that's quite comparable.

They shot one, hosed them all down with tear gas and OC to the point of a police officer needing medical attention for too much OC exposure, and 3 other protestors are dead for unlisted causes.

If that had happened when protestors burned down a police station, destroyed miles of shops, threw molotov cocktails at a federal courthouse or any of the other riots in the past few months, there would be half of our politicians shouting to end all policing.

Are you genuinely arguing that the show of force displayed here was greater or more disproportionate than that displayed last summer?

How many unarmed protestors got shot center mass with 9mm by cops in those protests?

About as many as were trying to violently break into an in-session senate floor accompanied by an angry, armed mob intent on overthrowing the government.

Sorry, were the protestors who burned down a police station or occupied a block of Seattle unarmed? I'm pretty sure they had rifles, compared to our insurrectionists which had.. flagpoles?

Or is trespassing on federal property worth a death sentence now?

She was literally charging at the people the police were protecting.

You could not come up with a more justified police shooting.

It’s always a tragedy when police have to kill a assailant instead of apprehending them. Particularly when the assailant is unarmed.

There have been countless situations more dangerous to the lives of police or bystanders than this, where the assailant was not killed. But perhaps none with so many “important” people in the same room.

Edit: Graphic video of the police shooting. [1]

They could have easily arrested her. They shot and killed her instead. She had no weapon and had made no physical contact with any officer. Just shot as she came through the door.

At the same time, there are a half dozen well armed officers on the same side of the door as the protestors who are not being attacked and freely arrive at the scene within seconds of the shooting.

[1] - https://twitter.com/dancohen3000/status/1347076676342185984?...

> These people were trying (fruitlessly) to stage a violent subversion of democracy and openly threatened the highest elected officials in the nation.

You're giving them too much credit. They got in. Then what? It was like a carnival, walking off with furniture, posing for pictures, smiling while sitting in important chairs. Lots of screaming, a few broken windows.

In a country where you can buy guns in supermarkets, they didn't fire a single shot. They could have set fire to the place, taken people hostage. It could have been so much worse.

Most of those people probably couldn't subvert or overturn anything more than a paper bag.

That is irrelevant. The intent was to overturn the election. The fact that they were incompetent or not sufficiently dedicated to their cause to be willing to die for it is no excuse for letting it get to where it did.

Perhaps if the insurgents had faced the same violent police response as BLM protestors the outcome would have been very different. But if the police let you in instead of engaging in violent escalation, why not pose for pictures and have a chat?

>They got in, then what? they didn't fire a single shot

Then: four people killed

There are lots of ways to do harm without shooting. Many politicians are elder. Somebody could have suffered a heart attack, Biden for example... and then what?.

And some of the rioters were trained professional soldiers. Do they had access to harmful substances?, chemical poisons?, Nobody knows. Do we remember the 2001 Anthrax mail attacks to democrat senators and journalists finally linked to a Fort Detrick employee?.

In fact is even easier, in the middle of a pandemic just collaborating to spread a lethal virus between smiles and selfies would do the job. Videos show people touching three times each inch of the same knob door in a minute for no evident reason.

Those people was armed, organized, directed and manipulated.

> In a country where you can buy guns in supermarkets

You can also buy ps5’s in supermarkets. Is the absurd part that you could buy non food related items in a supermarket or that supermarkets have devolved into a one stop shop for everything?

It’s not just related to guns

And what do you call the attempts to burn down a federal courthouse in Portland, with people inside of it?

"I just want to see people be consistent with how they describe and respond to protesters regardless of the political affiliation of the protest."

You want people fighting in the streets for social and racial justice in the face of quantifiable repression to be treated the same as people storming the national Capitol to overturn an election result they don't like based on provable lies?

You give these folks way too much credit. If they actually got power they’d have no idea what to do with it.

Yes, but that is just a stroke of luck, it's not something that should be relied on. Just like Trump's attempts to overturn the elections - they are scary as a principle, even though in practice they were so laughably incompetent.

The next fascist president may be less incompetent and achieve far more sinister goals.

While none of his objections had any legal merit, what exactly is scary in principle about using the law as it written to contest the results of an election? The laws are there for a reason and unless a law was broken I fail to see what the issue is?

I am comforted by the fact that our electoral institutions appear to be holding as they were designed to. It proves why separation of power is needed, and why it is critical.

Sadly it has been historically the democrats that want to tear down this separation for political expedience, one of the reasons Trump had sooo much power in the first place is decades and decades of consolidation of power into both the federal government and the presidency

The harm is elevating unfounded claims of a stolen election leading millions of people to believe something was actually stolen from them at a time when partisanship and distrust of people with different political views is already at a boil. It’s reckless and irresponsible.

There are reasonable questions about the rules, process and procedures used in the last election.

There was a lot that was done over the last year that eroded trust in this election, the objections on the day of the electoral count being the final perfunctory domino.

Trust in a system has to be earned, and the way that we go about setting the rules for voting, counting valid votes, and reporting the count has been frankly a very chaotic process. It’s no doubt millions of people doubt the outcome.

But this isn’t really anything new. In 2016 50% of Democrats believed that it was somewhat or highly likely that Russians directly altered vote totals to elect Trump.

Harry Reid said there’s “no question” in his mind that Russian hackers covertly altered the 2016 vote count. “I think one reason the elections weren’t what they should have been was because the Russians manipulated the votes. It’s that simple.”

I hope you are being willfully disingenuous with those arguments. Parsing words in just the right way to make a partial point does not count as compelling evidence for your alternate reality.

Not at all. Here’s a good example, from AG of PA Josh Shapiro;

> @RepFredKeller LIE: PA officials violated the law in regards to signature verification on mail-in ballots.

FACT: Our Election Code-which a Republican-controlled state legislature revised in 2019-does not provide for rejecting mail-in ballots based on signature verification.

https://twitter.com/joshshapiropa/status/1347063329404178432...

I don’t see how this is supposed to build trust that the election was run fairly and securely, in fact quite the opposite.

My point is not to debate specific failures. My point is it’s the responsibility of the systems and processes in place in the electoral system to instill trust in the populace that there is no fraud in the voting or the counting.

Instead, people were lied to about how votes would be cast, lied to about how votes would be counted, and the rules were changed arbitrarily in many places up to the final days and even hours of actual voting.

Again, my point is not how much fraud was actually present. But you can have a system people mostly trust even if they don’t like the outcome, or you can do things like not even checking the signature on millions of mail-in ballots.

Signature checking is stupid and pointless. Disenfranchising someone because their signature doesn’t match some record on file is ridiculous. The signature verification itself has many many issues on its own.

The problem is stating without evidence that the signatures are absolutely fraudulent. The claims made by Trump and the GOP over the last decade about voter fraud are to blame.

I think Trump's legal team was completely incompetent

However to believe there was no legit legal claims in an election where the rules where being rewritten on the fly often times with no legislative oversight at all by governor executive fiat is completely delusional

What? A bunch of cases were declined because the laws were written months in advance about it and only now they sue claiming unfairness.

> While none of his objections had any legal merit, what exactly is scary in principle about using the law as it written to contest the results of an election?

But that's not what happened. What really happened was that Donald Trump and his lawyers repeatedly committed perjury and barratry by deliberately filing cases that were either false or meaningless.

Any petitioner acting in good faith needs their day in court.

There are already penalties in law for people who attempt to abuse the court system for their own benefit and these penalties need to be applied with maximum force to the Trump administration and their legal "professionals".

The president and his cronies have repeatedly claimed in public that they have evidence of massive fraud. They have not even attempted to claim any of these in court, where these claims would have been immediately discovered as outright fabrications.

Also, Trump has sought to buy out election officials with 'gifts', has cajoled and petitioned various others to ask for votes to be thrown out or 'discovered', has tried to convince congressmen and senators to overturn the result of the vote, has cobtemplated invoking marshal law and redoing the election and so on.

In all of this he has been successful in conning a large number of people that the most important democratic institution, the vote, has been stolen from them by the federal government and several states. They were convinced enough that they tried attacking Congress to force it to overturn the results.

If these are not aspects of an attempted coup, I don't know how they should be interpreted.

I can't wait to see about this president how competent he is

Exactly the entire force should be dismissed (with no pension) and the senior leadership should be left alone in an office with a bottle of whisky and their side arm

I hate authority as much as the next, but when they keep people out we complain about their brutality, when they let people in we urge them to suicide. No one in their right mind would want such a job, thus we get the people who aren't.

The GP is way off base suggesting both the dismissal and suicide of the entire police force responsible.

There is a massive difference between police keeping people out of a public building and police actively attacking even quasi-peaceful protesters like we've seen a lot of times during the BLM protests. I, for one, don't have a real problem with police launching tear gas at BLM protesters trying to enter the Portland courthouse. I do have a problem with police shooting rubber bullets and throwing tear gas at protesters on the streets chanting.

