I don’t think these people had or have any interest in being anonymous. They are standing up for what they believe in. A public display is an important part of this all, it’s part of their statement as Americans in America.
There is a youtube video of a young woman expressing her utter shock and dismay at being maced as she literally tried to storm congress and disrupt the national democratic process. It is amazing to watch, just for how weirdly naive and entitled she is while right up saying they were trying for a revolution. What the hell did you think was going to happen?
Reality comes at you fast.
Anyway, for another example of "they also didn't seem to understand it was serious," the quote from the feet-up-on-the-desk guy:
> "I'll probably be telling them this is what happened all the way to the D.C. jail," Mr. Barnett said.
He's glib about it the same way you might be about spending a night in the drunk tank after getting a little too crazy at Mardi Gras.
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/elizabeth-knoxville-onion-...
WTF...
It's not clear that you should bring such a mitigation with you, though, as that might help make the case that what you were doing that got you gassed was premeditated, which can up the seriousness of what you might be charged with and the potential penalties.
People are more shocked about the *reason* they stormed the Capitol than the violence. If women in pink hats stormed the Capitol during the Kavanaugh confirmation vote (well they did, but not in enough numbers to overwhelm security), the parties would be having polar opposite reactions. GOP saying it was a coup and democrats saying it was justified outrage.
These people don't realize they were pawns in Trump's bad faith attempt to steal the election. They believe they are doing the right thing. *That doesn't justify their actions, but it explains their actions.*
Ayers being famous for admitting he doesn’t regret setting the bomb. Instead of being labeled a terrorist, he was made a professor and launched a lot of the social justice movement in education.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/03/02/a-...
https://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/presidential-campaign...
So... to say counterproductive isn’t taking into account history and possibility. Ayers and Obama didn’t suffer from association to each other or this domestic terrorism.
Now, obviously, Trump Supporters (notice I didn’t say GOP) will find this to all have been counterproductive, agreed there in this specific case. My point about Ayers is that this is all a matter of who writes the history.
It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency or that Ayers in any way influenced Obama to regard violence as the correct path for social change.
In fact, considering the ridiculous guilt-by-association he was subject to, it's more accurate to say Obama became president despite that limited connection, not because of it.
In short, the overblown Ayers-Obama link doesn't contradict my statement regarding peaceful protest.
I wasn’t trying to refute your point. Only offering a recent historical perspective where an actual terrorist organization was considered as... not that. Where the perspective is set by who is in charge.
>It's a far stretch to even imply the highly limited interactions between Ayers and Obama were in some way responsible for his rise to the presidency
I also didn’t imply that at all.
Perhaps you are just too used to arguing with people on the internet?
There are many people who stand up for what they belive in. What is clear, to me at least, is a group of people that belive they are protected from their actions because of what they are or what the belive in
They think of themselves as patriots, as John Wilkes Booth did:
> 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.
> Instead he was stunned to learn that he was being hunted down like a beast, while Lincoln was held up throughout much of the nation as a martyred saint.
> Source for this: The bibliography in my biography of Lincoln.
* https://twitter.com/Teri_Kanefield/status/134722988063564595...
> “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://archive.is/tZVFs (for paywall)
* https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/capitol-trump-ins...