That they would all be so lax is not a sign of ineptitude, so much as it is a belief that they will not face consequences for their actions.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilmington_insurrection_of_1...
Yesterday there was a confederate flag in the capitol halls, something that didn't even happen during the US civil war. Pictures abound of neo-nazi symbols, like a T-shirt celebrating Auschwitz.
These people expect no consequences, and they are probably right. They are still upset that Obama got into the White House.
Why is it that the left is allowed to express themselves through protest and civil disobedience but the right can't plant bombs and try to kidnap senators when they don't like the outcome of an election?
/s
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Whitmer_kidnapping_pl...
I also think the same thing needs to happen to the antifa flavored anarchists we were witness to throughout the summer. The endless attacks on businesses (big and small), federal buildings, lawlessness, looting, storming police precints, portland city council buildings, and general destruction should also result in as many felonies as possible.
Both groups "think" that sheer muscle and raw emotionalism in the street is a legitimate way to bully your preferred changes through. It's the same evil mindset and it needs to be called out and punished regardless of what flag they appear to operate under.
There is video of the rally prior where Trump, his son, Rudy Giuliani and others were inciting the mob to violence.
If you can’t see both sides of the coin, why play around at flipping it?
What we saw yesterday will be properly charged as entering a restricted building, violent entry and disorderly conduct on capitol grounds, in limited cases assault on a federal law enforcement officer, and in a single digit number of cases, second degree murder.
No charges will be laid for sedition, treason, or insurrection. Despite what you might read on CNN.
I would say the same thing for all the rioting that happened last year. Even though city blocks were illegally cordoned off and occupied for weeks. Just my prediction.
2. I disagree that those are proper charges. Context matters. A mob showing up at the capitol and smashing a few windows from the outside when nothing of note is happening is disorderly conduct.
A mob showing up at congress in the middle of a certification of an election, spurred on by cries that the election is stolen, and we need to do something, where members of the mob think they are participating in a revolution... Is a coup.
It's a naked attempt to prevent a lawful transfer of power. Just because it's a failed coup doesn't make it anything less than a coup.
1. Police stations were burned to the ground. Federal courthouse under sustained assault for months. $2 billion in property damage, thousands of police injured.
2. Those are what people have actually been charged with yesterday. Similarly, just because a BLM protestor is screaming kill all cops! while throwing rocks at a police car, it doesn’t make an attempted murder charge appropriate. Nor should everyone standing around chanting the same thing in the vicinity be charged with attempted murder.
All I ask is for a little logical consistency instead of the absurd political flame war.
He literally spoke to them right before the event, and insinuated they should take direct action, then waited for hours until he asked them to leave (while still claiming fraud and that their country was being stolen).
It's really annoying to have to point out this obvious context over and over to the people who are minimizing what happened.
The word “coup” doesn’t mean what you think it does. Interrupting a political process is not a coup. Protesting an election result is not a coup. Trespassing in the Capital building is not a coup. Posing for selfies and stealing Peliso’s lecturn is not a coup. And doing all 4 of these things at once is not a coup.
What it is? Mostly? Just extremely embarrassing for the people in power and the people who were supposed to protect them.
Calling it a coup mostly just covers for the raging embarrassment of being owned by Half Naked Viking Man.
All you did was drop your standards to the ground.
I hope you are proud of what you are defending.
I am against any form of violent protest, and as a matter of scale, I’m much more offended by the dozens killed, hundreds maimed, and billions of dollars of damages over the summer than what happened yesterday.
The framing of this particular riot as a coup is nothing but a duplicitous political flame war, and I see the politicization of this riot is a coup versus that riot is a mostly peaceful protest as a dangerous gaslighting of the American people.
How about we just prosecute everyone who breaks the law?
I said nothing of the sort and I don't know how you would interpret my words that way.
From the poster I responded to:
> The other kind of insurrectionists seem to also have little to fear from the law
My response was about the notion that protesters and rioters this summer were "insurrectionists", they were not. At least not as a general rule. Some of them, maybe, probably always are in political protests. But most of them were there to either create havoc (rioters) or protest for change to the way policing is conducted in the US (the protestors).
The people who went into the US Capitol Building on 6 January, 2021 were intending to prevent the carrying out of a legal process to certify the results of a democratic election and, in their minds, prevent the succession of the presidency. That makes them insurrectionists, not just protestors anymore, at least as regards the US Constitution and democratic process.
Besides, protestors and rioters in 2020 were prosecuted. And it's moronic or ignorant to say they weren't.
