Excuses Why the FBI Failed Jan 6 2021 Capitol Raid
grid.news
grid.news
It turns out that everyone knew who would be there, what weapons they would have and their intentions. The only thing they got wrong AFAIK was the clothing. The militia that usually wear Hawaiian shirts were in plain clothes but they were still spotted instantly. Here is a documentary that covers this fairly well and everything leading up to it. [1] No covert communications. The militias were using public podcasts and social media sites to communicate and coordinate with one another and people were using machine learning to predict their actions quite accurately.
The bit I don't quite understand is why the Whitehouse had only a normal contingent of police in standard gear. These police were barely equipped to deal with a black Friday sale at Walmart much less a massive mob with some militia stirring them up.
It was both. Some of the groups involved were clearly taking it more seriously than others, even if none of them were really up to the task. Intent still matters.
And the modern interpretation of the Second Amendment would certainly consider one or more of them well-organized militias, once they're at the point of discussing tactics on Discord and color-coordinating their wardrobes.
If the IRA were this disorganised there would be no northern-Ireland issues, if the taliban were this disorganised they wouldn't have overthrown Afghanistan (again). By counter if 4chan is to be taken as seriously as the above we'd be living in a hell hole run by reactionary keyboard warriors.
Yes intent matters at the point of conviction, but frankly pretending people are more of a threat than they are paradoxically emboldens them and makes it so. Please don't give these people any more credit than they deserve.
Let's also pretend that same community is often in the mis-information business, as it pairs well with the being proactive. That is, get the ball rolling and then stay out in front of it with (misinformation) spin.
Was 6 Jan ugly? Sure. Are there entities who would prefer we focus on that ugliness, and not what led to it, context, failures, etc.? Yes, of course that's fact as well.