I'm really getting tired of the what-about-ism here. They should ALL be prosecuted. Any violent protestors. Anyone that does property damage. Anyone protesting in a non-violent way should be allowed to do so. What we are seeing instead is peaceful, non-violent BLM protesters and journalists are shot and teargassed. Violent protestors are allowed to get away without prosecution. And Trump insurrectionists are allowed to walk into the most important federal building in the country, and then walk out. This is insane. As a country, we no longer know wrong from right, or up from down, or true from false. That is the definition of a major mental pathology.

That was dark humour - if the leader of that police force had any honour he would have personally apologised to both houses and resigned last evening.

Have you heard any information about any of the thousands of legislators, Capitol employees, media members or any of the other legitimate occupants of the Capitol building being hurt, killed, or even being in unwilling contact with the insurrectionists? If not, than the Capitol Police did their primary job effectively, which probably hurt their ability to do their other job (maintaining a secure perimeter around the building).

This is way out of proportion, and you're suggesting this without even waiting for a formal investigation, which is almost hypocritical.

The whole point is that we should re-establish the supremacy of the rule of law. What happened last night was an assault on this. Enacting your suggestion would be the same.

I wasn't suggesting do it without the law - Presumably the House and Congress are the employers and could pass the relevant motion/law very quickly

And collective punishment of employees is perfectly valid in law.

> This was a shameful display by the police charged with defending the rule of law in the USA

Considering congresspeople are also directly charged with defending the rule of law, the federal legislature could always take the Texas approach ..

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/09/us/guns-get-a-pass-at-tex...

would have been 'interesting' (albeit even more tragic) to see how this would have played out in that environment

> with the express purpose of overturning the legal election results.

I guess the answer is... calm down? A few hundred (even heavily armed) people do not stand a chance changing the results of the election, or almost anything in the US.

The event was for show. Although, unfortunately, one of them died. But it should remain that way and there is no reason to escalate further. (I guess we already have precedents of how escalation usually lead to innocent deaths).

You don't get it.

It was for show, but the police allowed it to go way too far. Not to mention, where was all the surveillance power of the NSA to provide advance warning?

The disturbing part of what happened yesterday was not that a bunch of assholes formed a mob to disrupt Congress. The disturbing part is that they were obviously allowed to do so.

The NSA is officially not supposed to be spying on the citizens of the USA. That’s the FBI’s job technically... as the USA has no dedicated domestic intelligence agency. There are a number of agencies with limited domestic intelligence roles tasks with specific kinds of intelligence work such as the intelligence branches of the US Treasury, the Department of Energy, and the Coast Guard... but there’s no USA agency equivalent of the United Kingdom’s MI5.

To extend the comparison, the CIA is roughly the USA’a MI6 and the NSA is very roughly equivalent to the GCHQ but not exactly as the NSA are not meant to spy domestically while the GCHQ don’t have that explicit limitation.

They didn't need to spy. They already knew and didn't care. The president held a speech in the morning, addressing his supporters who had traveled from all over the country to come to Washington. He told the crowd to storm the Capitol over the loudspeaker, and that he would lead them in doing so. He didn't. Instead he returned to the White House. But the crowd did what they were told anyway. (People do that a lot these days. They do what they're told.)

Regardless of what it officially is and is not supposed to do, the NSA and not the FBI is the organization that developed programs like PRISM.

The point is that the US federal government has a huge intelligence organization, with a huge amount of resources invested in dragnet data collection and surveillance on anyone and everyone.

The specific 3-letter organization that is technically supposed to be looking at and taking action based on that data isn't that relevant.

That’s my take. A lot of smoke but no fire. The chance of these people actually overthrowing the change in presidency is pretty much 0%.

It’s over let’s move on.

"A mob overtook the capitol, four people died, the police did nothing and let them go, let's move on"?

Literally shaking my head. I just can't fathom how this is so unremarkable to you.

3 people died not at the capital building. Why are you including them?

Are those 3 people not related in any way to this incident? As far as I can tell the 4 deaths were directly related to the protest. The one person in the US Capitol was shot and was pronounced dead later on. Does it make a difference that not all 4 were shot in the same place?

There needs to be some consequences here. Maybe it was just for show, and turned out harmless, whatever. Regardless, the people who participated in this, and those who incited them, should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law. Otherwise this sort of thing will happen again, and next time it may not be so harmless.

I agree 100%. Of course that is what lots of people have said previously about similar incidents coming from the left but calls for prosecution and stronger police tactics were dismissed in favor of the less-than-peaceful actions because "reasons".

Personally I'm exhausted at trying to "score" the actions of two teams when in fact I really don't want either team to win. It has become an absurd attempt to decide which team is less awful while each side fools itself into thinking it exclusively represents political virtue.

I'm hoping that events don't escalate further and that perhaps there is some opportunity for the emergence of some alternate political parties and more thoughtful political leadership in order to let the existing parties fade into history.

I wonder if the Trump administration will enforce their executive order calling for maximized penalties for anyone damaging federal property [0]

[0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-or...

What would have happened if they had pushed into the room? What would have happened if they had had firearms on them? What if they had been able to grab just a few congressmen at gun point?

Sure, I'm not proposing to escalate and it's wonderful that it is over with no real effects. But the security handling was atrocious, and the results would have been much worse if the mob were only slightly more organized and intent on bloodshed.

I'm not claiming that they would have succeeded to actually install Donald Trump for a second term. But I do believe that they could have forced a mock result to eb proclaimed on the senate floor, creating a much larger problem for the future and giving much more power to their narrative.

Also, note that the quote from me was supposed to reinforce the idea that there were compelling reasons for the police to take their presence as a serious threat. These weren't protesters chanting to save the whales, they were protesters asking for the election to be overturned (even if I agree with you that they had no real chance of achieving this goal).

> it is over with no real effects

I admit to being a little shocked at the glibness of this statement. As a non-USian, I see a profound shock among other thoughtful non-USians that it has come to this. Regardless of political affiliation, I believe most honest, ordinary non-USians have held in high regard the robustness of the American democratic system and its resilience to the wholesale corruption that plagues many other countries. The democratic ideal, and America as exemplar, has always been held in lofty regard. However, I’m more certain than ever that this ideal has now been firmly relegated to a historical oddity. A 200 year blip in the record of human governance, with a forthcoming return to mean. Watching this slow motion disaster unfold has mad me very, very sad.

I'm not so much shocked as tired. This is like 9/11 with a four year warning of the planes arriving and being able to watch them on Flightradar, towing a huge sign saying "we're going to crash this baby into the Pentagon". And nobody doing anything about it because that would mean that "both sides" weren't in fact equal.

Pleasantly surprised that the death toll was only four, of which only one was shot; much better than the regular death toll of single mass shooter incidents.

How is it a 9/11? In 9/11 thousands of people died, postcard-symbolic buildings demolished by foreign terrorists. Here... A few hundred people strolled around in the Capitol and 4 people died.

Ah, but how many of those people died of 9/11 or just with 9/11? How many of them had pre-existing conditions? Besides, that's just one day of COVID. Was it worth closing the skies and invading Iraq for a mere three thousand people some of whom would have died anyway?

... no, I probably shouldn't joke about this, however dark, but if there's one thing that last year has made clear is that death tolls barely move the needle politically and that symbols stick in people's heads and effect real change. Even if the symbols aren't tied to underlying reality. The revenge of Baudrillard.

https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20201210/covid-19-deaths-sur...

The symbolism of protestors in the capitol was "shocking" upthread. I worry that next month we'll have forgotten about it because something worse will have happened. We've already moved on from the guy who blew up a telephone exchange, and the other occupations of state capitols, and those guys who tried to kidnap a state governor despite being infiltrated by the FBI.

(For the avoidance of doubt, I am with John Donne that anyone's death diminishes us, but avoidable and preventable deaths doubly so, which is why I'm in favour of responsible politics and the politicisation of preventable deaths)

People care about whatever they are told to care about by the media or whatever social media algorithms shove onto their feed.

Whole countries can freak out about the disappearance of one child or a car accident caused by some random intoxicated person and then everybody talks about their names, there are political leaders chiming in etc. Whole countries can come together to donate millions for the treatment of a rare disease of a single child. It's kinda random.

Humans are not calibrated to care about actual stats, just stories. A good story of one person can weigh more than a boring story of millions.

It's all theater, nothing more, whichever party wins... It's circus.

I meant 'no real effect' in terms of modifying the results of the election itself, or loss of life.

You're absolutely right that the symbolic effect is huge and will likely be long-lasting - both inside the US and outside.

> Regardless of political affiliation, I believe most honest, ordinary non-USians have held in high regard the robustness of the American democratic system and its resilience to the wholesale corruption that plagues many other countries. The democratic ideal, and America as exemplar, has always been held in lofty regard

Where are you from, how old are you? Watching too many Hollywood hero movies?

I think the above attitude is less common outside the US than within. It's usually Americans who view themselves as through the lens of American exceptionalism, the rightful police of the world, just bringing democracy everywhere out of altruism and a care for people everywhere etc.

In Europe, the US is definitely seen in a more ambivalent light with lots of corruption etc.