That some people were prosecuted doesn't negate the overall acceptance by the left of the violent activity as legitimate political activism because it was in support of particular favored political opinions. The very clear message was that as long as you were spouting the approved political mantras the violent activities were OK.
Attempting to discern who is or who isn't an "insurrectionist" is a distraction. Trespassing, breaking and entering, looting, vandalism, destruction of property, arson, assault are all crimes that should be prosecuted and not excused if you are committing them while having the correct political thoughts.
BTW, yesterday's opportunists have to be the saddest lot of "insurrectionists" I've ever seen. They seemed more interested in posting selfies than overthrowing anything. They should be mocked mercilessly and prosecuted vigorously.
No, they were threatening and intimidating lawmakers that were in session to try to manipulate the election. This is an enormous difference.
Also pipe bombs shouldn't be ok. Not sure why this is being ignored.
Sure, it is a difference -- as in not identical. But what do you conclude from that difference? That crimes that are less serious than this should be excused when committed as an act of protest but these crimes are different and should not be excused?
The assertion is that there is a double standard between these types of events. That some riots are excused and yesterday's are not. You seem to be asserting that there isn't a double standard because the events were different in the way that you described and so it sounds like you are saying the different treatment is justified. No one is excusing yesterday's rioters but you seem to be excusing previous incidents of rioting because they were different.
That would be a novel and very welcome thing in America.
You're suggesting that an arsonist, for example, should be treated differently if they burned a building down based on their political ideology?
How do you think the victims of these crimes are going to feel about your notion of "justice"?
I was commenting on your use of the term insurrection to describe what were, mostly, protests against police brutality (which were often met with acts of police brutality) and trying to establish that those actions were not the same as literally storming the Congress to prevent/delay the presidential election process (a much clearer act of insurrection, even if it was completely moronic and doomed from the start)>
If we take one step back, though, to what led to those protests this summer... we see police killing a black man for a minor offence.
Let's compare THAT police action with the police response to yesterday.
THAT'S America.
Still, they weren't insurrectionists. They weren't trying to put someone in power who lost the election. That's an important distinction. Maybe we shouldn't compare them at all, but if we're going to, what MAGA did was worse.
If Trump told them to this, which pretty much the entire media has been saying, then it then wouldn't it be entrapment to charge them?
That's the relevant point, not whether or not the cops removed the barrier. The cops knew that hundreds of protesters were planning in on breaking into the capital building to assassinate senators, and purposely didn't send anyone to stop them. The whole thing was literally planned in public on social media.
In the very scene where the girl got shot, if you look from a different angle, you see there were a dozen riot police behind them doing basically nothing [0]. I have yet to find a satisfying explanation for it, considering the protesters were literally smashing doors and windows. [1]
And, let's be frank here: people were protesting the police, and the police took it personally. They felt threatened.
I have personally witnessed police brutality in my community. Have you?
To say that the police felt threatened by protests aimed at the police, and that because of that, the police acted more brutally than they otherwise might have, is not a justification of police brutality. It is an explanation.
But sure, some short video of cops removing a 3' tall baby gate, circulating on social media without context, makes a great basis for suggesting that the police and these hooligans were collaborating.
Edit: this sibling comment has a better angle on the barricades, https://mobile.twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1347174957613199...
We don't know what went through that officer's mind. If you're standing watch and someone stands next to you and clicks a photo, is there anything you can and should do? Should you, as the officer, wrestle him to the ground, knowing there's a riotous mob right behind him?
But even if it's the case that the officer enthusiastically posed for the photo, it's probably best not to understand police like a monolithic entity operating perfect information, but rather as a group of heterogeneous actors working in a fog that limits their awareness. Otherwise, if you extend the "one officer did X therefore the motives of all officers are established" logic you quickly get really stupid contradictions. Over the summer, I saw several photos of officers kneeling in solidarity with BLM protesters -- I guess that means all police everywhere support the aims of the BLM movement now?
Probably not, because police aren't a monolith, and subsequent police actions contradict that solidarity. Likewise, police teargassing, manhandling, and shooting these other protesters also paints a more complex landscape than "one officer took a selfie, therefore they're all collaborating."
I'd have no concerns had that selfie pic been taken outside at the original rally, but once that group had broken into the Capitol building everyone there was present illegally. That is not the time to pose for pictures, even if the situation or orders are such that you're not able to make arrests or expel them.
During the protests, the police had no issue shoving people to the ground [1], but at the capitol it looked very different [2].
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PAVTZIM5ks
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0bX7j3xUB3A
[2] https://twitter.com/alafairburke/status/1346940066812276738
I believe there was a situation in Seattle, for example, where they broke into and destroyed a police station.
