tetrometal

I owe you an apology. I was sure I had posted the article referencing his conclusions video, but I did not, and I ended up wasting your time and compounding my error with an unfounded accusation. That was pretty egregious and rude, and I'm sorry about that.

If you're still inclined, here's his conclusion video. The summary includes links to various sections within the admittedly lengthy video, if it helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA

Kamala Harris literally paid for their defense.

Entire books were written in their defense, one infamous title being "In defense of looting".

MSM talking heads were besides themselves defending the rioters. For months!

> 100% of the people who invaded the US Capitol were rioters.

This is so blatantly twisted that I am forced to believe you're being intentionally deceptive. Everyone knows a tiny fraction of the protesters went into the capitol building.

True. It's also true that he told them to protest peacefully BEFORE the riot as well.

"I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard."

Frankly I find your dishonesty unacceptable.

It's crazy to me that you think the media should make that decision for us instead of just presenting the facts.

You believe Trump was making some kind of insurrection suggestion with his invitation to a rally in the capital. I don't. You think there's something between the lines of his words, but that's just speculation. If you're going to make a claim so grand as the sitting president was inciting insurrection, you need more than speculation.

My honest opinion is that Trump wanted a BIG rally to demonstrate that he had a lot of support to make the idea that he lost to Biden seem absurd. He used this reasoning over and over again, even in his call with the GA SoS.

Occam's Razor makes that far easier to believe than that he wanted people to take over the capitol building. Beyond just sounding like crazed conspiracy, it doesn't even make any sense to do. What is he gonna do with a building? Like, what if they managed to take congresspeople or senators hostage? How in the world would that lead to maintaining his hold on power?

Sorry, it just sounds like a bunch of conspiratorial claptrap to me, along the lines of the stuff I hear from the right with their Q and Lin Wood nonsense. The crazy thing is that it's become institutionalized on the left in the MSM. It's bonkers.

Matt Braynard's evidence was not seen in court.

It's attitudes represented by this blithe dismissal of a compelling argument that will continue to divide the nation. I guess you think you're going to get something out of it, but this is a scenario that nobody wins.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

You're comparing apples and oranges. You're comparing the results of the former (which you have painted in an incredibly rosy light) to the potential outcomes of the latter.

If we look at the potential outcomes of the BLM/Antifa riots, there's no reason to believe that they couldn't have destroyed our democracy.

Or, if we compare the actual outcomes, it's not quite as rosy for your apparently preferred riots: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25706651

I suspect you understand that you are doing this, and that you are comfortable with the charade. More and more people are beginning to see through the kind of spin you and others present, however, and are coming to resent you powerfully for it.

I don't understand why you think I'm standing up for any of them.

I thought the savior figure was the guy with horns and a fur cape prancing about on the dais?

Glad they got him. We were THIS close to the end of the US, I tell ya'.

Not really. The vast majority were thrown out on procedural grounds.

The left completely controls the MSM at this point. It's unsurprising that large swathes of officials, including judges, are unwilling to investigate their narrative for fear of being branded and extremist of one flavor or another. The right knows this, and so doesn't trust outcomes that aren't transparent. The left knows this too, but has no incentive to correct it, in spite of the damage it's going to cause to our democracy.

I have the feeling we're about to find out in the US precisely how the left can go too far, and how Americans respond to it.

You sure about that? How many cases were thrown out on their merits vs. procedural grounds?

> Another side told people that their country was being stolen from them and only they could stop it before telling them to go to the capital.

Was it or wasn't it being stolen? Do you have a debunking of Matt Braynard's argument? [1]

I presume not, since one hasn't been presented, because the evidence hasn't been examined or litigated, which is why hundreds of thousands of people went to the capital.

What should the American voter do if they believe there's a chance that their election was unfair? Sit it out? Would you?

Stop spreading the "very fine people" misinformation.

[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...

[2] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2019/03/21/trump_...

> Show the receipts that the election was stolen before you decide to broadcast that claim to millions.

Again, look at Matt Braynard's work. It's compelling, and has been completely ignored. [1] The right isn't pissed because they think they know fraud happened, they're pissed because the evidence hasn't been examined.

> Trump's legal team had the chance to do that in court dozens of times

False. Trump's legal team brought a handful of cases before the courts, most of which were thrown out on procedural grounds without looking at the merit, which again is the reason the right is rightfully pissed.

Many more cases were presented to the courts by third parties and thrown out. Some because they were batshit, some on procedural grounds, very few on their merits. The media has been presenting those cases as "Trump's cases being thrown out" in order to make him appear incompetent, but that is just more spin. That you bought into, apparently.

> attempted to kidnap and execute the executive line of succession.

More speculation presented as assertion.

[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...

I see it's graduated from "mostly peaceful" to "overwhelmingly peaceful". The craziest part of your spin is that by applying it, you're greatly increasing the odds of actually getting it.

You're narrowing the criteria to match this specific event and asking for an exact replica the left, of which there are none. We see through your rhetoric.

Last summer was replete with examples of violence from the left. Far more deadly and destructive than seen at the capitol building riot.

You're just making assertions and hoping that the zeitgeist continues to agree with you.

It's easy for the winning side to trot out a bunch of people that support their position (and if you try suggesting R's are on the same side as Trump supporters, then you're more divorced from reality than I feared). Trump supporters don't care. They want specific concerns addressed.

And frankly, they should be. Every election in a bona fide democracy should be characterized by the winning side steel manning the losing side's objections and addressing them one-by-one until the fraction of the population continuing to object is minuscule enough to ignore.

