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I'd argue the reason these type of people are pissed off is because they have been incessantly attacked for 4 plus years while watching the media turn a blind e

I'd argue the reason these type of people are pissed off is because they have been incessantly attacked for 4 plus years while watching the media turn a blind eye to anything that disparages any minority or "protected class." We spent 10 MONTHS watching riots every day. DC was BURNING in July.

dboreham 6y ago
No, they're pissed off due to whatever in their psychology. However, they're choosing to resort to violence due to lies being spread by Fox News et al. Other people were rioting due to truth about police actions. While all rioting is to be condemned, there isn't some symmetry between a scenario driven by lies and one driven by truth.
- donatj 6y ago
  MLK said that violence was the language of the unheard. The silenced will turn to violence. That's not surprising in the least.
  - pmiller2 6y ago
    Oh, please. The people who elected the man who was President for the past 4 years are "the unheard?"
    - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
      To an extent they are, in that they elected him hoping to get something out of it, and he didn’t deliver much of anything useful. He conned them. Such is the way of politics sometimes.
      - pmiller2 6y ago
        Well, they saw that over the past 4 years and then voted for him again, so, I have no sympathy, and neither should anyone else.
        war1025 6y ago
        Then again, the other side voted for Biden, so it's not like we've got stellar options here.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        True enough. I voted for "not Trump." That just happened to be spelled "Biden" on the ballot. :/
        war1025 6y ago
        In the same way, in 2016 a lot of people voted for "not-Clinton".
        pmiller2 6y ago
        Clinton was a terrible candidate. I have no idea if she would have been a good President, but she was the exact wrong person to go up against Trump.
        MrMan 6y ago
        She is a really bad candidate and it was clear Trump would destroy her on TV. I think she would have been a really decent president, even though I think she has an unpleasant media personality.
        MrMan 6y ago
        I am very unhappy that Biden was the candidate on the other side. But I saw the alternative as fascism and sectarian violence. I predicted Trumps 2016 win and no one took me seriously. I predicted the rise to prominence of white nationalism and even the Cville event. I think Biden is a terrible candidate but the alternative is worse. If there is ever a non racist non violent Republican party I will join it but right now everything is off.
  - tjr225 6y ago
    This is absurd. You must know it to be so. They are angry because they lost and they are being told that they didn't lose. If you can be told that anything you don't like is the case then you will always be "unheard." MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence. You can't just live in unreality and pretend you're a victim. Either you can't see it for some reason or you do see it and you're pretending you don't.
    - donatj 6y ago
      The anger started a long time before they lost the election. If you didn't see it, blame your filter bubble. It started well _before_ the 2016 election. The anger is what got Trump elected in the first place. > MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence. No, but it's a reflection of a common symptom, not a justification. Silencing begets violence _because_ it's all that's left. The pen is mightier than the sword, but when you take the pen away, what are they left with?
      - loopz 6y ago
        Anger about what though?
        nwienert 6y ago
        If you want to genuinely understand the other side and not comfort yourself by relying on simple slanderous slurs to do the work, this is worth at least an hour of your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0
        adventured 6y ago
        I can explain that one. Stick with me on this dear HN reader, as your gut reaction may be to trigger downvote, but I'm going to actually explain it for real, I'm going to tell you exactly why (I'm not going to filter it for everyone so it feels better or sounds better). Jobs. Opioid deaths. Suicides. Life expectancy. Standards of living. Manufacturing erosion. Lack of a future. Lack of wealth creation. Rural and middle class erosion. Education costs. Healthcare costs. Endless war. Shitty rotting infrastructure. Mismanagement of the US fiscal house by worthless political elites obsessed with their own petty bubbles in DC. A mediocre social safety net despite enormous government spending. Corporate-government-lobby coordination to endlessly pillage the people (eg per capita healthcare costs in the US being 2x what they should be). Being lied to for generations by the elite political class while things haven't gotten better for half the country for 50 years. Everyone is starting to look around and ask good questions. Like, why do US taxpayers & citizens fork over $8.2 trillion (directly or through debt/inflation) every year, equal to ~40% of the economy, and have so little to show for it? Why is there no money in Social Security? What did they do with what should be the world's largest sovereign wealth fund? Why does nobody call them out on the lie that is the non-existent Social Security lockbox? Why do we keep burning trillions of dollars in the Middle East? Insert 487 other lies from the political class. Trump got their attention because he brought up some of these lies - including the endless war aspect - and was one of the first leading candidates to ever do so. It's a similar reason why Bernie Sanders came so close to the Presidency twice, a large group of people on both sides are very angry and have had enough of the same old status quo (which the elites in power have an interest in perpetuating forever). Those trillions of dollars wasted in the Middle East should have been in a Social Security wealth fund, and some of it should have been put toward infrastructure. Tens of millions of white people - those core Trump voters - are getting increasingly angry about all of it. Most of them probably have no idea what to do, so they're flailing for something different (if you're not an experienced fighter and you get hit in the face, your only capable reaction may be to flail). Those voters are not supposed to be upset about anything (so goes the fantasy social theory), because