I live in Europe, and the universal reaction I saw in my circle was shock. People don't think the US is perfect, but the events of yesterday are completely outside the range of what they expect to see in the US.

What exactly? They broke into a building and wandered about a bit. They didn't take any politician hostage, didn't burn down the building, etc. They were like unruly children.

Aren't you shocked to see thousands of cars burned in France over NYE? About seeing the American riots last summer?

It's blown out of proportion. This Trumpist crowd was disorganized. They didn't have a plan, didn't have leaders, didn't have demands or any credible way to win. Life goes on.

They had a plan, albeit an insane one, a leader, albeit an insane one, demands (change the election result), and a credible way to win (abduct or kill senators in order to change the outcome of votes). It's all very "we took six of the seven control rods out of the reactor and nothing happened!"

Fundamental disagree. They didn't even scratch the surface. These buildings, the senators etc are all symbolic. They are expressions of the power relations, not the originators of it. Even if they do say stuff under threat, that would not have a real effect. It would be overturned by the Supreme Court or whatever.

There is no way to make Trump win this way and actually get obedience from the institutions of the country. They would just not recognize Trump, even if somehow senators, under duress, said he won.

It was 0 rods of the 7. Power is not in the buildings. It's in the network of interests of powerful people in the background across the country.

They stormed the Capitol, trying to disrupt the process by which the President is chosen. How many times have you seen this happen before in the US? For me personally, it's zero.

France has famously unstable politics, which is why they are on their fifth Republic. No one was surprised to see something like BLM because the US has long-running problems with racism. But this? This was new.

If anything, yesterday's event should reinforce your opinion of

> the American democratic system and its resilience

because there was a half-hearted attempt at a coup, and it failed miserably, even when indirectly backed by the current president.

> What would have happened if they had had firearms on them?

They (some) did have guns on them, along with knives, restraints, bombs (allegedly) and probably other weapons hidden on their person.

> I guess the answer is... calm down?

Rioters inflamed by years of Trump's gross lies storm the Capitol, demanding to overturn the results of the election, four die, and your response is, "Calm down"?

What's the alternative? Escalate and inflame emotions even more?

What good would come of that?

The right thing to do here is to break the feedback loop and take some energy out of the system.

One consideration here is that lack of consequences enables escalation - if it turns out that this disruption is not prosecuted and punished, then (as their core reasons for doing so have not changed) they are going to be emboldened and repeat similar acts with more force.

Breaking the loop requires a deterrent, not only verbal "we will not stand for this".

> A few hundred (even heavily armed) people do not stand a chance changing the results of the election, or almost anything in the US.

This is not the issue here. It is not even that the outgoing president very deliberately provoked the attack, as well as a much wider opposition to the democratic process. The biggest problem is that the president was actively supported, in his provocation, by more than a few US senators, along with elected officials of several states (some of whom are plausible presidential candidates themselves.)

There is little doubt that if any of the extra-legal or simply bogus attempts to overthrow the election had succeeded, these senators, and most likely the republican party as a whole, would have been happy to go along with that act, in what would, in reality, have been a coup d'état.

Even if the supreme court put a stop to it - which is not a certainty - much damage would have been done.

>There is little doubt that if any of the extra-legal or simply bogus attempts to overthrow the election had succeeded, these senators, and most likely the republican party as a whole, would have been happy to go along with that act, in what would, in reality, have been a coup d'état.

You could describe the 2000 election as a successful bogus attempt to overthrow an election. Has America already had a coup d'etat?

In 2000 it was unclear who actually won because the Florida vote count was very close. No one was alleging that one side or the other was cheating, and everyone was in agreement that whoever got the most votes should be president. Also, Al Gore, as the outgoing Vice President, presided over the same certification proceeding that Trump and his followers disrupted yesterday. In January 2001, that proceeding went without a hitch even though the loser of the election was in charge of it.

No offense, but I don’t think you understand the gravity of what happened. The fact that a mob of people, attempted to overturn the results of an election, is in itself a pretty serious event. That they were unlikely to succeed doesn’t cancel out the fact that they could have easily started a shootout with Congress people inside, that law enforcement seemed so unprepared to deal with a situation that had been telegraphed for so long, that as the article points out this has serious infosec implications, and that the sitting president of the US helped instigate an attempted coup.

It is symbolic, but I have particularly little sympathy for their stunt.

It wasn't a protest of a bill, or a protest for a particular legislative action. It was a protest against the election of the President itself - against all evidence, all facts, and all testimony from just about every official except the President, who egged this on.

I didn't want to see heads rolling, but I was shocked at how delicately they were handled - cops even let them through barricades.

Contrast this with left-wing protesters and their treatment by cops, and you see a much different picture, of people walking or sitting down getting pepper sprayed, or 70-something men getting shoved to the ground in a public square by a team of armored officers.

There are a number of reasons to be angry at this stunt, and a number of conclusions to draw from it. First thing is first, if we had any kind of collective conscience, Trump would be impeached today.

This is an overreaction because, as the OP mentions, legislatures around the world are often not heavily secured. Protestors forcing themselves into legislative buildings is pretty common worldwide even in stable countries, for example Taiwan and Germany recently, and there are no longterm consequences at all for rule of law.

There was meaningful security in place last night in Washington DC: the legislators were evacuated to a heavily secured facility nearby.

Even in Switzerland was a shooting some years ago (a man shot 15 people in the parlament of Zug). Things just can happen fast und just by surprise. For me it was more surprising how long it took to get more police force to the place, I mean, it can happen suddenly are a lot of people there, but it took hours for the police.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zug_massacre

The context is wildly different. One deranged man with a gun on a completely normal day can easily surprise security and cause surprising harm.

A well known protest on a specific day, protesting a contentious issue, while all of the legislative branch is gathered together to confirm the results of the election, which the crowd believes was fraudulent, is an entirely different thing.

Not to mention, the crowd was allowed on the steps near the entrance with no opposition, with reports of policemen taking selfies and even opening a door. Had this happened with the shooter in Zug, would the policeman doing so have been investigated? Would his superiors?

Is it common for that to happen while the legislative is meeting to confirm the next head of the executive? Were these protesters in Germany or Taiwan taking selfies with the police there? Were they also there with the expressed intent of convincing their legislature to overturn the results of the election?

Context is important.

The protesters in Germany actually didn’t enter the building and were just taking selfies outside the building.

Second that. Once was visiting the German parliament and just strolling around the waiting area. Suddenly a (unarmed) guard rushed from a hallway and asked for my ID. He seemed not too amused with me going through these automatically opening glass doors...

As to the infosec problems: legislature is run (even more in the US) by mostly senile, corrupt lawmakers and a staff of technically inept party groupies (or so I guess, clicking random aides linkedin-profiles). I doubt that any nationstate actor needs a raid of their offices to get to their computers (and that's why these people probably get the real national-security stuff on paper...)

That’s the problem. The “protestors” just stole a bunch of those papers.

The difference is in this case the “attack” was announced and legislators had spoken to the police in advance and been told that they were prepared.

The other difference is that not even a few months ago, police used massive shows of force against people who were unarmed (other than cameras for the reporters among them) and completely peaceful, in the same area.

Protestors didn’t force themselves into the Reichstag in Germany. There were standing in front of it and were talking selfies.

If you think those three police officers at the Reichstag would have stopped those protestors if they action had wanted to storm the building, you are delusional.

Oh, and not too long before that Greenpeace members actually climbed the Reichstag and unrolled an anti-coal banner. Just that the media didn’t frame this into “an attack on democracy”.

To attack democracy is precisely the goal of this protest, though. The democratic election is complete, the results didn’t go their way, and in the midst of the final certification of results, these people broke into the Capitol to disrupt the process. That seems like an attack on democracy to me. If not that, what was their goal?

Well to be fair, isn't it their apparent belief that the results did go their way, but <.. something conspiratorial..>? So they presumably at least notionally feel that the attack on democracy has already happened, and they are... I don't know, defending it?

Perhaps, but to what end? So they breached the Capitol and disrupted Congress. Then what?

They believe what they believe and they also hold the idea that if that belief is threatened by facts, there must ALWAYS be an alternate narrative that allows them to continue to believe what they believe. This is because Trump himself is strong in this means of building an internal fantasy reality and then presenting it to others (irrationally) which then either causes them to believe it or come to understand his ego is the issue here.

If you listen to him, he's constantly negating what he just said, which comes across as open to interpretation (or completely insane).

No one man or woman is above the law.

Factual information is arrived at by consensus of people. That a certain group of people in this country refuse to accept or participate in the consensus mechanism (or threaten or dismiss that mechanism) then those people are against whatever it is that forms the consensus, such as the constitution, the US Govt., etc.

This is how dictatorships are born and it would do these people well to understand that replacing their made up fears with a dictator is not going to help anyone.

The protestors in front of the German Reichtags clearly wanted to get into the building, but were stopped by the reinforced glass doors and the three police officers, who acted very differently from what I saw until now from the Capitol Police [1].

