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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

From a little light Googling I don't see that any police officers connected to the 100+ nights of rioting and protests in Portland killed themselves. Why would one event result in so many suicides while the other didn't?

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The police in Portland were never overrun. Over the course of those 100+ nights they maintained discipline, held their secure perimeters, and succeeded in their mission to keep rioters from breaching e.g. the federal courthouse or their station buildings. In contrast, officers at the Capitol were completely overrun, isolated, and brutally beaten by the mob without hope or expectation of rescue. Some have said that while lying on the ground taking blows, cut off from backup and effectively abandoned by leadership, they thought they were going to die then and there [0].

They also failed in their mission to protect and secure the Capitol. While blame for that rests mainly on their leaders, at least according what I've read in the IG and Senate reports, I imagine it still weighs heavy on each officer.

[0] https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/dc-police-officers-speak-o...

An event that only lasted a couple of hours is so much more dramatic than months long riots with the leadership throwing police line officers under the bus? Sufficiently so that there's literally an epidemic of suicides?

I'm not buying it.

Just look at the suicides if you aren't buying it....I won't pretend to know what those officers experienced. But when officers are saying they view the actions of their leaders as disgraceful, and talk about a feeling of abandonment, then just maybe we should believe what they say? Or continue to ignore their complaints.

Leader abandonment is hardly unique to that job. The conclusion of many Portland and similar officers was to retire, change job types, or change job locations - not suicide.

When facts don't add up I tend to conclude that there either are missing facts or some of the purported facts aren't actually facts.

"Do the research!", or how does it go?

I'm totally buying it. look at the scale of intensity. rioters are no fun. but they possess no existential risk to America, and withdrawl was a tactical option if needed. I'd also say few protest groups qualify as rioters. there is some rioting, some destruction of property, some physical force that did happen in the various month long "riots" ongoingly but for the most part at a very small scale. mostly I'd classify the groups as being protestors or a crowd, not rioters.

amassed violent insurrectionists threatening & overrunning a seated us congress, which you are sworn to protect, & where backup has not arrived, is a genuine horror the likes of which I never expected anyone in my lifetime would have faced.

I'm hearing violins reading this.

Because of the treason of storming a democratic process, and then lying about it? It makes you question who you're working for, when half of politicians are behaving in such shameful manner without reprecussions and justice. These police officers were physically assaulted and had no way of knowing wether they'd come out of it alive or dead. Some people were even searching for politicians to murder, and officers had no way to be able to guarantee for people's safety (ie. doing their real job). It was an extremely volatile and uncontrollable situation, a bet from the curtains behind, that could've gone either way.

Expectation is another attempt in a few years, as happened between 1930 and 1940.

I wish this warning is unnecessary!

Yes, January 6th is more like the Beer Hall Putsch. And we all know that that was only the beginning of Hitler's political career. Not sure if that is the right comparison, history is not repeating itself in that way. But having a failed, rather embarrassingly, coup attempt is no guarantee there won't be another one. Or a power grab abusing existing, legitimate democratic processes. The first time the NSDAP won was through a fully legitimate election. First order of the day was a new election that was everything but democratic, so.

> First order of the day was a new election that was everything but democratic, so.

We're seeing the groundwork for this being laid by various states passing "reforms" on voting intended to prevent another "fraudulent election" from taking place (intended to both normalize the narrative that such a fraud occurred and legitimize it when it occurs in the Trumpists' favor under these reforms) and attempts to repeal Section 230 protections and have the government directly control platform content (again, normalizing the narrative that social media platforms have been engaged in an organized criminal conspiracy of censorship and making it illegal for such platforms to combat Trumpist misinformation in the future.)

I don't think Trump has a chance of being elected again - he's burned too many bridges even with his own base after the insurrection by not pardoning the conspirators - but it's entirely likely someone else in the family or another, more charismatic Trumpist will step in and succeed where Trump failed.

History doesn't repeat but it does rhyme.

It's the normal people who think that Trump has failed. The world of savages can see this differently. Who else was able to attack the Capitol and survive two impeachments? Who else was able to f*ck the US political system so hard? How he has failed if he is enjoying the life after all that (while others are committing suicides)? He is a very decent chieftain for them.

They just don't want to touch the former president role. You can only lose and face destruction with people like that. It's about dragging down everyone. To be even loved for their demise, is just top of dominion.

Fox News et al way way way way over blew what actually happened in Portland. There were a few incidents (which Fox News blew up into a full scale war), but overall it was very peaceful.

The biggest problem in Portland was not the protesters or the police, it was the anonymous federal troops that trump sent to stir up trouble, against the demands of the Portland and Oregon governments that they leave. I put 99% of the trouble in Portland at the feet of Trumps SS troops.

That, my friend, is the primary difference between protest and insurrection. Protestors are trying to get their voices heard by the system, insurrectionists are trying to thwart the system itself.

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