of their privilege. How is their privilege looking compared to a white person in Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, France, the Netherlands or Sweden? I'd say many of them are increasingly worse off and they know it when they look around. Those standards are what white people in the US look at to compare their well-being, and that's where they start to get increasingly upset. Michael Moore was right about what he said about Trump voters prior to the 2016 election, why they were seeking to elect him. Those voters wanted to throw a molotov cocktail at the system. And they were not thinking particularly rationally, angry people rarely do. People tend to vote for radical options when they're desperate. One can think less of them for voting for Trump, say they chose wrong, shit all over them, call them stupid, mock them, call for their arrest or purging, call for them to be blacklisted, try to suppress their speech and so on. One can shake one's head and proclaim that if they only voted Democrat they could have all of those things they want (which also begs the question on how the Democrats screwed up so badly that they lost the poor and lower class white voter that they used to have). Those voters feel attention-abandoned by the Democrats - which is an ongoing mistake by the Dems - and Trump scooped them up by paying attention to them. They're angry regardless of anyone's thoughts about them, they're increasingly lost regardless, and they're going to get more so as time goes on and as things fail to improve, as their lot in life fails to improve. They're angry because their point of comparison isn't what some people think it should be, it's what they think it should be. White lower & middle class people are never going to bounce around happy because they're better off than a poor black person in the US (which is what the premise of throwing white privilege statements at them is meant to accomplish), that is never going to be their point of comparison no matter what anybody says to them; their point of comparison is going to be other affluent white people around the world (that is not a politically correct thing to say, of course, it's the actual truth of their perspective and what's really going on). Telling people that they shouldn't be angry does not work, particularly when they've been dealing with decades of standard of living erosion and have little hope for the future being better. The elites have been conspiring against their interests forever at this point, it's little wonder they're staggering around in a daze with little clue as to what direction to go. It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future. The Democrats have power again (narrowly), and they need to deliver a lot better than they did in 2009-2010 with their mostly squandered super majority.
  - vharuck 6y ago
    In the case of Tuesday's attack on the Capitol, the crowd thought they were unheard because a group of Republicans and right-wing conspiracy nuts have told them so. They were being heard for the last four years, with a Republican President and Senate. But some Republicans, including Trump, had invested so much in the underdog victim persona they lied to keep it up.
  - reddog 6y ago
    It makes you wonder what will happen ofter the tech cartel completes its project of silencing half the country.
    - longtimegoogler 6y ago
      That's why right wing topics dominate on twitter and Facebook by a large margin. It couldn't be that the "tech cartel" is concerned about a specific subset of speech designed to insight violence.
    - LarvaFX 6y ago
      The cartel belongs to the right wing guys. Peter Thiel is in part owner of facebook.
  - rodgerd 6y ago
    Ahh, yes. The unheard such as <checks notes> CEOs, the sons of state supreme court judges, the wife of a US supreme court judge, retired millitary intelligence officers, general counsels, and state legislators.
- nprz 6y ago
  As Chomsky[0] I think rightly points out, the suffering and grievances of trump supporters is real, but unfortunately they are unable to correctly identify the cause of their suffering. Evidence seems to support this as deaths of despair have been climbing over the past few decades[1]. This is something I rarely see mentioned in left news outlets, instead we are told trump supporters are only motivated by racial hatred. [0] https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271 https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271 [1] https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=gr...
  - Talanes 6y ago
    Yes, very few people are motivated BY racial hatred, far more can be motivated TO racial hatred.
    - loopz 6y ago
      Too bad they vote for the party making it worse, though seems what they really want is coup. That won't end well and in good policies. Explaining everything by race is also a dead end.
  - rorykoehler 6y ago
    I never ever heard anyone say that their grievances aren't real and that they are only motivated by racial hatred. I distinctly remember after Trump won the first election that all the talk on the left was about disenfranchised voters in mid-America vs coastal elites. I'm sure you remember that too. That does not backup your assertion in fact it refutes it. That they are all also racists is a different topic.
  - longtimegoogler 6y ago
    It's real in some cases, but for many it isn't. Many of my friends are decently well off, own a home, with good jobs and support Trump. These people support him because they don't like paying taxes, immigration, BLM, wokeism, etc. I am sympathetic to those who have been impacted economically. But, many of those who are despairing do end up blaming "outsiders" for their problems.
jberryman 6y ago
Certainly white resentment is at the core of Trumpism. They also truly believe the election was illegitimate.
AaronFriel 6y ago
If you truly believe that DC was BURNING, then I think you have fallen prey to those lies.
- o-__-o 6y ago