In the end the three officers in front of the Reichtag were able to act this way, because they knew that reinforcements in the form of 100 riot police were only 200 meters away. Badly positioned to prevent the initial compromise of the perimeter, but still there to handle a protest like this.

[1] Video of the incident in Germany. I think the intent of the protestors to enter the building is visible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdX5952CFTU

How is this different than the very large and often violent protests that have been taking place around the country in major cities, often in front of legislative areas, yet law enforcement has by and large allowed the property damage and violence to proceed without intervention, precisrly because they do not want to escalate tensions? None of it is good, but we should be consistent in requesting law enforcement to draw down every such violent mob, not just the partisan favorite.

In what cities was there no intervention? There was sure plenty of intervention in Portland, even against journalists.

If I recall correctly, protestors were allowed to take over multiple city blocks for weeks.

Right, if invading the nation's capital building for a few hours is considered insurrection, then much more so is taking over the part of Portland around the mayor's office, along with property destruction and violence towards other citizens. If we want to get technical, the latter is most definitely the sort of insurrection that would allow lawful military intervention by the president.

The problem is that law enforcement is incompetent. They are provocative against the peaceful and ineffective against the violent. Pretty much the worst of both worlds.

I think there's an argument to be made that the response at the Capitol was what you want from a police force. The Capitol Police have a dual role as bodyguards (for legislators, their staff, other employees of the legislative branch, and the journalists and media covering them) and as security guards (for the buildings of the Capitol complex). Given that as far as I can tell none of the people who were there to do the business of operating the US government were injured, and that almost all were successfully evacuated, it seems they did that first (and more important) job excessively well.

The second job is more difficult to do effectively (with the potential that some of the protesters were armed, any armed response could have escalated into an actual battle), and was almost certainly compromised by the absence of the personnel needed to evacuate and secure the legitimate occupants of the complex (I don't see any numbers at a quick glance, but almost certainly thousands of people on what was a normal workday until 2:30PM).

Not to mention the inexplicable absence of last summer's no-badge secret police in guarding this protest, and an unwillingness of the executive branch to provide requested national guard allocations to support the Capitol Police.

I did not say that the police should have quashed the protest or attacked it violently.

That does not mean that they should have ever allowed protesters to attack the Capitol building while Congress was in session.

It's also important that the BLM protests were not about wanting to overturn the results of the election and install their preferred candidates. The cause that is at least proclaimed by a protest movement matters, it is not just a detail when considering a valid response to it. And even so, any police officers who fought BLM protesters to keep them from attacking democratic institutions, especially those in session, were fully justified.

Neither did I. In both cases the police should have shutdown the protests once things reached a certain point, regardless of cause.

HN desiring more authoritarian rule simply because it was the other side. I think the election fraud accusations are completely bogus, but holy shit, do you people listen to yourselves??

Who here is asking for authoritarian rule? Demanding that police protect democratic institutions from fascist mobs is not 'authoritarianism' by any stretch of the imagination.

It is not acceptable for the certification of the legal election to even be delayed as it has by a mob.

I assure you that I would believe the same if pro-Hillary crowds would have amassed in hopes of convincing or forcing Congress to overturn the electors vote in 2016. Especially if police had done little to deter them.

You have to remember we spent most of 2020 being gaslit by the media about “mostly peaceful protests” where people were being assassinated, $2 billion in property damage, a Federal courthouse attacked for weeks, and entire city blocks seized for days by protestors.

After spending the last 4 years hearing that Trump conspired with the Russians to steal his election.

But this suddenly is a mob committing treason and sedition.

The protests were mostly peaceful, which still leaves room for plenty of looting and killing. Don't forget that a lot of the killing was actually performed by policemen and fascist groups/individuals AGAINST the protesters.

The attacked federal courthouse is also a nice contrast - despite weeks of trying, the protesters never made it inside the courthouse. The fascists trying fruiessly to overthrow the election last night however made it inside Congress while it was in session.

The Russia conspiracy theory was a massive red herring, but it also didn't succeed in motivating people to try to overturn the election. Hillary Clinton conceded her election immediately following the result estimates, and Obama immediately started the transition process with Trump's people. There were no lawsuits seeking to disenfranchise 5 million voters for vague reasons.

The democratic quibbling about Trump's legitimacy was just that - quibbling. To compare this to what Trump and his cronies have been doing since the election is laughable.

Here’s a picture of DC, and not from last night:

https://twitter.com/unsafespace/status/1347273909280923648?s...

Turns out that Viking Man is actually a paid actor from Arizona. I don’t think you could make this stuff up if you tried.

First unarmed person shot to death by police in 2021 was Ashli Babbit.

I think you can choose to take a principled stand in support of protestors, or maybe you can call people who shutdown courts or congress and takeover city blocks domestic terrorists, but you don’t get to pick and choose one side or the other depending on whether you agree with the protestors or not.

The real attempt at overturning the legal election results, "legally": https://twitter.com/zeynep/status/1347169481689354240

> 138 representatives —65% of GOP caucus—and 7 senators voted to discard PA. PA rules were voted in by the GOP but even the guy who got elected by them voted to throw out the ones for the president. They would have stolen that election if they had the numbers.

(The riot was an alternative approach to throwing the election by destroying the electoral college ballots https://twitter.com/SenJeffMerkley/status/134693870593264845... ; it's not clear to me whether that would be a mere paperwork hiccup or whether it could provide a pretext to really invalidate the electoral college somehow)

Each state makes 6-9 copies of the certifications that get sent to Congress. And each house of Congress gets their own stamped/sealed and certified "originals". So I would say there was next to zero chance of the ballots being destroyed having any lasting impact, other than the sheer horror of it occurring, of course.

I heard a former Chief of Homeland Security of Obama's on the radio and she had an interesting take. She was surprisingly forgiving of the actions of the security staff.

The argument being that they do training exercises all the time, but there is no playbook for what to do if the president incites violence against his own Capitol. Split-second decisions made in a state of confusion and chaos which make sense from a security point of view could have enormous long term political implications. Up to a point, the risk of acting outweighs the potential reward.

I'm on the fence about this type of explanation. Individual police, I can agree were overwhelmed and were not trained or ready for this.

But as organizations (Capital Police, Metro Police, FBI, etc.) this event was broadly known to be happening all over social media well in advance of Wednesday's event. There should have been a response as soon as that crowd made it to the steps of the building.

What concerns me is how this could have played out if that rioting group was even 10% more organized than they were. Or if they were intending to destroy/damage the building beyond windows and doors. Could you imagine if instead of just taking selfies in the senate president's chair, they piled up the desks and lit them on fire?

I hope this event sparks some changes in security protocols, because now any extremist group intending to disrupt government or make a bold statement know exactly how to do it and know they'll get far enough to do some serious damage.

> But as organizations (Capital Police, Metro Police, FBI, etc.) this event was broadly known to be happening all over social media well in advance of Wednesday's event.

Exactly my take on this. And why I got so baffled it actually happened. I, a Brazilian living in Sweden with a passing interest in US politics (just due to its repercussions to my life and countries), was aware of the radio chatter that something like this was bubbling. How can security forces of the most powerful country on Earth's history let this roll?

I think you might be missing the subtlety in argument I was relaying.

The security staff know how to deal with extremist groups. But they were not dealing with an extremist group in the traditional sense - where the overwhelming majority of the population are in agreement that their actions are wrong e.g. 9/11, Boston Marathon, Orlando nightclub. They were dealing with a group claiming to act on behalf of the leader of one party in a two party system - in other words, a very significant percentage of the population.

It wasn't failing to act, but confusion about choosing whether or not to act and to what extent. They were not prepared for a scenario where taking action could genuinely be a trigger for wide scale insurrection, violence and even civil war affecting millions - the trolley problem on steroids.

> Or if they were intending to destroy/damage the building beyond windows and doors.

They were - pipebombs and molotov cocktails were recovered. But as uncomfortable as it feels, it might not have been as simple as shooting the bad guys.

Given that this was an entirely predictable series of events, I think it's pretty damning in itself that there was no playbook to deal with this sort of uprising.

While at the individual level it probably makes sense to err on the side of inaction, at the organizational level this is a massive failure.

>Given what we've seen tonight, this could have easily turned into a putsch attempt

No, not really.

The US government isn't a dictatorship, and power is not held by a narrow few people. More importantly, the whole government is structured to prevent someone making themself king.

Let's say that the worst case scenario had happened, and the terrorists had taken members of congress hostage and used the situation to demand that Trump be retained in power indefinitely.

They wouldn't have any leverage beyond the ordinary because in the US, our political officials are easily replaced. In fact, the problem we usually have is that they aren't replaced often enough.

Holding the capital building and the entire congress hostage doesn't mean they have control of the US... it only means they control a building and some hostages.

That's the thing that so many anarchist/white supremacist/revolutionary plots in the US fail to consider... that you can't decapitate the US government and then just take the place of the people you killed, because the rest of the country will just refuse to follow you.

