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Comment by milkrocks | Hacker News Reader

Which group caused 3 Billion in damages this past summer? I'll wait

It's not a question of property damage, this is the great foretold National Security Emergency. We've spent twenty years giving up our privacy for this.

If you want to bring up costs, it's only fair to call into question the damage to the US reputation internationally. Having this type of security threat on a national scale is terrible for trade and strategic relations. I'm a Canadian, I don't trust my closest neighbour right now. That's an entirely incalculable cost.

Which group tried to murder members of Congress and fundamentally alter or stop our constitutional process because they were mad they didn’t get they’re way? Who is threatening to have armed rallies to finish the job?

Please, tell me why refusing to follow the constitution or ending the country is on par with a Target being burned down. I’ll wait.

I'd be careful with us pretending one of these groups is less violent or more dangerous than the other. The right just got done making that same logical mistake. It's a long way to the bottom when you claim the high ground.

Why the false equivalency? BLM's stated goal is to end police oppression of people of color. White Nationalists' stated goal is to "cleanse" the country by force.

I think _that's_ the false equivalency right there. The right does the exact same thing, only it looks something like this...

> "Why the false equivalency? Trump's stated goal is to bring back jobs and protect America. BLM's stated goal is Marxism and the destruction of the western nuclear family."

Rubber and glue FTW, eh?

A "left-wing activist" actually shot the house majority whip in 2017, and he was actively trying to assassinate other republican politicians as well. [0]

I'll never vote for another republican for as long as Trumpism remains a part of the party, but we can't pretend that only one side has been radicalized to the point of violence.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_sh...

To be fair, a difference here is that it was one sole person committing that act, and they generally were not paraded around as heroes by people of similar political leaning. One-off stuff like that happens all the time and is not necessarily indicative of any kind of trend.

> I'll never vote for another republican for as long as Trumpism remains a part of the party

As someone who used to vote for the occasional republican, neither can I. In fact, as far as I am concerned the republican brand is now unsalvageable and any sane conservative would have to be running under a different label since I can't trust the reasoning of anyone who'd run under that one anymore.

I agree that the lone wolf nature of the attack makes a difference, but if we are going to paint other lone wolf shooters as products of their political beliefs then we have to apply the same standard in this case.

>they generally were not paraded around as heroes by people of similar political leaning

I would invite you to look at discussions of the incident on reddit, it might change your mind. That said, I agree that the celebration of politically motivated violence is despicable, and the unwillingness of some the members and supporters of the republican party to condemn the recent riot is a terrible mistake.

My main goal with my first comment was to remind everyone that painting the people we have political disagreements with as irredeemable monsters can drive people from both sides to violence.

I'd also like to thank you for taking the time to reply instead of downvoting and moving on, this is a tough subject and I don't think my hasty 1st comment was sufficient to the task.

I don't want to defend that. I want to instead ask, what would the damage be if members of Congress were killed? I think the long-term damage would be much, much worse.

Not the "group" you're thinking of. Groups exist along a spectrum of cohesiveness, and a political party and/or political cult centered around one individual, is several orders of magnitude more cohesive than grassroots social movements with loosely affiliated themes, during whose protests some unaffiliated rioters and looters caused the majority of the damage. In effect, you're comparing incidental property damage to a calculated, targeted, and rallied-for/single-leader-inspired insurrection; it's like comparing storm damage to arsonists.

And how do I know it wasn't just random unaffiliated violent individuals causing most of the damage during the insurrection? Because they freaking wore matching hats and chanted Trump slogans...

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