Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency. Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.
Do you realize that numerous times throughout history people have successfully killed the actual president and it didn't end democracy?
What these people did was a serious crime and it should absolutely be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but no it was never going to destroy the country or end democracy. This is hyperbole people are using to grab and consolidate power.
Democracy is not a single person that can be killed and taken over. It's all of us acting in concert to uphold those values. It doesn't end by this person or that person being killed, it ends by all of us collectively agreeing to give up the values that make it work. That's the real threat here.
I'm no historian, so was there ever a time the killing was instigated by a sitting politician who then was not punished? (Yes, the Senate has yet to decide, but chances are they won't vote for removal or banning from office).
Because politicians trying to have their political opponents harmed or killed is basically all one needs to have fake democracy.
I don't follow this logic. Assume for the sake of argument that politician A attempts to have politician B killed (also not a historian, but I feel there has to be at least one instance of this happening somewhere, at some point in US history). Based on this event, we now conclude that the entire democracy is fake? How? All of the votes for all other politicians are now invalid? The electoral process (largely out of the control of any single politician) just ... goes away? How do you figure? What's the cause and effect mechanism there?
The vice president presides over the counting of electoral college votes. Tradition says this role is largely ceremonial. Trump disagrees. What would a conservative Supreme Court, with 3 justices appointed by Trump, say about this?
What were to happen if the VP was murdered by a mob while the president is arguing in bad faith that he won the election and the VP is needed to certify the true winner?
Can the president pro tempore take the place of the VP in counting votes? We would likely be back in the Supreme Court to decide. What if they say only the VP can serve this role? Would Trump and Congress be able to agree on a new VP?
If no VP is in place, would the election end up in the House? Would they have time to vote before 1/20? Who would they vote for?
If we don't have a clear president by 1/20, the line of succession passes to the speaker of the House. What happens if she was murdered too? Would the House vote on a new speaker quick enough or would the line of succession go to the 4th person, the president pro tempore of the Senate?
Would this create perverse incentives for the the president pro tempore to reject EC votes if the Supreme Court decided in his favor several steps back in this hypothetical?
There are obviously a lot of hypotheticals there, but what they are meant to show is there are a lot of ways for this to go wrong and for the next president to be in doubt. Do you see how this is bad for a healthy democracy? Would you be confident that Trump would sit idly by and wait for this situation to play out without putting his fingers on the scale, inciting more violence, or potentially something even more drastic?
Can you point to a place where he specifically encouraged trespassing or violence in a way that is more egregious than the ways in which various Congresspeople encouraged violence in Kenosha or Minneapolis?
> Can you point to a place where he specifically encouraged trespassing or violence in a way that is more egregious than the ways in which various Congresspeople encouraged violence in Kenosha or Minneapolis?
This seems like a weird statement to me. Does it matter what other Congresspeople said or not said? I had a quick read of the speech you linked. Its clear that the whole speech is priming the crowd that their vote has been stolen, and that they need to go their and fight for their votes.
> Now, it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down, and I’ll be there with you, we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down.
> Anyone you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them.
> Because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength and you have to be strong. We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing and only count the electors who have been lawfully slated, lawfully slated.
> I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard.
This bit right here is clearly indicating that the people need to walk to the Capitol, to "confront" the egregious assault, to show strength, to "not going to be cheering so much for some of them". Granted yes, he also does state that they will be marching over "peacefully" and "patriotically" but spending paragraphs telling an audience that their votes are stolen, and they must fight those who stole their vote and then throwing in a few words about peacefully doesn't absolve you when that mob does basically what you said.
Near the end :
> And we fight. We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.
> So we’re going to, we’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue. I love Pennsylvania Avenue. And we’re going to the Capitol, and we’re going to try and give.
Again, clearly indicating that they need to go to the Capitol, to "fight like hell" and ensure that Republicans vote in a certain way. I think anyone reading between the lines can clearly see how a group of people who believe this man quite a bit would get an indication that they need to walk to and into the Capitol.
Why don't then tell us which nationality you are from?
I thought the disclaimer would help to ensure that I don't accused of being a dem or rep or whatever else.
and then I read the speech, and quoted exactly what was "inciting" or could be considered such.
I am sorry if I offended you.
https://www.justsecurity.org/74138/incitement-timeline-year-...
https://www.brandeis.edu/now/2021/january/trump-language-cap...
That being said, the speech itself certainly didn't help.
> they rigged an election.
> They rigged it like they’ve never rigged an election before.
> All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical left Democrats
> You don’t concede when there’s theft involved.
> We will not take it any more
> We will not let them silence your voices.
> Although with this administration, if this happens, it could happen. You’ll see some really bad things happen. They’ll knock out Lincoln too, by the way.
> we’re going to have somebody in there that should not be in there and our country will be destroyed
> some of these guys. They’re out there fighting the House. Guys are fighting, but it’s incredible
> Democrats attempted the most brazen and outrageous election theft. There’s never been anything like this.
> We’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them because you’ll never take back our country with weakness. You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.
> We have come to demand that Congress do the right thing
> Our country has been under siege for a long time
> You will have an illegitimate president, that’s what you’ll have. And we can’t let that happen.