The only way a Germany-style takeover of the government is really possible is with years of slow changes... that has been happening, but hopefully now that it's out in the open we can do something about it.

Say they somehow successfully forced congress to hold their meeting and vote not to certify the elector vote; then, they would force them to hold a vote for the president and 'officially' nominate Donald Trump.

What would happen next? Who would cancel these acts of Congress? What if the Supreme Court (filled with partisan judges) decided to accept the results as well?

IANAL, but i think there's an argument to be made that a congressional vote held under duress (like any other contract) is invalid.

Ultimately, the question of who controls the US government (and its monopoly on the legitimate use of force) falls to "who can order the army to collect taxes from the states". In the absence (or ambiguity) of guidance from the representatives of the states, the decision would come down to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US armed forces, to decide whose orders he takes and to give the nuclear football to somebody.

> This was a shameful display by the police charged with defending the rule of law in the USA

Defunding the police doesn't seem like a great idea anymore now, does it.

I mean, as we saw yesterday the USCP doesn't seem to be doing much good with their $460 million budget.

I don't think the reason for their ineptitude was lack of funding.

"Defund the police" doesn't mean eliminating the police, or reducing their ability to respond to in-progress violence.

It means reducing the scope of the police so that they aren't the ones dealing with things like homelessness and mental illness, things that they usually are not trained to deal with.

Here's a good explanation [1].

[1] https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/a33024951/defund-the-p...

It does mean reducing their budget though, and with a potentially long lasting insurrection ahead you either need public police or private...

> but perhaps they didn't because of the symbolism of the location.

I think there were a number of things going on, but one of the not to be discounted is that individual police officers probably had a lot of sympathy for the protestors. There are pictures of police officers taking selfies with protestors etc. They saw each other as sharing similar politics and backgrounds. Very different from the individual police officers attitudes toward Black Lives Matter protests.

Note I am not saying it was some kind of conspiracy with orders from abovve, I am saying individual police sympathies in aggregate led to much increased tolerance.

In many cases in the USA the cops are quite happy to create puddles of blood, for better or worse (and it's usually worse).

Note I am also not saying they "should" have created puddles of blood here.

I completely agree with this take. 85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

Just from personal experience, I've noticed a growing animosity from police pushing back on the reform movements happening across the country. I've heard officers refusing to be involved in psychiatric calls due to changes in use of force laws which could hold them personally accountable. Instead of working to find a legal solution, their attitude seems to be one of revenge and their actions a punitive measure on the electorate and government which chose to enact those laws.

There is a culture of us vs. them that is being focused towards politicians and reformists. I hope it's not a pervasive one.

>85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

That's likely a national statistic. Remember, these are police in DC, a very liberal area.

On police salary they live in Calvert or Charles or Fauquier Counties which are still oases of red.

Very few police officers actually live in the area they work in. Most live far outside the city in the suburbs or more red areas. Either due to cost of living or politics. This often contributes to the "us vs them" divide because the people policing neighborhoods are often from different areas, ethnicity, incomes and political leanings.

Even in places like Chicago where there is a residency requirement, most officers tend to live in "cop and firemen" neighborhoods on the outskirts of the city. This has some predictable consequences: https://blockclubchicago.org/2018/12/20/police-heavy-wards-g...

> That's likely a national statistic. Remember, these are police in DC, a very liberal area.

Still cops. I personally know two DC area cops who are quite red. Remember, police organizations have been pushing the idea that anyone who protests police brutality is anti-cop and the right wing have more or less 100% stood by them or encouraged them.

It's not surprising that police don't side with Democrats who vilify them for defending themselves, and refuse to respond to psychiatric calls that might make them a target. Consider the killing of Walter Wallace, one of the "psychiatric incidents" you're talking about:

> Several 9-1-1 calls were made by Wallace's sister, brother, and neighbor, telling dispatchers that Wallace was assaulting his parents

> The two officers arrived in the area to respond to a domestic dispute. When they arrived, Wallace walked out of his house carrying a knife. The two officers backed away while telling him to drop the knife, and as Wallace walked in their direction, each officer fired several rounds at Wallace, hitting him in the shoulder and chest. He later died from his wounds in the hospital. Wallace's family stated that Wallace was having a mental health crisis.

> Protests and demonstrations against police brutality and institutional racism in response to Wallace's killing took place across Philadelphia throughout late October.

> The then-presidential nominee Joe Biden and his running mate Kamala Harris published a joint statement saying, "Our hearts are broken for the family of Walter Wallace Jr... We cannot accept that in this country a mental health crisis ends in death."[34]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Killing_of_Walter_Wallace

Body cam video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xl1QBL8TijI

Edit: And it really says something about our ability to discuss facts on Hacker News when quotes from Wikipedia and a body cam video are downvoted to invisibility.

I’m sorry, but can you really not think of any other way to subdue somebody with a knife than shoot them?

Never having been in a knife fight, I'm not going to speculate or second guess people who put their lives on the line. What's your expertise in this area?

No expertise, but just offhand one could use beanbags, rubber bullets, tear gas, pepper spray, tranquilizers, etc - Is there a good reason that these are not options? Why jump straight to shooting someone multiple times? Maybe I’m just not understanding something.

I don't know how effective any of those are at stopping someone who intends to hurt you, but Tasers, which were specifically discussed because the officers weren't carrying any and some people thought they might have helped, apparently are only between 50% to 75% effective.[1] That's a big risk when someone is only a few steps away.

1: https://www.npr.org/2019/06/27/729922975/despite-widespread-...

That is only with the shooty prongs. Get right in there and a taser works 100% of the time. Hit 'em in the spine and the legs drop out. The problem is cops are too concerned about their own safety. They are cowards, and when they get scared they shoot.

This is oversimplification, and is unhelpful.

Public and local priorities determine budgets. Departmental budgets and priorities determine what equipment is purchased and equipped, and the degree to which their usage is trained. Training and official departmental policy determine the degree to which de-escalation is a priority, and whether the officers are obligated to follow an escalation policy in which tools they employ, or if they're permitted a toolkit approach.

... and all of these things differ per locality.

Circumstances matter, but it can be done (eg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9mzPj_IaMzY made the news a while ago).

Here in Germany, people wielding knives get killed from time to time as well. Pepper spray tends to get used first, and I do not remember any case where a dozen rounds were fired[1] (German police fire on the order of 50 rounds total per year, cf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffengebrauch_der_Polizei_in_... ).

[1] edit: apparently, this does happen, cf https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tennessee_Eisenberg

A knife wielded as a weapon within 20ft of you is very definitely a lethal threat. I don't know the circumstances of this particular situation very well, but if I shot someone coming at me with a knife and an intent to harm I'd be well justified in doing so.

You aren’t a cop. I’m 100% in agreement that if a citizen gets attacked by a knife wielder, the use of lethal force in defense is fine. However cops are professional peace keepers. They have training, equipment and numbers on their side. You can watch videos of European cops dealing with a knife threat, it’s really not hard.

A police officer i knew, in Europe, had practiced self defence and disarmed the knife person, no one hurt.

I would have wanted a tazer, personally, if i was a cop.

> It's not surprising that police don't side with Democrats who vilify them for defending themselves

I honestly don't disagree with this. However, I think it's possible to believe that police are abdicating their duty instead of handling it like proper authority figures while simultaneously believing that the harsh rhetoric of some reformists isn't helping the situation.

This cuts both ways since, as your comment indicates, we always blame "Democrats" or "Republicans" instead of identifying actual problematic behavior. "Democrats" are no more to blame for this than "Republicans" with their "thin blue line" which quite obviously pits the police against some underworld of crime (or, at this point, the "radical left") instead of presenting the reality that police work for and with the community.

> Consider the killing of Walter Wallace, one of the "psychiatric incidents" you're talking about

Cases like this are a very real concern amongst police, EMS and fire in many jurisdictions. I don't think it should be swept under the rug. On the other hand, police, in particular, have vast amounts of leeway and are often not held accountable (certainly not criminally) in many cases that go the opposite direction of the one you describe. This is evident to everyone reading this, I'm sure.

There are no easy solutions but I'm tired of police departments acting entitled. Refusing to perform your job and acting like the legislature + the reform minded public is your enemy does not help anyone. Responsibility lies in police chiefs, police unions/brotherhoods, and the executive and legislative bodies of our local governments to work together.

It does beg the question; if your the leader of a political faction, who is currently faced off against another faction which has spent the last something years courting the prime authority figures in the region, what's the next tactical step after that faction starts starting shit and those authority figures who are tasked with stopping said shit refuse to act? Is the only solution to quickly bootstrap your own brand of authority figures and hope yours is bigger than theirs?

> 85% of police officers voted for Tump in 2016.

Is there a source for this claim? All I could find was https://www.policemag.com/342098/the-2016-police-presidentia...

It says that 84% of responding email-registered readers of POLICE MAGAZINE indicated that that they would vote for Trump. That's not the same as what you said at all.