  If you truly think a mass of armed people stormed the capitol then you too have fallen prey to lies. What I’m saying is both actions didn’t end with a good look and they both should be condemned Edit: I seemed to have touched a nerve. I was rewatching video from people storming the capitol. They were not armed and they were all milling about without a plan. Even the lady that was shot was unarmed Edit2: I think we are being hoodwinked. We saw lots of angry people storming the capitol out of frustration, provoked by false information fed to them. I don’t think the disinformation campaign stopped at the rally, I think it is continuing now. Everyone is being led to believe that the folks who walked in were acting the same as the Michigan capitol protest earlier last year. It was not like that. It was a bunch of people thinking they were going to make a difference and ended up not having a clue of what they were going to do. The orderly exit of most leaving the capitol building is proof of this. I just ask before you rage downvote to pause and think is this the division they (those making the narrative of DC burning vs Capitol Siege) are trying to sow? Both actions are heinous and doesn’t look good for America regardless of how you try to spin it.
  - AaronFriel 6y ago
    I watched armed people storm the capitol with my eyes, as did many millions of Americans glued to their TVs and monitors that day.
    - o-__-o 6y ago
      Give me a time stamp. I JUST rewatched the livestream as people streamed in, it’s for a project I am working on. I did not see anyone armed. Maybe some were armed but it was not clear and irrefutable. Edit: https://youtu.be/OiaWd5gVDvg https://youtu.be/OiaWd5gVDvg
      - 6y ago
ashayh 6y ago
Protesting racial injustice (peacefully) is absolutely required. Claiming such protests are "violent mobs" is nothing new: https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p... Also note that some of the violence was instigated by the police: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-protests-police-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p... OTOH mobs in DC, Michigan were motivated by "masks=slavery" & "election fraud" both of which are completely imaginary, and EXACTLY one "leader" has been promoting it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-calling-elections-rigged-doesnt-results/story?id=74126926 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-c...
- TheOperator 6y ago
  Protesting electoral fraud is also absolutely required, even if I am extremely extremely sceptical that it actually happened. Some of the protests that happened in the civil rights movement were indeed violent although this has been rather aggressively whitewashed in government approved public school classes meant to teach students the way to affect real change is to stand around with signs and sing songs and have racist white police officers beat you until you win (Kings flirting with communism and advocacy of reparations doesn't get much mention either). Ever hear of this guy called Malcolm X who wrote quite a bit about violence, he's definitely not somebody who could be allowed on social media. Race riots happened, people got beaten, some were killed largely by the police (just like in this most recent protest) but also by protesters (just like in this most recent protest). Did this delegitimize the civil rights movement? No, it was a noble movement, people just whitewash and dramatize it instead to prevent any degree of cognitive dissonance, and then compare modern day movements to the whitewashing to whitewash the modern day equivalents. Back then like today, the degree of violence was greatly exaggerated, disproportionately by the media and by racist segregationist's. Protests are mostly a dull affair filled overwhelmingly with non-violent people and only the exciting bits hit the front pages. The extent of violence by Trump supporters too is greatly exaggerated, mostly by media and their political opponents. If one police officer dies and 4 protestors, the only reasonable reaction is a speech crackdown against those who blame this incident on democrats dubiously. Since obviously cracking down on the free non-violent exchange of ideas and advocacy of peaceful protest is what prevents violence from happening. Point I'm driving at is that if the entire argument is based around the idea that any violence, or even violent mobs, delegitimizes a large movement than virtually all movements from BLM to the Civil rights movements to... whatever this is.... are delegitimized. Really the issue people have with the Trump supporters, above all, is that they're wrong and unpopular. As such they're a good test for exactly how much people REALLY support freedom of speech and the right to protest a cause that isn't broadly supported.
CerealFounder 6y ago
Youre both right and wrong. Its much simpler. These people are pissed off, simply because theyre being told to be pissed off. There is no nuance, culture is what we are told at scale. Its why everyones pissed off. Anger is the easiet engagement to bait and advertising based businesses at scale are powered by engagement.
- vic20forever 6y ago
  There's the correct answer. You're seeing the fruits of 70+ years of conservatives telling their audience "Everything sucks now, and everything will suck more in the future, and those people over there are to blame for all of it". This is the reason you're seeing so many educated, affluent people among those who stormed the Capitol - they're just really, REALLY pissed off.
cmurf 6y ago
These are the same bigots who believed Trump's racist lie of birtherism that he peddled for five years before even running for president. Trump tried to delegitimize the former president, like he's trying to delegitimize the incoming president. He's always been anti-American insofar as he is exclusively pro-Trump. Abraham Lincoln said that all controversies are about minorities and majorities, and that one of them must submit, or the government ceases. There is no alternative. And that if the losing states of the 1860 election were permitted to secede, it would be the end of self-rule, the end of democracy. And he decided that could not be permitted. In the 2016 election, a majority of voters elected Clinton. They submitted to the minority because that is what the Constitution required. And they did it peacefully. Clinton conceded the day after the election. Fast forward to 2020, Trump has gotten 2/3rds of the Republicans in the House to debase themselves. They are now a sedition caucus, selling these lies too. As well as several Republicans in the Senate. The lie that they are not the minority. And the lie that they do not have to submit. They can fight instead. This is a non-insurable proposition, because the majority was never going to submit this time. The message being broadcast for two months is: cease the government. That is why violence broke out in 1861, that's why it broke out last week, in the first violent transfer of power since then. BLM riots vs capitol attack? Not at all the same thing. Not at all the same risk. And the whataboutism? Sounds like white nationalist nonsense to me.
- MrMan 6y ago
  Word

