6 ms·

This was my exact initial reaction. However, suppose that Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Barack Obama had declined to attend the inauguration of there predecess

• um_ya 6y ago
  Perhaps Trump supporters should have burnt down cities and destroyed businesses. Apparently everyone is okay with that, but it's "unacceptable" to protest and occupy the capital in protest. I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone.
  • objectivetruth 6y ago
    There are, in fact, many significant differences between "burning down a Burger King franchise" and "storming a country's legislature with the intent to depose and possibly execute elected officials."
  • jhardy54 6y ago
    > I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone. It's called an echo chamber, and you should try to escape it if you can.
    • alentist 6y ago
      So should you.
      • jhardy54 6y ago
        "no u" It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Good luck.
        • alentist 6y ago
          > "no u" > It would be funny if it weren't so sad. Please join us in reality when you're ready. I rest my case. I was suggesting that you take your own advice, instead of throwing stones in glass houses.
          • dang 6y ago
            Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Comments like this are abusive regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
            • alentist 6y ago
              dang, what part of my comment did you feel was "abusive"?
              • dang 6y ago
                Perpetuating a flamewar in violation of multiple site rules. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html There's another form of abuse, too: your comment history looks like you're using HN primarily for political and ideological battle. That's not ok—it's not what this site is for, and it destroys what it is for, so we ban accounts that do that. If you want more explanation of why, you can find many via https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix=false&page=0&query=primarily%20test%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme....
        • dang 6y ago
          Please don't take HN threads further into flamewar. Comments like this and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693147 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25693147 are abusive regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • jnordonez 6y ago
    To be fair, much of the problem starts with the exact brand of whataboutism you display in your comment.
    • um_ya 6y ago
      A clear double standard exists, and I'm pointing it out.
      • jnordonez 6y ago
        Fair enough, If your intention was not whataboutism, I would suggest choosing a more refined way to present your point. Currently the comment is structured such that it seems like you are attempting to justify the insurrection on Capitol Hill.
        • alentist 6y ago
          > it seems like you are attempting to justify the insurrection on Capitol Hill What mental gymnastics led you to this conclusion? It's obvious that the comment was pointing out the double standard and hypocrisy that pervades this discussion.
          • jnordonez 6y ago
            >It's obvious that the comment was pointing out the double standard and hypocrisy that pervades this discussion. What mental gymnastics led you to this conclusion? It's obvious his comment was attempting to justify the insurrection on Capitol Hill.
  • augustt 6y ago
    Try to ram this through your thick skull: The US president organized his loyalists at the foot of the capitol and then had his henchman shout "LET'S HAVE TRIAL BY COMBAT" while congress was about to confirm his political enemy. What did you want to compare that to? Some loons burning down their local pizza hut?
    • zests 6y ago
      > Try to ram this through your thick skull What the heck
    • um_ya 6y ago
      > What did you want to compare that to? How about this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tts1q9TgXxg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tts1q9TgXxg
      • DennisP 6y ago
        Yes, shouting at elected officials totally compares to forcing your way into the Capitol, making congresspeople flee for their lives, looting their offices, and killing a cop.
        • um_ya 6y ago
          Nobody killed a cop. A cop killed a protester.
          • DennisP 6y ago
            Get out of your bubble. The cop's name was Brian D. Sicknick, and he died from injuries sustained fighting the rioters. https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tally-live-updates/2021/01/07/954333542/police-confirm-death-of-officer-injured-during-attack-on-capitol https://www.npr.org/sections/congress-electoral-college-tall... According to Capitol police, the rioters "actively attacked United States Capitol Police Officers and other uniformed law enforcement officers with metal pipes, discharged chemical irritants, and took up other weapons against our officers." https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/statement-steven-sund-chief-police https://www.uscp.gov/media-center/press-releases/statement-s...
  • aaron695 6y ago
    > I feel like I'm living in the twilight zone. Absolutely true. The media has hoodwinked the public. But the real problem, Trump is calling for a coup and the system around that is broken does need to be addressed. How do you deal what a public to stupid to deal with that? Trump style fool them into thinking a real coup attempt happened? It's a tug of war over the general population to stupid to believe anything in the media or who stupidly believe everything in the media. And now, somehow we are in a position private businesses have the power.
    • zests 6y ago
      After the 2016 election I read a headline “Russia hacked the election.” Do you see no similarities at all?
  • kruxigt 6y ago
    This is a culture war. This is not a battle of logic.
    • astronautjones 6y ago
      what culture? literally all these people care about is demanding blind devotion to their leader and buying Q merchandise to wear at their demagogue circuses. it's time to stop treating them like they're anything other than a deluded, dangerous, cultish mob
  • semi-extrinsic 6y ago
    I'm not going to argue about which other demonstrations have "burned down cities", nor about whether everyone is OK with violent protests. But yes, there is a large and qualitative difference between a riot with property damage and attempting a full on coup d'etat. The latter is a crime against the very heart of society. To be clear, if the Trump supporters had stood outside Capitol and protested, even violently, it would not have been such a momentuous thing. Crossing the Rubicon indeed.
    • sawjet 6y ago
      How was this an attempted coup? Some agitators attempted to enter congressional chambers with no real plans or demands with what to do. Seems like your standard societal unrest to me.