That didn't happen. Instead objectors got people they didn't trust trotted out before them declaring "There's NO evidence of election fraud" (demonstrably false, there's evidence of election fraud in every election), stonewalling, and running out the clock.

They should have steel-manned and addressed in a very public and forthcoming, unspun manner the more compelling arguments presented. Matt Braynard's [1] work, for example, should have been litigated to hell and back.

Undergoing these challenges is critical to maintaining democracy, but the left was hell-bent on painting a narrative that pursuing election transparency in 2020 (not 2016, mind you; they had quite a different take then when they were mucking with the electoral college themselves [2]) was somehow antidemocratic because all questions had been settled by the people only they were permitted to declare trustworthy.

So what we have now is a huge fraction of the population that feel the election has been stolen:

"Sixty-one percent (61%) of Republicans say it’s Very Likely the Democrats stole the election, but just as many Democrats (61%) say it’s Not At All Likely. Among unaffiliateds, 29% feel it’s a stolen election; 45% do not." [3]

I don't have much of a dog in this fight. I'm about as pure a libertarian/ancap as you can find. I leaned slightly Trump because I despise war, but I would have been just as happy with Biden and a republican senate. I'm telling you with open eyes (the same eyes I use to attempt to discredit the Q and Lin Wood madness on the right) that you have bought into a false narrative sold to you by the leftist media. You are nowhere in the vicinity of "woke". You are stuck in a bubble that decries other bubbles and you don't even realize it. Worse, it's the most powerful bubble that is causing the most damage to society. It is YOUR bubble that is causing the most damage to democracy in this country.

[1] https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2020/11/matt_braynards_...

[2] https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/12/17/how-democrats-attempt...

[3] https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/ele...

They did reach the floor. Some topless dude with horns and a fur cape pranced about the dais.

And guess what? We're fine.

You're pulling together a handful of facts from a massive event composed of trillions of facts and weaving them into a conspiracy. It was what it appeared to be. A rally that got out of hand.

They are obviously pointing out the hypocrisy and bias with which the left spins narratives.

Here's a pointed question for you: Which was worse and by what measure, the BLM/Antifa riots of last year or the capitol building riot?

You literally responded to zero words in the parent's comment.

This is precisely the expertly spun narrative I can watch on CNN or MSNBC. It's wonderfully constructed, people get paid a lot to do it. It's also just a lie. To fully half of the American population, and a rapidly growing proportion, this is a bald-faced lie.

So please, hold the speculative narrative. Don't repeat talking heads to me. Show receipts. Demonstrate with evidence that Trump tried to get his rally to invade the freaking capitol building.

In the meantime, respond to the rest of the arguments being represented here. You can't conveniently ignore the much worse riots that took place last summer as you try to spin your crazed narrative, we see through all of this now.

> The fact remains that the President gathered tens of thousands of people and, with a torrent of lies, weaponized them into an attack on the United States. Just because it failed doesn't make it any less grave of a crime.

I cannot fathom why you keep saying this. Please present some evidence.

If he's discussing Matt Braynard's data, that data doesn't have strong indications of dead people voting being an issue.

It does present a compelling argument that really needs to be addressed sooner than later, however. The margins of the questionable statistics presented are well beyond the margin of victory.

I think the truth will eventually come out. I HOPE that those claiming sufficient fraud to effect the election are dead wrong. The alternative would be a nightmare. That's why the media and big tech shouldn't have buried their head in the sand.

"Every single case got struck down by judges" is not a new argument to my ears. Do you think most of those judges heard actual evidence, or were throwing cases out on procedural grounds? Have you considered that question?

Has Matt Braynard's work been heard and responded to?

What are the responses to these?

https://spectator.us/reasons-why-the-2020-presidential-elect...

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-m...

Look at this "fact check", does it seem reasonable to you? https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-...

Here's a response to it: https://gellerreport.com/2020/12/no-the-georgia-vote-countin...

I think 90% of all these concerns are likely to be dismisable. But they haven't even been examined, and I have a deep and abiding fear of the remaining 10% actually having merit.

"This company cannot be brought to heel quickly enough."

That you can say that and not think of yourself as authoritarian is the reason the US is so divided right now.

Quote the wording you think Trump used to organize an insurrection.

Juxtapose that with the wording you would be okay with him using to organize a protest.

Then try to tell me that the difference between them is "insurrection".

This spin leaves me incredulous. How does Trump inviting a protest equate to "inciting treason and sedition"? Y'all are bonkers.

No, your argument requires that we ignore the fact that good cases may take time to develop.

Consider the Voter Integrity Fund by Matt Braynard. It's one of the more convincing arguments I've heard to date, and involved making many thousands of phone calls, analyzing the resulting data, generating reports, and collecting sworn testimony. All that didn't happen overnight, and they didn't begin immediately after the election.

There are many cases being presented in the courts, by many plaintiffs. I'd be surprised if there weren't some frivolous ones in there. That doesn't mean they all are, and we can't know until they are presented. If your argument is simply "No good case has been made yet, therefore no good case can be made," well, I don't think anyone with sound reasoning skills will agree with that.

I think the angst in the public sphere is much, much deeper than some politician "rallying their base".

My take is that the federal government has accrued far, far more power than was ever intended. The entire population of the US has to fight over who is in charge at the federal level in order to live their lives the way they would like.

The founders had the right idea - a federation of states with a variety of laws that the people could choose among, glued together by a weak federal government.