dboreham 6y ago

No, they're pissed off due to whatever in their psychology. However, they're choosing to resort to violence due to lies being spread by Fox News et al. Other people were rioting due to truth about police actions. While all rioting is to be condemned, there isn't some symmetry between a scenario driven by lies and one driven by truth.

donatj 6y ago
MLK said that violence was the language of the unheard. The silenced will turn to violence. That's not surprising in the least.
- pmiller2 6y ago
  Oh, please. The people who elected the man who was President for the past 4 years are "the unheard?"
  - amanaplanacanal 6y ago
    To an extent they are, in that they elected him hoping to get something out of it, and he didn’t deliver much of anything useful. He conned them. Such is the way of politics sometimes.
    - pmiller2 6y ago
      Well, they saw that over the past 4 years and then voted for him again, so, I have no sympathy, and neither should anyone else.
      - war1025 6y ago
        Then again, the other side voted for Biden, so it's not like we've got stellar options here.
        pmiller2 6y ago
        True enough. I voted for "not Trump." That just happened to be spelled "Biden" on the ballot. :/
        war1025 6y ago
        In the same way, in 2016 a lot of people voted for "not-Clinton".
        pmiller2 6y ago
        Clinton was a terrible candidate. I have no idea if she would have been a good President, but she was the exact wrong person to go up against Trump.
        MrMan 6y ago
        She is a really bad candidate and it was clear Trump would destroy her on TV. I think she would have been a really decent president, even though I think she has an unpleasant media personality.
        MrMan 6y ago
        I am very unhappy that Biden was the candidate on the other side. But I saw the alternative as fascism and sectarian violence. I predicted Trumps 2016 win and no one took me seriously. I predicted the rise to prominence of white nationalism and even the Cville event. I think Biden is a terrible candidate but the alternative is worse. If there is ever a non racist non violent Republican party I will join it but right now everything is off.
- tjr225 6y ago
  This is absurd. You must know it to be so. They are angry because they lost and they are being told that they didn't lose. If you can be told that anything you don't like is the case then you will always be "unheard." MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence. You can't just live in unreality and pretend you're a victim. Either you can't see it for some reason or you do see it and you're pretending you don't.
  - donatj 6y ago
    The anger started a long time before they lost the election. If you didn't see it, blame your filter bubble. It started well _before_ the 2016 election. The anger is what got Trump elected in the first place. > MLK didn't make this statement so that anyone who was unhappy could justify violence. No, but it's a reflection of a common symptom, not a justification. Silencing begets violence _because_ it's all that's left. The pen is mightier than the sword, but when you take the pen away, what are they left with?
    - loopz 6y ago
      Anger about what though?
      - nwienert 6y ago
        If you want to genuinely understand the other side and not comfort yourself by relying on simple slanderous slurs to do the work, this is worth at least an hour of your time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm5xxlajTW0
      - adventured 6y ago
        I can explain that one. Stick with me on this dear HN reader, as your gut reaction may be to trigger downvote, but I'm going to actually explain it for real, I'm going to tell you exactly why (I'm not going to filter it for everyone so it feels better or sounds better). Jobs. Opioid deaths. Suicides. Life expectancy. Standards of living. Manufacturing erosion. Lack of a future. Lack of wealth creation. Rural and middle class erosion. Education costs. Healthcare costs. Endless war. Shitty rotting infrastructure. Mismanagement of the US fiscal house by worthless political elites obsessed with their own petty bubbles in DC. A mediocre social safety net despite enormous government spending. Corporate-government-lobby coordination to endlessly pillage the people (eg per capita healthcare costs in the US being 2x what they should be). Being lied to for generations by the elite political class while things haven't gotten better for half the country for 50 years. Everyone is starting to look around and ask good questions. Like, why do US taxpayers & citizens fork over $8.2 trillion (directly or through debt/inflation) every year, equal to ~40% of the economy, and have so little to show for it? Why is there no money in Social Security? What did they do with what should be the world's largest sovereign wealth fund? Why does nobody call them out on the lie that is the non-existent Social Security lockbox? Why do we keep burning trillions of dollars in the Middle East? Insert 487 other lies from the political class. Trump got their attention because he brought up some of these lies - including the endless war aspect - and was one of the first leading candidates to ever do so. It's a similar reason why Bernie Sanders came so close to the Presidency twice, a large group of people on both sides are very angry and have had enough of the same old status quo (which the elites in power have an interest in perpetuating forever). Those trillions of dollars wasted in the Middle East should have been in a Social Security wealth fund, and some of it should have been put toward infrastructure. Tens of millions of white people - those core Trump voters - are getting increasingly angry about all of it. Most of them probably have no idea what to do, so they're flailing for something different (if you're not an experienced fighter and you get hit in the face, your only capable reaction may be to flail). Those voters are not supposed to be upset about anything (so goes the fantasy social theory), because