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Really? They overwhelmed police and entered the building. The Vice President was moved to a "secure location." If they had arrived 5 minutes earlier, they'd hav

Really? They overwhelmed police and entered the building. The Vice President was moved to a "secure location." If they had arrived 5 minutes earlier, they'd have entered the House full of representatives, who could have been killed or taken hostage. We were a hair's width away from losing democracy and you can't take it seriously. We are, literally, being attacked by fascists, anarchists, and neo-Nazis. As I said, it's hard to see these things until it's too late. What happened on Wednesday was nearly the end. If you still don't see it, you're wearing blinders.

vangelis 6y ago
I doubt any of the StopTheSteal group has read Kropotkin or spouts on about mutual aid. Interesting characterization there...
halfjoking 6y ago
It was on purpose. Like I'm saying powerful people want to convince America we are being attacked. The best way to do that is to make it look like a real threat. They basically left the front door open, where BLM protesters got tear gas immediately. Do you disagree that the response to the two groups of protesters was a little uneven? The only difference in our opinions is that I think the response was on purpose. Huck Finn Braveheart is not a criminal mastermind. The number of protesters were miniscule compared to the BLM protesters. If the secret service and police actually wanted to stop them it would have been very easy.
- heroprotagonist 6y ago
  Well, US institutions are being attacked. But I agree that the mob is just a mechanism in the system that was wielded poorly and got out of control. We don't need to crack down on the mob, but we do need to address the situation which led to it's rise. The electoral college is an outdated piece of government 'software' that has been repeatedly exploited in recent years. Through 2016, there were 58 presidential elections. In 5 of these, the popular vote didn't match the electoral vote. About 8.6% historically. But for the last couple of decades, excluding this last election which is apparently still being argued, that percentage has been 40% instead of the 6.8% historically. If Trump's re-election argument fails, that life number will likely drop to 33.3% in my recent subjective experience compared to 8.5% historically, or rise to 50% in recent experience compared to 10.2% historically. Either way, these numbers mean something's wrong. "That's just a statistical variation you see in any set of data when giving it enough numbers" is not likely with 58 and 59 datapoints. Particularly with the inclusion of other data. If you check the history logs, you'll see a technological explosion the last couple of decades that coincides with these electoral results that suggest exploitation of the system. Technology allowing fine grained microtargeting is only getting better, and it's being used to exploit the electoral system. This time with disinformation campaigns and fine grained behavioral tracking and analysis (eg, Cambridge Analytica). "Yes, we say we're a democracy but technically we're a republic so that means everything is fine and we don't need the numbers to always match up with the voting majority." I mean, I guess. Sure. Until we decide to push exploitation further, beyond the boundaries of the game we've set up. This time it looks like the actors in the system missed the margin of exploitability within the game and went searching for new exploits. Instead of acknowledging the loss, they spammed every court they could find with useless lawsuits. Like a malware bot checking every port to try to fingerprint services and check for vulnerable versions. And they turned the disinformation dial up to 11, inciting their base to keep their political machine operational since it's got a 4 year reboot cycle and it'd take time for their port scanning to finish. This tactic led to a mob rioting. And it's unfortunate, but the mob were ultimately a system mechanic that got out of control. They were the tools or were 'acted upon' in a systems thinking perspective, rather than actors in the system. The actors were wielding them as a tool, and like any tool, irresponsible handling resulted in injury.

vangelis 6y ago

I doubt any of the StopTheSteal group has read Kropotkin or spouts on about mutual aid. Interesting characterization there...

halfjoking 6y ago

It was on purpose. Like I'm saying powerful people want to convince America we are being attacked. The best way to do that is to make it look like a real threat. They basically left the front door open, where BLM protesters got tear gas immediately. Do you disagree that the response to the two groups of protesters was a little uneven? The only difference in our opinions is that I think the response was on purpose. Huck Finn Braveheart is not a criminal mastermind. The number of protesters were miniscule compared to the BLM protesters. If the secret service and police actually wanted to stop them it would have been very easy.

heroprotagonist 6y ago
Well, US institutions are being attacked. But I agree that the mob is just a mechanism in the system that was wielded poorly and got out of control. We don't need to crack down on the mob, but we do need to address the situation which led to it's rise. The electoral college is an outdated piece of government 'software' that has been repeatedly exploited in recent years. Through 2016, there were 58 presidential elections. In 5 of these, the popular vote didn't match the electoral vote. About 8.6% historically. But for the last couple of decades, excluding this last election which is apparently still being argued, that percentage has been 40% instead of the 6.8% historically. If Trump's re-election argument fails, that life number will likely drop to 33.3% in my recent subjective experience compared to 8.5% historically, or rise to 50% in recent experience compared to 10.2% historically. Either way, these numbers mean something's wrong. "That's just a statistical variation you see in any set of data when giving it enough numbers" is not likely with 58 and 59 datapoints. Particularly with the inclusion of other data. If you check the history logs, you'll see a technological explosion the last couple of decades that coincides with these electoral results that suggest exploitation of the system. Technology allowing fine grained microtargeting is only getting better, and it's being used to exploit the electoral system. This time with disinformation campaigns and fine grained behavioral tracking and analysis (eg, Cambridge Analytica). "Yes, we say we're a democracy but technically we're a republic so that means everything is fine and we don't need the numbers to always match up with the voting majority." I mean, I guess. Sure. Until we decide to push exploitation further, beyond the boundaries of the game we've set up. This time it looks like the actors in the system missed the margin of exploitability within the game and went searching for new exploits. Instead of acknowledging the loss, they spammed every court they could find with useless lawsuits. Like a malware bot checking every port to try to fingerprint services and check for vulnerable versions. And they turned the disinformation dial up to 11, inciting their base to keep their political machine operational since it's got a 4 year reboot cycle and it'd take time for their port scanning to finish. This tactic led to a mob rioting. And it's unfortunate, but the mob were ultimately a system mechanic that got out of control. They were the tools or were 'acted upon' in a systems thinking perspective, rather than actors in the system. The actors were wielding them as a tool, and like any tool, irresponsible handling resulted in injury.