This magazine "emailed 59,238 readers". There are more than 10x that many full-time police officers in the US. Can one conclude that the responding fraction of this tiny-circulation magazine's readership is statistically representative of all police officers in the country?

> Note I am not saying it was some kind of conspiracy with orders from above.

There is no conspiracy necessary. A single officer can simply allocate too few officers to guard the place. And in fact that is what happened and is the reason the national guards weren’t there prepared and stopped it before it happened. No conspiracy, just a chain of sympathetic command.

> There were exactly 2 (unarmed) "security guards" present who told my friend they obviously stood no chance if these people decided to charge.

No government stands a chance if an any much significant part of population raises against it. I'm not even saying a majority.

What we saw today in DC was not a big rally.

A big rally would look like this: https://i.tribune.com.pk/media/images/Khadim-Rizvi-funeral-2... and like that for a few more city blocks.

Or like this: https://cdn.theatlantic.com/static/infocus/moscow1991/AP9103...

Or this: https://static.toiimg.com/img/67604038/Master.jpg

Learning living along with the radicals is a good alternative to having a war with them.

> Learning living along with the radicals is a good alternative to having a war with them.

This is what most regimes and "leaders" don't understand. They think that if they were put/elected there by some people then those are the only ones they have to serve. They do not acknowledge that they should serve the country. As such the disenfranchised start to think that if the power isn't on their side, the complete opposite must be. They drift towards an extreme, whatever that may be since both left and right extremes are very closer to each other - they justify the same things for different reasons.

Once enough are disenfranchised the power balance shifts. But the next to come in power will do the same, this time with the "moral" justification that the others deserve to be punished, swinging the pendulum further to the opposite side. If you repeat this cycle a few times you get to the pendulum's breaking point.

A president with a terrible character to begin with will just fast track the pendulum in one swing. They will add fuel to the fire and watch it burn not only out of pleasure or frustration, but also ineptitude.

> Learning living along with the radicals is a good alternative to having a war with them.

I think the original deal of public education was to establish a realistic way to do this. IMO the over focus on the shared benefit of raising income/GDP as the benefit has compromised the long term sustainability of the system.

Re: those protest turnout photos... how does one relieve themselves when in the middle of the sea of people? In Times Square on New Years, you just don’t drink water and do whatever you can to hold it in. If you leave you’ve lost your spot and you’re stuck at the outskirts where the portapotties are. I assume there are no mobile bathrooms during protests... Im guessing people are always in motion as people migrate to new locations?

I have no clue but have always wondered

Walls. Or floors.

This is a particular point of the "kettling" tactic, where protestors are herded into an area and kept there for hours.

It sounds like the crowd was much larger than anyone expected, and the organizers didn’t think to provide bathrooms. Probably the same folks who organized the press conference at the four seasons.

As a kid, I walked right into the front doors of the US Capitol, down the hall, and into one of my representatives offices. (Without adult supervision too!) They were quite friendly.

The building has security, of course, but it’s not like some kind of off-limits private building.

https://www.visitthecapitol.gov/plan-visit/watching-congress...

That being said, I have never been more embarrassed and scared for politics in this country than I have been today. These people really had no clue about the kind of damage they did today. It is looking like misinformation is the biggest plague of the Information Age.

It's not, but one, congress was in session, and two, they knew there was going to be a big group of agitated protestors outside. Compare how tight security was when there was a BLM protest there.

Oh yes, clearly today was not a normal day that people should be walking in the front door. And it should have been treated more seriously than it apparently was. I’m just saying that the place isn’t a fortress by default.

> One thought that comes to mind is that I'm sure the most heavily armed nation in the world could have gotten rid of these people in no time, but perhaps they didn't because of the symbolism of the location.

Oh no, the police let them through, there's clips showing they literally opened the gates, pictures of them taking selfies, etc. It's the "blue lives matter" subculture within those groups, where the police think they're on their side and the protestors think the police is on their side. The policemen involved should be fired and charged with dereliction of duty and conspiracy or something like that. Of course, there should have been a lot more (riot) police active as well, since it was known in advance it was going to be a bad protest.

Sickening when you consider the sacrifice of PC Keith Palmer who "un armed" stopped a knife wielding attacker attempting to breach the Houses of parliament.

I hope it's investigated thuroughly. That said, I don't think that being apparently "nice" to protestors is necessarily a convincing proof that you are somehoe "letting it happen". If you are outnumbered and the situation isn't directly threatening, then it may be better to keep the situation from becoming threatening while you call for reinforcemens. Then the problem was that they were outnumbered to begin with, which could shift blame upwards. It's going to be obvious from investigating communications, whether reinforcements were called in, how quickly they were sent.

I mean, if we're talking about symbolism, you might be right for "a guy in a buffalo costume", but the confederate flag was flown inside the capitol.

For many people, the damage that causes to government feeling "theirs" is much, much higher than a violent incident, even more so if we compare it to the way recent protests have been handled.

A dead woman on the floor with blood pooling out of her head sends a weaker message in this respect than an appropriately-decorated piece of cloth being raised? I suspect you may be a little too shaken by recent events to be thinking clearly. Thoughts and prayers, my friend.

That flag symbolizes millions of dead and generations of bitterness. It's very, very weighty.

So does the American flag for a lot of people, that's why we need a military, right? Did you know this woman was a veteran, by the way? She swore an oath to protect that flag, not the confederate flag. Try reconciling this in your mind, maybe you'll understand what's happened better.

Who was she and what were the circumstances of her death?

She appears to have been shot (maybe by a security guard?) while trying to break in through a window.

Finally saw a news report: https://www.thedailybeast.com/one-woman-shot-six-hospitalize...

I'm not justifying it, just giving context for why folks are alarmed, especially for people from other countries who don't necessarily have context for obscure US symbols.

And yes, the American flag is problematic in its own way.

Parent didn't say anything about that woman, it's a new element in the conversation. Don't put your assumptions in people's mouth.

His assumptions are built into his response.

He said "how about this symbolism!" and talked about a piece of cloth. I'm now asking what an unarmed woman with blood pooling out of her head symbolizes. If it helps you answer the question at all, she was also a US military veteran with four tours of service.

It symbolizes nothing. A flag is a symbol for an idea and means nothing on its own. A death is not a symbol for anything but means a lot on its own.

I really don't understand how this is relevant to flying that flag which represents much intentional suffering, to which the above poster objected.

A death is not a symbol? We’re you around for the protests this summer?

Yeah, this is a tragedy and a failure of the VA as well.

I’m sure there is a program (or several) to help our vets adjust to civilian life but it needs to be updated to help build community so they aren’t as likely to get sucked into Qanon or similar cults like she did.

Separately, we need to continue to raise our expectations of police ability to de-escalate situations. This is one of many, many unarmed civilians killed by police in recent years. Normally they aren’t storming the capitol, but it should still be possible for police / secret service to de-escalate a situation like this. It won’t happen until our DAs and various state attorneys start charging cops that kill.

Symbols usually become symbols due to them being glaring examples of an injustice. George Floyd became a symbol, for example, due to the obvious unreasonableness of him being killed violently on the street when an officer responded to the use of a counterfeit bill. People don't consider that a reasonable reaction.

If you had asked any American a week ago about what they think is a reasonable reaction for an officer faced with people trying to surpass a barricade, that has been set up for security reasons inside a government building to protect the people inside, after said building has been trespassed by a crowd breaking through the windows, I don't think "shooting" would have been unexpected.As some people pointed out half jokingly, "you can't even try that in GTA".

I don't see the relevance of mentioning that woman's connection to the military either, other than emphasising that she should have known better.

In opposition, I think the flag that symbolises the right of people to own slaves, being flown without consequence in the meeting place of congress while the officers stand around and take selfies with the mob, sends a clear message to the descendants of slaves about how much can they expect to be protected and represented by that democracy. Even more so in a climate where they have been violently repressed for protesting inequality.

It's not just about slavery.

Today's "Confederate flag" is literally a rebel battle flag from a horrifying civil war.

The fact that said civil war was instigated by the rebels specifically to protect the institution of slavery is just bonus.

It is a very powerful symbol. Anyone who claims it's about Southern heritage is being deliberately ignorant. It's blatantly oppositional, self-serving, and violent.

It's unfortunate that you're being downvoted, you make an excellent point.

George Floyd was murdered by police during a routine arrest.

Ashli Babbitt was executed by police for trespassing during a protest.

Both of these (and many others) are powerfully symbolic: of an overbearing and largely unaccountable police state, in which its enforcers use violence as a first resort.

People tend to lose sight of the fact that something like 99.9% of interactions between police and civilians involves no violence at all.

George Floyd was a common criminal coming down from a large fentanyl dose (nevertheless RIP), Ashli Babbitt was a military veteran acting in an expressly conscientious manner alongside a large gathering of other like-minded political activists. Surely these are both tragic losses, and yet the common criminal received immeasurably greater sympathies here and elsewhere. What's going on? Were BLM grievances not rooted in an equitable respect for the sanctity of life and an earnest desire for peaceful coexistence? Perhaps this explains the months of undirected destruction that followed across the country in the middle of what was represented as a dire pandemic? Maybe these people are hypocrites, useful idiots, bigots, and losers?