of their privilege. How is their privilege looking compared to a white person in Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, Finland, Britain, France, the Netherlands or Sweden? I'd say many of them are increasingly worse off and they know it when they look around. Those standards are what white people in the US look at to compare their well-being, and that's where they start to get increasingly upset. Michael Moore was right about what he said about Trump voters prior to the 2016 election, why they were seeking to elect him. Those voters wanted to throw a molotov cocktail at the system. And they were not thinking particularly rationally, angry people rarely do. People tend to vote for radical options when they're desperate. One can think less of them for voting for Trump, say they chose wrong, shit all over them, call them stupid, mock them, call for their arrest or purging, call for them to be blacklisted, try to suppress their speech and so on. One can shake one's head and proclaim that if they only voted Democrat they could have all of those things they want (which also begs the question on how the Democrats screwed up so badly that they lost the poor and lower class white voter that they used to have). Those voters feel attention-abandoned by the Democrats - which is an ongoing mistake by the Dems - and Trump scooped them up by paying attention to them. They're angry regardless of anyone's thoughts about them, they're increasingly lost regardless, and they're going to get more so as time goes on and as things fail to improve, as their lot in life fails to improve. They're angry because their point of comparison isn't what some people think it should be, it's what they think it should be. White lower & middle class people are never going to bounce around happy because they're better off than a poor black person in the US (which is what the premise of throwing white privilege statements at them is meant to accomplish), that is never going to be their point of comparison no matter what anybody says to them; their point of comparison is going to be other affluent white people around the world (that is not a politically correct thing to say, of course, it's the actual truth of their perspective and what's really going on). Telling people that they shouldn't be angry does not work, particularly when they've been dealing with decades of standard of living erosion and have little hope for the future being better. The elites have been conspiring against their interests forever at this point, it's little wonder they're staggering around in a daze with little clue as to what direction to go. It's a mistake for the Democrats to obsess over blaming and castigating those people, instead of focusing on convincing them, swaying them, educating them, peeling away voters and ultimately delivering real life improvements (the big part of that) if they truly believe they have a better path to offer for their future. The Democrats have power again (narrowly), and they need to deliver a lot better than they did in 2009-2010 with their mostly squandered super majority.
- vharuck 6y ago
  In the case of Tuesday's attack on the Capitol, the crowd thought they were unheard because a group of Republicans and right-wing conspiracy nuts have told them so. They were being heard for the last four years, with a Republican President and Senate. But some Republicans, including Trump, had invested so much in the underdog victim persona they lied to keep it up.
- reddog 6y ago
  It makes you wonder what will happen ofter the tech cartel completes its project of silencing half the country.
  - longtimegoogler 6y ago
    That's why right wing topics dominate on twitter and Facebook by a large margin. It couldn't be that the "tech cartel" is concerned about a specific subset of speech designed to insight violence.
  - LarvaFX 6y ago
    The cartel belongs to the right wing guys. Peter Thiel is in part owner of facebook.
- rodgerd 6y ago
  Ahh, yes. The unheard such as <checks notes> CEOs, the sons of state supreme court judges, the wife of a US supreme court judge, retired millitary intelligence officers, general counsels, and state legislators.
nprz 6y ago
As Chomsky[0] I think rightly points out, the suffering and grievances of trump supporters is real, but unfortunately they are unable to correctly identify the cause of their suffering. Evidence seems to support this as deaths of despair have been climbing over the past few decades[1]. This is something I rarely see mentioned in left news outlets, instead we are told trump supporters are only motivated by racial hatred. [0] https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271 https://youtu.be/lJ84xM8YPpw?t=271 [1] https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand https://i.imgur.com/ceAwn59_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=gr...
- Talanes 6y ago
  Yes, very few people are motivated BY racial hatred, far more can be motivated TO racial hatred.
  - loopz 6y ago
    Too bad they vote for the party making it worse, though seems what they really want is coup. That won't end well and in good policies. Explaining everything by race is also a dead end.
- rorykoehler 6y ago
  I never ever heard anyone say that their grievances aren't real and that they are only motivated by racial hatred. I distinctly remember after Trump won the first election that all the talk on the left was about disenfranchised voters in mid-America vs coastal elites. I'm sure you remember that too. That does not backup your assertion in fact it refutes it. That they are all also racists is a different topic.
- longtimegoogler 6y ago
  It's real in some cases, but for many it isn't. Many of my friends are decently well off, own a home, with good jobs and support Trump. These people support him because they don't like paying taxes, immigration, BLM, wokeism, etc. I am sympathetic to those who have been impacted economically. But, many of those who are despairing do end up blaming "outsiders" for their problems.

