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Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

When January 6 happened, it was a shock.

Not to me, and not to a lot of others. We'd been expecting it for quite some time. If anything was shocking to me, it's that there wasn't more of it, and worse.

Fortunately, most of the loudest and most paranoid people are also lazy. It's easy and risk-free to spread conspiracy theories on the Internet. Only the .0001% of them with the most free time and least sense showed up that day -- and then only because it was incompetently organized.

There will be better organizers and less stupid leaders coming. That's not even close to over. So don't be shocked next time.

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What was shocking to me was how brutal but stupid it was. The party of the second amendment completely pussed out on bringing guns to a coup and it was a bunch of fat old dumbfucks bashing the police with flags and bats. I was shocked that the capitol police only shot one person.

I'll admit to only paying a small amount of attention to that whole thing, but from the little that did filter in, brutal seems like a strange word for it.

What words do you have left for events where numerous people are intentionally killed (shot, beheaded, blown up, tortured, etc) when you use brutal for this one?

More than one thing can be brutal at the same time.

There's video of people being beaten, crushed in doors, etc. That's brutal. That there's more brutal stuff out there doesn't mean it's not brutal.

I don't know.

We're in a thread about Nazi Germany. I think it really degrades our ability to communicate effectively when you use the same words to talk about that and 1/6.

Was the holocaust just "more brutal" than 1/6? Of course not. They're in completely different universes, and one of those things pretty much set the standard for brutal.

It's a trend that jumps out at me. People reach for the strongest adjectives by default. It seems like peoples scales just aren't calibrated.

I think the sibling comment might be onto something, maybe there was a missing word there.

You could argue the Holocaust was beyond brutal, and 1/6 is certainly not of the same magnitude, but the Holocaust's existence doesn't mean describing a beating as "brutal" is inappropriate. It's pretty standard usage.

People get brutally attacked on a daily basis. Genocide is a bit less common.

I think it actually would be inappropriate (or at least more than a little inaccurate) to describe a beating as brutal when genocide has already been brought into the conversation. Talking about a beating on its own, brutal could absolutely be appropriate.

It's as if we have a scale from 0 to 10, where each number maps to an adjective. To me, brutal is towards the end of that scale. Everyone seems to have forgotten how to use the words on the 3 to 7 range.

OK, what other words are we not permitted to use to describe something once the Holocaust has been mentioned? Am I allowed to describe something as "bad"?

On the contrary, bad seems pretty appropriate, because there are words that mean "worse than bad". "The worst" would be an example of something that would not be appropriate, unless it is actually worse than the holocaust. To me, brutal is basically a superlative.

I have the same reaction when I see people describe something as "extremely x". I don't often see things described as "extremely" whatever and think, "yep this person has a decent grasp on reality". This may just be something I'm sensitive to for whatever reason.

I'm guessing there's a word missing: "What was shocking to me was NOT how brutal but stupid it was."

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