From what I remember the common criminal was not resisting the arrest and got slowly suffocated by a police officer using a technique that is not sanctionned for neutralizing suspects.

The military veteran - gathering with like minded people who thought they were sent there to make a coup and storm the capitole and one of them was carrying colsons so who knows what else they planned to do - try to get further in the capitole, with the support of a mob behind her singing threats, to wreak havoc.

How you think your attempt to fabricate an alternative reality on HN is going to fly is beyond me.

> Were BLM grievances not rooted in an equitable respect for the sanctity of life and an earnest desire for peaceful coexistence?

GF was slowly put to death. Ashli Babbit broke through a doorglass after breaking into the capitole with people who had previously brought the flag down and claimed to overturn a democratic election. I don't see this act as a sign of wanting a peaceful coexistence.

What we have seen conclusive proof of tonight is that police are happy to work with or at least to allow fascist mobs to storm the government, while they are willing to maim and kill leftist protesters against police brutality at the slightest signs of provocation.

The fact that a woman was shot by police in last night's protest is a tragedy, as all human life is precious. But a democracy can't bow down to mob rule for fear of violence. The protesters should have never even been allowed to get near the Capitol building while Congress was in session, and in that case perhaps this loss of life could have also been avoided.

Police brutality and the police culture of violence before other solutions is also something that has been discussed in leftist circles the entire year. It is a culture that must be changed, which will surely be a monumental task, if it even is attempted. Still, the alternative is not simply allowing mobs to attack federal institutions with impunity.

In case you have forgotten, last year saw literal insurrectionist leftist communes that took over parts of cities, and were left unsuppressed for weeks. This is definitely quite an escalation, but to me, a European looking from the outside in, it looks anything but unilateral.

The fact remains that BLM related protests in 2020 were handled much more harshly than this. If this were a BLM protest, not only would the protestors have been all arrested and/or killed, but the media would be treating it like a national emergency.

And it's not just the fact that the police allowed it to happen or that the military was not asked to intervene until way too late.

It's also the alarmingly not-alarmed media response. What happened to "thugs" or "rioters" or "enemy combatants"?

Are we watching the same news channels? They were called "terrorists" on several cable news channels, and (fairly) "insurrectionists" on just about every news channel. I also heard "thugs" more than once. I heard the event as a whole called a "sacrilege".

In that case... good. I don't have a TV so I am only seeing the headlines and articles on the Web.

How are protesters against police brutality 'insurrectionists'? Were they trying to stop an election from being certified? Were they trying to even overthrow elected officials?

Not to mention, the largest difference is that during the BLM protests you saw daily police brutality against the protesters from day one, with tear gas, rubber bullets, etc. You did NOT see police taking selfies on the steps of the buildings they were supposed to keep the protesters out of.

They literally declared an autonomous zone. If that is not an insurrection I don't know what is. Words don't mean anything I guess.

Are you referring to the Red House? You believe that a fenced in house that was sometimes called an 'autonomous zone' (as far as I can tell, most often by people outside - the mayor of Portland for example apologized for calling it such) was closer to an insurrection than people seeking to overturn the legal results of the election entering the Capitol building while congress was in session?

Even if the people defending the Red House did call it an autonomous zone, their only real demands were to protect the livelihood of one family. They did not seek to expand, they did not try to gain political power from it,they did nothing that I would actually view as a significant attempt to challenge the authority of the state beyond a very specific case.

He's obviously talking about CHAZ.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Autonomous_Zone

Even there, I understand the name "Autonomous Zone" was only used by the people occupying the area between June 8 and June 13 - afterwards they decided to call it an "Organized Protest" instead. They also never challenged the authority of the state itself (except for police), and all of their demands were social, not political. They eventually peacefully dismantled most/all of the area anyway.

I fail to see how this can be presented as comparable in gravity with people attacking the Capitol building with the intent of overturning the result of the federal election.

Social demands are political.

Everything is political in some sense.

But there is a difference between demanding social change and demanding to take down a politician or to overturn an election.

>They also never challenged the authority of the state itself

>(except for police),

I rest my case.

Police is not a branch of government.

But you also saw police officers in demonstrations of solidarity (either photo-ops or sincere).

I think if you compare a single event with a large number of different events, you’ll find examples where one is worse by some measure and others where one is better. I don’t really want to comment on the recent events or the validity of the argument (or it’s spirit), but I think it probably isn’t reasonable to compare a single event with the aggregate of many different events.

It's all the worse that the right is trying to paint her death as police brutality.

We need to be clear, she was shot while trying to force her way through a barricaded door when law enforcement was trying to safely get elected officials and other innocent people out of harm's way, and she was only shot after multiple warnings.

I fully agree that the terrorists shouldn't have been allowed into the building, but it happened, and given that, if this isn't a textbook example of a situation where law enforcement was justified in using lethal force, I'm not sure what is.

> the right is trying to paint her death as police brutality.

.. have they bothered taking down their "blue lives matter" decorations first?

I happened to have recently bought a police trade-in Glock. I'm returning it. I'm disgusted. I've had enough. We're back to carrying the Sig.

> if this isn't a textbook example of a situation where law enforcement was justified in using lethal force, I'm not sure what is.

There is no reasonable justification for the police to execute an unarmed protestor simply for trespassing in a political building.

I suspect that you (like many others) have just become normalized to such police brutality, to think this is acceptable.

> police are happy to work with or at least to allow fascist mobs to storm the government

Correct me if I'm wrong but a dozen or so cops standing down in front of hundreds of protestors != compliance.

> The protesters should have never even been allowed to get near the Capitol building while Congress was in session

That's absolutely right.

In some ways it brought back old memories of storming of Stasi HQ in Eastern Berlin[0]. I couldn't find references to that effect, but I recall there was talk back then that among the first ones to breach the Stasi were people from the western intelligence agencies, who had a pretty good idea of where to go and what to grab.

[0] https://www.dw.com/en/stasi-hq-storming-german-president-pra...

There are many alternatives that are not "total anarchy" or "puddles of blood" or "fort knox". Obviously America tends to prefer the fort knox strategy[0], but there are other choices like staging police nearby[1].

[0]: https://www.slowboring.com/p/maga-mob (see picture of national guard on steps of Capitol)

[1]: https://www.thedailybeast.com/capitol-police-were-poorly-pre...

Yes, a serious error of judgement was made letting these people storm up the stairs. Hopefully cause of stupidity and not malice.

There is no way to attribute this to anything but malice. The police response was so wildly different from the response to any other protest we have seen in the past 10 years that it is laughable to even entertain the idea that it was a case of stupidity.

You know, it's not the first time the Capitol building has been stormed by the protestors. Before this, there was a BLM protest and they managed to hold the building just fine.

They were being reinforced by mysterious federal forces then… which was bad, so we got rid of them. Last time’s problem was solved so hard it produced this time’s problem.

The other issue is that reinforcements in DC are controlled by the President, who of course wanted this to happen so he could watch it on TV, so he didn’t mobilize any of them.

BLM never made it into the capitol or even the grounds. They built a large fence to keep them out.

And? That's what should've happened yesterday too.

But it didn’t. That’s what people are pointing out. All the stops pulled for BLM (so they’re clearly capable) and none of them pulled for this. Why?

I think so, too. Openness is more important. But I have to say that the physical security before the Capitol building was laughable. There is a video of three policemen trying to hold a makeshift barricade against more than 50 protesters. Obviously, they failed.

The bottom line is that the police appeared to be totally understaffed even though the protests had been announced for weeks and were entirely predictable.

The charitable take is that it was human error. Bad planning.

The conspiratorial one is that it was deliberate. The question in that case is on what level (leadership, or on the ground). I hope investigations will show this. Who raised the issue of too little staff? Who denied reinforcements? Was there a massive number of officers calling in sick that morning? Etc etc.

I have stated this in other comments, but I feel it is extremely important. There is no rational way to attribute this to simple human error, given the overwhelming evidence of how protests on much more irrelevant topics, moments and locations are normally treated by US police.

There can be no reasonable doubt that this was allowed to play out, with the few policemen stationed there being openly friendly with the crowd by some reports. The level where the decision to allow the protest to attack Congress was taken is of course up to the courts to investigate, but I feel it is disingenuous to claim that this isn't the most reasonable conclusion by far.

Just want to point out that police are friendly with protesters all the time and often take pictures with them even when they are anti police protests.

Openness is extremely important, but the rule of law is still more important.

What we have seen last night was an attempt at mob rule, and it was almost obviously allowed by the police force whose duty it is to safeguard the security of the nation's most powerful institutions.

This doesn't mean that the Capitol building should be turned into a fort. But there is a vast distance between being open in general on one hand, and allowing a crowd of people whose stated intent is to overthrow the legally confirmed the results of the presidential election to amass on the steps of Congress and to breach the building while the legislative is in session confirming those results at the federal level.

