Perhaps I am of the minority opinion, but I damn sure was never worried about a bunch of selfie-taking unarmed rednecks destroying the United States of America. My faith in this country goes a little deeper than that.
This could’ve gotten way uglier and who knows what the ramifications would be. Let’s not fixate on the selfies.
If all it takes for your movement to attempt to kidnap elected officials or disrupt transfer of power is a few undercover agents nudging along, your movement is a huge problem.
>call the press the “enemy of the free state.”
Criticism of media is terrorism?
>kidnap elected officials
That group was comprised almost entirely of undercover agents along with a couple of mentally ill people. The FBI orchestrated the entire thing.
>disrupt transfer of power
Again, a valid target for protest.
Feel free to disrupt traffic and make a scene elsewhere.
> Feel free to disrupt traffic and make a scene elsewhere.
Yes, disrupt the worker bees, not the queen.
Edit: it does seem strange that you wouldn't include some sort of disclaimer in this convo about your employer's stake in "counter-terrorism".
If it takes more agents then perpetrators to pull off your sting, and if the agents conceptualized, planned, financed, managed the operation, and participated in it…
Well, let’s just say I am going to be the wrong person to sit on your jury if you want a conviction.
“Armed” folks armed with what? Yeah, I’m pretty sure the most powerful nation ever to occupy the earth wasn’t going to fall to a bunch of pitchfork wielding social media posting hayseeds demanding to have Frankenstein’s monster handed over to them.
Note that most crimes are still crimes even if you suck at committing them.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/03/04/fac...
Let’s agree that at least a thousand people breached the capitol. So at least 99.96% of the crowed were angry pitchfork waving villagers and .04% were some dorky Van Helsing wannabes.
In what world does that constitute a threat to topple to most powerful country ever to exist on this earth? It’s not.
We simply don’t really know what would’ve happened if e.g. the ballots were destroyed. They would’ve had to get duplicate ballots from the states. Would all the state election boards have stuck with their previous results now seeing an apparent opportunity to install their leader and feeling galvanized by the “fraud” of vote-by-mail?
It’s interesting how many people will complain about clear bureaucratic failure in basic day-to-day tasks like the DMV, and then imagine that the most complex bureaucracy in history is held together by patriot power and not, you know, bureaucracy, with all of its strengths and vulnerabilities.
If you want to shift the conversation to election integrity, that’s fine…but that was actually the whole point of the demonstrations. You have one group that felt that they had legitimate concerns about the election’s integrity. The other side downplayed those concerns, does not want to improve election integrity, and actually wants to erode it further.
I am pretty sure that if you want the bulk of America to feel that elections have integrity you should make it a priority and not downplay concerns just because your candidate won and I apply that standard to both parties since both are guilty over the last few election cycles.
Yes, if that succeeded, it would’ve harmed the US.
In any case, your suggestion that the democrats “actually want to erode [election integrity] further” reveals a lot.
It might reveal that I am not happy with the political party that once upon a time were liberal and good but are now just filled with power hungry intolerant authoritarians. At least the republicans don’t pretend that they are good people.
Those "unarmed rednecks" were able to do something not even the various armies of the Confederacy couldn't: get inside the capitol.
People are not terrified enough, because this group of people saw they could do it and I have a strong feeling they will try again.
It's not meant to be a secure building that takes an army to get into.
In what way is a group of proles walking around, taking selfies, and breaking some glass comparable?
In that sense, the capitol attack was comparable to your whataboutist example.
Whataboutism increasingly seems to be used as a thought-terminating buzzword by people who want double standards.
Some rednecks stopping by arent going to topple anything
“But what if…” is a pointless exercise because the past has already proven that those things didn’t happen and is just a mechanism for a bunch of people who desire authoritarianism in this country to justify making a free people less free.