jberryman 6y ago

Certainly white resentment is at the core of Trumpism. They also truly believe the election was illegitimate.

AaronFriel 6y ago

If you truly believe that DC was BURNING, then I think you have fallen prey to those lies.

o-__-o 6y ago
If you truly think a mass of armed people stormed the capitol then you too have fallen prey to lies. What I’m saying is both actions didn’t end with a good look and they both should be condemned Edit: I seemed to have touched a nerve. I was rewatching video from people storming the capitol. They were not armed and they were all milling about without a plan. Even the lady that was shot was unarmed Edit2: I think we are being hoodwinked. We saw lots of angry people storming the capitol out of frustration, provoked by false information fed to them. I don’t think the disinformation campaign stopped at the rally, I think it is continuing now. Everyone is being led to believe that the folks who walked in were acting the same as the Michigan capitol protest earlier last year. It was not like that. It was a bunch of people thinking they were going to make a difference and ended up not having a clue of what they were going to do. The orderly exit of most leaving the capitol building is proof of this. I just ask before you rage downvote to pause and think is this the division they (those making the narrative of DC burning vs Capitol Siege) are trying to sow? Both actions are heinous and doesn’t look good for America regardless of how you try to spin it.
- AaronFriel 6y ago
  I watched armed people storm the capitol with my eyes, as did many millions of Americans glued to their TVs and monitors that day.
  - o-__-o 6y ago
    Give me a time stamp. I JUST rewatched the livestream as people streamed in, it’s for a project I am working on. I did not see anyone armed. Maybe some were armed but it was not clear and irrefutable. Edit: https://youtu.be/OiaWd5gVDvg https://youtu.be/OiaWd5gVDvg
    - 6y ago