> In the end, a guy in buffalo costume fooling around on the senate floor is better than puddles of blood.

This statement is no longer true.

My left leaning twitter feed has many references about how the police removed wheelchair bound protestors some years ago and references to lost eyes during BLM walks/riots and Jane Fonda's arrest on the steps of the Capitole and pictures of police officers in body armour waiting on the steps of the Capitole for BLM marches.

Gunshots were fired in the Capitole, POTUS's message to deescalate started with election results denial, protestors brought down the flag and replaced it with a Trump flag.

It's much more concerning than the buffalo guy fooling around. Reframing the chain of events to that single moment is missing the bigger picture.

Keep in mind that this happened while:

- Members of the Senate - Members of the House of Representatives - The Vice President

were in the building during an important legislative event.

We can look back at this and say it a mostly harmless event, but what if one of the protesters was a deranged person or enemy agent with a deadly weapon or decided to start a fire or explosion in the capital? Even in state courthouses they won't allow you in before going through a metal detector. And this was before 9/11. And Americans are well aware of having to take off their shoes before entering their airport gate.

> what if one of the protesters was a deranged person or enemy agent with a deadly weapon

This person clearly intended to do much more than just take a selfie: https://i.imgur.com/e2s7UXT.png

(description: a person dressed in black paramilitary gear with modified US flag insignia, possibly with a sidearm, clutching a handful of large zip ties, jumping over a rail in what appears to be the senate or house gallery)

> In the end, a guy in buffalo costume fooling around on the senate floor is better than puddles of blood.

The police executed a lady who was trying to climb through a broken window in the building.

There are photos and videos of her literally dying in puddle of her own blood.

[0] https://heavy.com/news/ashli-babbit/

[1] https://twitter.com/Ashli_Babbitt/status/1345125644888281088

As far as I can tell, there were police officers on the other side of the door (where Babbitt was). Police officer shouldn't have shot her. His life was not in danger.

I'm against the storming of Capitol, but this type of shooting should not be allowed.

I think in this case it's not only about your life beeing in danger, try this at any milittary base and the chances of getting shot are also quite high i guess.

Yes, but the difference is here that the police obviously let the protestors inside the building. Once that happened, the police and protestors were mixed and there was no real power struggle. Police looks like they were keeping an eye, but no one was fighting. This guy who shot turned a situation that could have been handled with a baton into a deadly situation. He could have created a worse situation, imagine if a protestor had a gun behind this woman and a gunfight erupted.

Completely unnecessary.

While i completely agree that this was all unnecessary and a complete fuckup (Trump not calling the national guard, police clearly had a shitty tactic) But i don't think you can hold this "let them in" up high. They didn't invite them in, they let them in because of fear of beeing overrun/escalation. If a mob is in front of your house and threatens to burn it down if you won't let them in, there is no claim you invited them in If you do out of fear.

They should have blasted them of the stairs with watercannons, but idk what the plan was.

I mostly agree with you. Police should have blasted them off the stairs and/or held the cordon at the top of the steps. It would be easier to do and should be easily planned for. If someone died there while trying to break through it would be much more understandable than this.

Agreed, police officers should rarely be shooting anyone. And certainly not those who are merely trespassing.

There are plenty of options for stopping a person going into a place, that don't involve executing or seriously wounding them. It should be a grave concern for every citizen that the police generally have so few qualms about firing their guns at people.

The police should have attempted to deescalate this situation with a minimum of violence - not the maximum.

I guess you think the police should just let those 'mere trespassers' get close enough to the representatives to pose for a photo? Maybe hold the camera?

For some reason I have seen a vide of the shooting and it looks like the person shooting is in a suite? Is it normal that police officers wear a suite?

They reported that it was a plain clothes police officer. My guess is that some of the Capitol police wear plain clothes. They are usually not in public.

Getting shot by security a while trying to climb through a smashed window can hardly be called a execution.

These are the guys who called the killings of Rittenhouse self defense.

Shooting an unarmed protestor who is merely trespassing is absolutely an execution. Just as Rittenhouse's shootings were.

Whether I agree or disagree is secondary, I am just so glad to see some logically consistent thought!

There have been a lot of violent protests in the last 12 months, this being just the latest example. It’s nothing if not a great litmus test for anyone speaking or writing about protestors or policing protests.

What is your definition of trespassing? As a non american i would think that trepassing is beeing on someone elses property without permission, not beeing with a violent mob storming a gouvernemnt building with the (at minimum) intent to destroy stuff and breaking the democratic process.

And Rittenhouse was clearly looking for trouble, i don't think a black perosn could Go fully armed to a KKK rally and claim self defense if started shooting people after beeing harassed there.

Rittenhouse was in the open, chased and later surrounded by hostile protesters who variously threw things at him, hit him, and attempted to take his rifle. The NYT reported that there had been gunfire as Rittenhouse retreated, and he may have thought it was aimed at him.

The Policeman was with a number of other cops. They had ample room and time to retreat. There was a closed and barricaded door between him and the woman he shot. He fired the first shot.

They both have a case for self-defense, but the Cop's case is going to be a harder sell.

Rittenhouse had no reason to be there in the first place, while the capitol police will have some kind of policing plan and rules of engagement.

Both should be sorted out in court. So many of the protests this year and previously were about situations in which the police shooter never even stood trial. We shouldn't have to second-guess this in the court of public opinion, but we can't trust the prosecutors to prosecute unjustified shootings.

> There was a closed and barricaded door between him and the woman he shot. He fired the first shot.

She was in the middle of climbing through the top of the barricade, which is what got her shot.

DC is also a stand your ground territory, there is no duty to retreat even in civil matters. I think it would be very easy to convince at least a single juror that "a riot attempting to break into your place of work" would instill a reasonable fear of bodily harm. Doubly so when your place of work is the center of the nation's legislative branch. Quadruply so when the rioters are known to be armed.

Even if the officer didn't have reason to fear for his own life, shooting someone because you have a reasonable fear that they will cause bodily harm to someone else is legal. These people were armed and attempting to break into a session of congress. Fear that they might attempt to shoot a legislator would not be an unreasonable concern.

The cop's case is a trivial sell. For instance, who would prosecute him?

Took me a little scrolling to find her retweeting: https://twitter.com/Matthew_4_Trump/status/13423200194731294...

"The Founding Fathers would have started shooting 8 months ago. We have been incredibly patient."

RT https://twitter.com/richardgibb8/status/1346170478776479744

"!The President reinstates Death by Firing Squad , Guess What the US penalty for Treason Is ? DEATH BY FIRING SQUAD !"

(unclear as to who the intended victim is, but we can guess)

RT https://twitter.com/NicoleArbour/status/1341251645972361216

"If everyone bought $600 worth of ammo, and went to speak to their representatives... I’m sure we’d have a new bill real quick"

Her twitter feed has plenty of calls for gun violence. Guess she never expected to be on the receiving end, just the dishing out side.

> a guy in buffalo costume fooling around on the senate floor

Although this qanon leader made it seem ridiculous, the capitol was attacked by an armed mob, who used teargas and flash grenades to prevent the certification of the next President. A bomb was found and four people died.

Somehow, this is not that bad? How are these people merely funny protesters and not insurgents or even terrorists? The funny guy broke laws that can land him at least 20 years in jail.

Its weird seeing the lackluster police response after the secretive kidnappings, overwhelming force and use of chemical weapons against blm protesters.

Hang on, the mob had teargas and flashbangs?

It's a lot more complicated than that. There is very real and powerful anti-democratic fervor over here. Hundreds of members of the House of Representatives are involved in it, and several members of the Senate also. One member was actually heard outside on a loudspeaker yesterday invoking Hitler, by name, as a virtuous figure. There is white-supremacist anti-government infiltration of the police involved, including the Capitol Police. These same white-supremacist anti-democracy people have even stormed a military base in recent years, and they were NOT met with lethal force in that instance either, so it's not just because the Capitol represents a symbol of democracy. It's a complicated dynamic over here, but that doesn't make it any less chilling.

I live in Florida, and just a few minutes ago on the way to work this morning I passed a white commercial truck with a large commercial logo on the side. The logo reads "Confederate Electric, Inc." laid over a waving Confederate flag (which is a flag of treason and white supremacy.) Anti-government fervor is right in your face, and taken as a very normal and matter-of-fact way of life here now. Florida's Senator Rick Scott last night voted against allowing Pennsylvania the right to participate in representative democracy in voting for the new president. It's a very serious and very sad thing what's going on in America.

> One thought that comes to mind is that I'm sure the most heavily armed nation in the world could have gotten rid of these people in no time

Some people might say the same about the store burners and looters.

I'm pretty sure security would have been a bit higher even in Brussels if armed nazis with a history of breaking into legislative chambers declared they would "march on the court house".

And I have a lot of family members still stateside who think things will get better with Kamela… whereas i left almost 5 years ago… good luck my fellow Americans… because its only going to get worse…

Moral hazards abound… piper going to get paid…

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