Probably a waste of my effort, but it's quite disingenuous to claim that not saying the word "trespass" in this speech after years of messaging that the Democrats are the enemy of Trump and Trump's followers proves it wasn't yet another piece of incitement. He absolutely encouraged "fighting." So either you believe he's a complete imbecile who does not understand what happens if you get a bunch of armed citizens to believe their favorite rights will be lost if they allow a fraudulent election of a Democratic President to come to fruition, or you understand that he was intentional with his language over time.
Don't forget that Alexander Hamilton was fatally shot in a duel with then Vice President Aaron Burr in 1804 [0].
> Few affairs of honor actually resulted in deaths, and the nation was outraged by the killing of a man as eminent as Alexander Hamilton. Charged with murder, Burr, still vice president, returned to Washington, D.C., where he finished his term immune from prosecution.
[0]: https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/burr-slays-hamil...
The danger is unreal not because it failed, but because it was obviously going to fail. We're talking about a bunch of delusional LARPers. If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country's government, that's insurrection. If it's the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much.
Note that the factual crimes are already plenty bad--they don't need to be exaggerated.
> Some members of the mob were actively looking to kill the people who were 2nd and 3rd in line for the presidency
There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists.
> Let's not pretend that there was zero danger to democracy.
There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
What are you basing the obviousness of the failure on? The mob was seemingly a few dozen feet away from numerous politicians with the only thigs between them being a barricaded door and seemingly less than a half dozen security people.
>There were murderers and arsonists at BLM riots as well; that doesn't impugn the legitimate protesters. Similarly, these few actual insurrectionists don't make the MAGA trespassers, rioters, even murderers into insurrectionists.
How many murders were committed by the millions of BLM protester in the dozens of cities they protested in over the months they protested? Because these thousands of people in DC were able to murder one and get multiple of their own killed? The violence rate of the two isn't comparable.
>There is a danger to our democracy in that a sitting president undermining democracy by spreading lies about election fraud. More generally, the media and tech companies are deliberately cultivating division and mistrust among the American people. These are real, credible dangers to democracy. The MAGA LARPers were not a credible threat to our democracy.
What happened on 1/6 was a direct result of those first two. This is part of the danger to democracy manifesting itself.
Being 1 door away from where they were hiding seems a pretty close call imo
They came very close to having members in the hands of the mob; I think you very much overestimate what was required for this to succeed. Even if the mob itself was disavowed, simply getting a presiding officer more that would be more sympathetic to the President’s interests int he circumstances (which probably would have taken at least one more removal than “Hang Mike Pence”, but may not have been impractical) would potentially have provided a sufficient pretext for a process in which the Congress would have ended up declaring Trump the winner.
But even if it was “obviously going to fail”, that doesn’t make it not-dangerous (even if the intended violence didn’t have the intended political effects, it still would have been horrific) or not-insurrection.
> If some foreign intelligence unit tries and fails to overthrow your country’s government, that’s insurrection.
No, its a (covert) invasion.
> If it’s the doofus who stole the podium or the guy with face paint and a horned fur hat, not so much.
How about if it is the retired Air Force Lt. Col. with zip ties who was directing action, including efforts at intelligence gathering on members, in the Senate chamber?
Just because the unusual outfits get disproportionate media attention doesn’t mean they were the dominant factor in the insurrection.
There were lots of LARPers. There were also some groups moving in organised fashion with less expensive and more useful equipment. There were people with bombs. There were some people ready to inflict harm on LE and luckily they didn't carry on to other people.
It was not a homogeneous group with same ideas and goals. That idea is just distracting from what happened.
I am interested in reading other people's thoughtfully formed opinions. Using words like "lots of" without clarifying further seems likely to lead to people talking past each other. That's why I commented.
This 5 deaths stat is one of the most mealy mouthed details being repeated. 1 police officer was killed, 1 rioter was killed. 2 people died of health related issues (1 stroke, 1 heart attack) while standing around. 1 died in the press of the crowd when people started panicking.
2 deaths were medical issues. 1 was a sad accident. 1 was a tragedy of someone being killed in the line of duty, and 1 was a trespasser paying the price for their actions. Playing it up like 5 innocent people were murdered by violent rioters is disrespectful to the one person who actually was, and is blatant politically motivated propaganda.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-bu...
Because Puerto Rico already had the Ley de la Mordaza since 1948. Also Pedro Albizu Campos had his pardoned revoked.
With that being said, you cannot take it lightly. The FBI should take it very seriously. We all remember Timothy Mcveigh. I really hope the next few weeks will pass quietly.
It also seems to me that "race" isn't the only pertinent difference with respect to the differing police response between the two riots. Even if the police simply leaned right, that would provide a non-racial explanation. Of course, we can't have a politicized police force, but that's a non-racial explanation. Similarly, BLM spent the entire summer campaigning aggressively against the police (whether or not their campaign was righteous is immaterial for this conversation) while MAGA was consistently "Back The Blue" right up until the Capitol Hill riots. Again, it's not acceptable for police to act on such biases, but it's a very different problem with a very different solution than a racial motive.
> Some people don't want peace, just wars.
Sadly, I agree. I get the distinct feeling that people want to crush their political opponents these days, and they're happy to use any post-facto reasoning to rationalize their anger, hatred, etc. It seems like we as a society no longer value peace, mercy, forgiveness, or grace; there is only vindictiveness masquerading as "justice".
https://acoup.blog/2021/01/15/miscellanea-insurrections-anci...
edit: to be clear, there were a number of people pictured and arrested carrying firearms.
Typical motte and bailey. “They bombed the Capitol building” except they actually didn’t.