You must be blind.
Now you are aware.
I also don't recall BLM protesters threatening the leaders of our government in a real and material way.
Accepting your description of events for the moment -- is it your real, sincere belief, that this is the distinction that matters? I find it very hard to believe that, if these protests had been relocated around the corner to the Supreme Court -- or maybe to the DOJ building, or the Lincoln monument -- yet producing the exact same results, that you or anyone would just shrug their shoulders and write it off.
But that's what I'm reading from your comment. And if that's right, it's fucking insane.
Political violence is political violence, full stop. If your instinct in this moment is to rationalize how the violence going towards ends you support is different from that which goes towards other ends, put your phone away and seek help. You're part of the problem.
It's impossible for me to believe you are unaware of the circumstances surrounding her death.
Rand Paul says hi. [0]
Seems like Capitol police should have covered that in their first day of training.
Either way, my point is that it is that there isn’t evidence to support conspiracy theories that the capitol police were somehow in on it, which are circulating.
If he tells you to do something illegal and you do it, he’s an accomplice.
No, see for instance: https://theintercept.com/2015/03/16/howthefbicreatedaterrori...
> “This is not America,” a woman said to a small group, her voice shaking. She was crying, hysterical. “They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.”
* https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/capitol-trump-ins...
* https://archive.is/tZVFs (paywall)
See also John Wilkes Booth:
> He had spent so much time among like-minded people who hated Lincoln, and he had read so many accounts denouncing Lincoln as a tyrant bent on destroying the Constitution and "personal liberty" that he expected to be hailed as a hero.
* https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/134722988063564595...
(the Proud Boys, Nazis, right wing militias etc. who were involved have no such sympathy from me. but the people who showed up because they believed the election was stolen do--I cannot blame them for their credulity, and ignorance, our society has failed them. democracy does have to be defended, after all)
Biden got over 6 million more votes.
That's of course ignoring the fact that Republicans actually gained seats in the house, that Trump would have to overturn the results in multiple states, that said states have Republican leadership overseeing the election.
But here we are.
Fact is, at some point (now) your claims of "dispute" are no longer worth entertaining.
Literally have not had a single victory in court (but over 60 losses). These cases are being thrown out by Republican judges, judges appointed by Trump even. What is your standard of evidence?
The Constitution sets no statute of limitation under the First Amendment to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
> That's of course ignoring the fact that Republicans actually gained seats in the house,...
How often do you think this happens? That a president will gain seats in Congress and still lose re-election?
> Fact is, at some point (now) your claims of "dispute" are no longer worth entertaining.
Are you not entertained?
> Literally have not had a single victory in court (but over 60 losses). These cases are being thrown out by Republican judges, judges appointed by Trump even. What is your standard of evidence?
Almost all of these court cases were dismissed for procedure, jurisdiction or standing reasons and not for the merits of the case. Is that your evidence? [0]
But since you asked, here's an exhaustive compilation. [1]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related... [1]: https://hereistheevidence.com
>How often do you think this happens? That a president will gain seats in Congress and still lose re-election?
Given the non-linearity of the Electoral College, Trump's historically low approval numbers, the difference in geographic and institutional levels between Presidential and House elections, and over-the-top gerrymandering, I don't think that its so unlikely to be suspicious.
In the last 100 years, only four or five incumbents lost re-election, so empirically there just isn't enough data to establish a frequency (and even then, lots has changed, in the last 100 years, so who knows, right?). So what you really have is a mental model that says if a party wins in Congress they should win in the Presidential too. Well, in 1960, John Kennedy won, but the Democrats lost 21 House seats, and in 1992 Bill Clinton won the White House and the Dems lost 9 seats in the house, and in in 2000 George Bush won the White House and the Republican Party lost 2 seats in the House, in 2016 Donald Trump won, and the Republican Party lost six seats.
I might also mention all those Republican governors in blue states...
I know what you are going to say. That doesn't match the exact scenario where an incumbent lost but their party gained seat. But you need to justify why that particular scenario is relevantly different than ones that have already been known to have occurred.
It seems that you think I am disputing the outcome of the election. I am not. I am merely pointing out that different people see things differently, that differences in belief can be sincere, that acting on those beliefs can be honorable, even if those beliefs are mistaken. And finally, I made the point that Trump, his enablers in Congress and in his administration and in the media, perpetrated this lie and must be held accountable. For they turned what is a noble impulse--to defend democracy--into a threat to our democracy.
(I also wanted to distinguish these people from the organized extremists who appear to have been carrying out a planned operation with the probable intent to carry out violence)