      • learc83 6y ago
        The President pressured the VP and Congress to overturn the election results. The President also told people to rally in Washington to pressure Congress into overturning the election. Then the President told the crowd at the rally to march with him to the capitol to pressure Congress into overturning the election results. People then marched down to the capitol, broke into it, killed a police officer, and forced congress to evacuate. When asked why, rioters stated they were trying to prevent Congress from certifying the results. It was a failed attempt at a coup, and a very bad attempt at a coup. It was still an attempt though.
      • ytpete 6y ago
        Subsets of the mob seemed to have much more concrete plans than others. Video footage shows one group chanting "hang Mike Pence!" while pushing into the building, and others specifically searching for Schumer and Pelosi. Photographs show people with zip-tie handcuffs and tasers. Some brought maps of the Congressional offices within the building. Parler threads ahead of the attack discussed likely escape routes members of Congress might use. Aside from all those frightening cases, it seems clear that there was a broadly shared goal was to "stop the steal" by preventing Congress from making progress in the peaceful transfer of power to the Biden administration. Maybe most of them had few concrete ideas how they'd accomplish that aim once inside the building, but they nonetheless were aiming to overturn an election and block Biden from becoming President - and if successful that absolutely is a coup.
  • adrr 6y ago
    Conflating BLM protesters with rioters and looters isn’t helpful.
  • tom-_- 6y ago
    This is a false assumption, the vast majority of Americans across the political spectrum have condemned the BLM riots and looting and largely find it unacceptable. Curious how you came to the conclusion that "everyone is okay" with it.
    • metabagel 6y ago
      Most BLM protests were non-violent. https://today.uconn.edu/2020/10/study-2020-protests-shows-difference-reality-perception/ https://today.uconn.edu/2020/10/study-2020-protests-shows-di...
      • abacadaba 6y ago
        "While the summer of 2020 experienced 100 days of violence and destruction in cities, according to the the U.S Department of Homeland Security, the most recent CCC study of 7,305 separate events in May and June suggests that 96.3% of events involved no property damage or police injuries" So 270 violent protests in that 2 month span then? Not trivial.
        • ytpete 6y ago
          There's a distinction between "violent protest" and "protest at which at least one (potentially minor) incident of violence and/or vandalism occurred" - the latter seems to be what those statistics are counting. If 10,000 people march through a city and one of the 10,000 sprays graffiti on a single store or breaks one window, most would not call that on the whole a "violent protest." How many were in that category and how many had truly widespread violence or more severe destruction? I'd love to see a source capturing that. Anecdotally though, in online discussion I often see people treating it as a given that BLM protests laid waste to whole neighborhoods in multiple cities, which seems more like flat-out misinformation...
  • halfmatthalfcat 6y ago
    Centuries of oppression, racism, disenfranchisement and extrajudicial killings by police causing riots versus seditious white grievance LARPers following orders from the President of the United States to interrupt the transfer of power... wow
    • Nursie 6y ago
      I have rarely seen that summed up so neatly. The two things are not the same, the constant equivocation is depressing.
    • Veen 6y ago
      The problem with this argument is that plenty of white communities in the US have suffered from deep generational poverty and exploitation too. Take a drive though an old Kentucky mining town or poor white communities in Alabama and Georgia. Ask these people if they’re larping and why they support Trump. Dismissing them as “Grievance larpers” is utterly counterproductive.
  • dang 6y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into political flamewar. Just because we're already in a circle of hell is no reason to walk into a deeper circle. It's a reason to walk the opposite way. We ban accounts that set flames like this, regardless of what color the flames are. No more of this please. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• joncrane 6y ago
  >suppose that Bill Clinton, George Bush, or Barack Obama had declined to attend the inauguration of there predecessors. That would surely trigger a crisis worthy of de-platforming. What? Let's say Obama had declined to attend Trump's inauguration. I don't think Twitter would ban him for that.
  • umvi 6y ago
    Yeah, I can't imagine that scenario at all. In fact, Obama publicly refusing to attend Trump's inauguration would have probably been met with thunderous applause from the "not my president" crowd.
  • arolihas 6y ago
    Maybe if he had declined to attend and refused to recognize the results of the election by falsely claiming fraud and spreading misinformation? And encouraged people to storm the capitol? Maybe then it’d make sense for Obama to have been banned.
• tim44 6y ago
  Democrats have fought him tooth and nail for four years,tried to impeach him, claimed his presidency is not legit and a sham or worse. So why do they need or want some symbolic transfer of power from a foreign operative taking orders from Putin ;) It seems he is only now accepted as president at zero hour so he can symbolically pass the torch.
• souprock 6y ago
  Bush Jr. did not attend. He was on an aircraft flying to Texas. This is memorable because the FAA had to modify software to support the callsign of an aircraft changing during flight, in this case from Air Force One to something else.
  • adwi 6y ago
    Do you have a source for this? Wikipedia says he did, even more curious about changing the call sign story: > Outgoing President George W. Bush, outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney, former presidents Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush, and Bill Clinton, and former vice presidents Walter Mondale, Dan Quayle, and Al Gore, along with their respective wives, attended the inauguration... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Barack_Obama https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_inauguration_of_Barack...
  • dragonwriter 6y ago
    Huh. Strange that DoD has a photo of President and Mrs. Bush leaving the inauguration with President and Mrs. Obama, if President Bush wasn't there. https://www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/2001151792/ https://www.defense.gov/observe/photo-gallery/igphoto/200115...