ashayh 6y ago

Protesting racial injustice (peacefully) is absolutely required. Claiming such protests are "violent mobs" is nothing new: https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/photo/1 https://twitter.com/BerniceKing/status/1300196044693741574/p... Also note that some of the violence was instigated by the police: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-protests-police-violence.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/06/26/opinion/blm-p... OTOH mobs in DC, Michigan were motivated by "masks=slavery" & "election fraud" both of which are completely imaginary, and EXACTLY one "leader" has been promoting it: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-calling-elections-rigged-doesnt-results/story?id=74126926 https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-longstanding-history-c...

TheOperator 6y ago
Protesting electoral fraud is also absolutely required, even if I am extremely extremely sceptical that it actually happened. Some of the protests that happened in the civil rights movement were indeed violent although this has been rather aggressively whitewashed in government approved public school classes meant to teach students the way to affect real change is to stand around with signs and sing songs and have racist white police officers beat you until you win (Kings flirting with communism and advocacy of reparations doesn't get much mention either). Ever hear of this guy called Malcolm X who wrote quite a bit about violence, he's definitely not somebody who could be allowed on social media. Race riots happened, people got beaten, some were killed largely by the police (just like in this most recent protest) but also by protesters (just like in this most recent protest). Did this delegitimize the civil rights movement? No, it was a noble movement, people just whitewash and dramatize it instead to prevent any degree of cognitive dissonance, and then compare modern day movements to the whitewashing to whitewash the modern day equivalents. Back then like today, the degree of violence was greatly exaggerated, disproportionately by the media and by racist segregationist's. Protests are mostly a dull affair filled overwhelmingly with non-violent people and only the exciting bits hit the front pages. The extent of violence by Trump supporters too is greatly exaggerated, mostly by media and their political opponents. If one police officer dies and 4 protestors, the only reasonable reaction is a speech crackdown against those who blame this incident on democrats dubiously. Since obviously cracking down on the free non-violent exchange of ideas and advocacy of peaceful protest is what prevents violence from happening. Point I'm driving at is that if the entire argument is based around the idea that any violence, or even violent mobs, delegitimizes a large movement than virtually all movements from BLM to the Civil rights movements to... whatever this is.... are delegitimized. Really the issue people have with the Trump supporters, above all, is that they're wrong and unpopular. As such they're a good test for exactly how much people REALLY support freedom of speech and the right to protest a cause that isn't broadly supported.

CerealFounder 6y ago

Youre both right and wrong. Its much simpler. These people are pissed off, simply because theyre being told to be pissed off. There is no nuance, culture is what we are told at scale. Its why everyones pissed off. Anger is the easiet engagement to bait and advertising based businesses at scale are powered by engagement.

vic20forever 6y ago
There's the correct answer. You're seeing the fruits of 70+ years of conservatives telling their audience "Everything sucks now, and everything will suck more in the future, and those people over there are to blame for all of it". This is the reason you're seeing so many educated, affluent people among those who stormed the Capitol - they're just really, REALLY pissed off.

cmurf 6y ago

These are the same bigots who believed Trump's racist lie of birtherism that he peddled for five years before even running for president. Trump tried to delegitimize the former president, like he's trying to delegitimize the incoming president. He's always been anti-American insofar as he is exclusively pro-Trump. Abraham Lincoln said that all controversies are about minorities and majorities, and that one of them must submit, or the government ceases. There is no alternative. And that if the losing states of the 1860 election were permitted to secede, it would be the end of self-rule, the end of democracy. And he decided that could not be permitted. In the 2016 election, a majority of voters elected Clinton. They submitted to the minority because that is what the Constitution required. And they did it peacefully. Clinton conceded the day after the election. Fast forward to 2020, Trump has gotten 2/3rds of the Republicans in the House to debase themselves. They are now a sedition caucus, selling these lies too. As well as several Republicans in the Senate. The lie that they are not the minority. And the lie that they do not have to submit. They can fight instead. This is a non-insurable proposition, because the majority was never going to submit this time. The message being broadcast for two months is: cease the government. That is why violence broke out in 1861, that's why it broke out last week, in the first violent transfer of power since then. BLM riots vs capitol attack? Not at all the same thing. Not at all the same risk. And the whataboutism? Sounds like white nationalist nonsense to me.

MrMan 6y ago
Word