4 ms·

This is great but its been posted 5 times in the last 2 days. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=propublica.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=prop

This is great but its been posted 5 times in the last 2 days. https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=propublica.org https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=propublica.org Regardless, Id like to see this with other events as well, even casual events.

hajile 6y ago
Five times and no comments on anything. I wonder why such a trove isn't worthy of discussion? I suspect because if people watched those videos, they'd come away with a very different perspective. Pretty much all you see is people standing around waving signs and chanting -- literally textbook non-violent protesting. Once you see them enter the Capital, you still don't see waves of violence and destruction. There are a couple-dozen aggressive/violent people at most (and those people should definitely be arrested and charged). In contrast, I've seen hundreds of videos of other riots throughout the year where you get hundreds of videos of the violence (along with the videos of people getting chased down and beaten up for violating the "no cameras rule" because they don't want to be filmed doing horrible things. Most of those didn't have large groups just standing around waving signs and chanting -- almost everyone was involved in the violence and destruction. There was an interesting article I read that the riots this year caused more property damage than any in US history by property insurance claims. That's not including people hurt/killed, all the property damages under 10-20k per building where it costs more to file than to pay out of pocket, vehicles totaled, government buildings ruined (that the people's taxes have to pay to repair), etc. As I said before, I have zero tolerance for the violent people at the Capital. I also have zero tolerance for those beating up and hospitalizing thousands (probably tens of thousands) throughout the summer. This is in stark contrast to most news organizations and even prominent politicians who stated that the massive violent protest was a necessary and acceptable idea while then decrying the couple dozen violent protestors at the Capital as the basest kind of evil when all of it was evil political violence and was all wrong.
- trident5000 6y ago
  This is exactly what I was thinking when I watched the videos. It stands in stark contrast to the media narrative.
- steve_adams_86 6y ago
  I agree. For days I thought perhaps hundreds had been protesting. I was blown away to hear it was thousands, and immediately realized that the media was latching onto perhaps dozens of bad apples, so to speak. I think it’s plain to see that most Americans don’t want to murder politicians. The Republican voters who feel disenfranchised aren’t all sharpening their axes right now. I think it’s insane what happened. It just isn’t representative of republicans. Not sure what to do with that. I’m Canadian so I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I only see what the media gives me and I don’t personally know a lot of Americans, let alone republicans.
  - kadoban 6y ago
    There were more than what I'd call dozens, there's already been over 100 arrests and it's early in the investigation. Also basing this on the videos I've seen. There were hallways full of people packed behind barriers, streams of people going by different locations, etc. I wouldn't say violence of this sort is representative of Republicans, but Republicans are too accepting of the extremists that this event grew out of. One of them is the leader of their party.
    - steve_adams_86 6y ago
      You're right, it was more than dozens. I think my mental model is something like: - Dozens of severely bad actors - many of which actually did intend abduction or murder. These people are terrifying. - Hundreds of bad actors. People attempting to subvert democracy which, despite sounding alarmist or cheesy without proper context (You need to see the videos to understand, I think) is also very scary. These people will hurt you for their political cause. - Thousands of people convinced that their political system, their democracy, isn't serving them. This is alright with me - I think they were convinced by the bad/severely bad actors, and I believe this happens on all political spectrums. I know many "left leaning" folks with arguably insane ideas about politics and society in general, so this isn't a republican disorder. I don't resent them or even myself for coming to unreasonable conclusions and I believe they're actually trying to improve their situation in the way they know how. Being wrong in and of itself isn't a crime, I suppose. Protesting on bad information is unfortunate, but not criminal. I have sympathy for all of these people. Things seem pretty awful for them right now, whether it should or not. It all seems very self-inflicted. Regardless, it seems a lot of manipulation has been involved. It's very cult-like. Power hungry folks have recruited disenfranchised individuals to serve their agendas. It's really sad. The rest of the republican voters will be a mix of these groups, but I suspect they've come to terms with the election despite disappointment. They don't want to zip tie anyone in congress or illegally overturn the election. The bad actors really should experience consequences. They are a rot that contaminates the people around them. Whether they intend that or not, have good intentions or not, they have become so unreasonable and dangerous that they need to be contained at the least. I believe that includes Donald Trump most of all.
- IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
  Storming parliament is fundamentally different from walking down some street with signs. That's true even if the same amount of violence somehow happens at those events. Which it didn't: These people had functioning gallows, yelled "kill Mike Pence", actually beat a police officer to death, managed to trample four of their own to death, brought zip-ties to take hostages, etc. And you consider that peaceful?
  - hajile 6y ago
    You should look at the actual charges for the things you mention. ZERO charges of rioting. ZERO charges of attempted kidnapping. ZERO charges of insurrection. ZERO charges related to congress-people in any way, shape or form. Zip-tie guy (the retired Lt. Col) and other zip-tie guy: entering a restricted building, violent entry, and disorderly conduct. NOTHING about your kidnapping claims. Likewise, Viking Dude, West Virginia Rep, confederate flag guy, Auschwitz guy Olympic Gold Medalist, and around 60 others: entering a restricted building, violent entry, and disorderly conduct. Sometimes restricted building charge is swapped for obstruction, picketing in the Capitol, trespassing, or dropped completely Molotov guy: 16 DC unregistered weapon violations, 2 federal violations (probably Molotovs), but he wasn't actually in the Capitol as far as I can tell, so any mention of those completely lacks intent. Other big weapon guy: Making threats and unlicensed weapons, but again, not actually charged for being near the Capitol. Guy sitting in Pelosi's desk, fur coat guy, and podium guy: violent entry, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and theft of public money, property or records. Police officers: not sure about charges, but claim the DC police let them in which would probably mean nothing sticks. Another guy got a curfew and unlawful entry for standing in a parking lot. Got to pump up the numbers somehow. Now, we DO have 1 murderer (killed police officer with fire extinguisher). We have around 18 people wanted for "assault" (which includes simply shoving an officer -- serious, but nothing unusual during protests). We have 7 other people wanted for a police beating that ARE serious. Finally, we have a seemingly unrelated pipe bomber who was likely using the event for cover. He/She (unlike everyone at the Capitol) made sure to cover their face and targeted the DNC/RNC headquarters rather than being involved in the "stop the steal" protest. That's at MOST 30 people who did anything more than wandering around the capitol. Notice also that they didn't even try to charge with rioting. That's three orders of magnitude LESS than a single percent of all protesters. Meanwhile, Antifa was blowing up firework cannonballs in the faces of police in Oregon for MONTHS at a FEDERAL courthouse. They called to kill all kinds of people -- including the president and vice president. There's videos of them doing stuff like lying in wait with hammers until police tried to go through the door. They tried to block police inside a precinct and burn it down. They beat scores of police to a bloody pulp. I don't care how you try to paint it, that was a way worse event both by the percent of protesters involved in violence and by the raw numbers of hospitalizations, permanently disabled or dead people at their hands. As to trampling, it's sad, but people have gotten trampled to death at all kinds of events and it doesn't really indicate very much. For example, in 2019, 3 people got trampled to death in a St. Patrick's Day line. Around 150 people got trampled to death in 2020, and that's just the ones recorded on Wikipedia. This isn't a good argument for anything and might have happened anyway. I hold that all 30 of those people at the Capitol should be found, arrested, and charged. I don't agree that a couple hundred thousand other people should be tarred and feathered along with them. I especially dislike the hypocrisy that the worst political violence in the US since the Civil War should be labelled as perfectly acceptable just because you agree with their end goal because the end does NOT justify those means.
- kthejoker2 6y ago
  > Most of those didn't have large groups just standing around waving signs and chanting -- almost everyone was involved in the violence and destruction This is demonstrably false, and you should retract it. Second, it is qualitatively different to riot and break into one of our main bodies of government and threaten the lives of anyone (even if it was just a select few out of the larger whole) during an important part of the process of our peaceful transition of power. To simply equate this rioting to this summer's protests (and yes riots) and say "it's all wrong" is to almost miss the point entirely about what the impact, the risks, and the response to these two things should be. And while I would broadly agree that most of the content collected here is of angry, mostly harmless (and willfully misinformed) constituents asking for their voice to be heard, what I also saw was: * Largely unanimous support for attacking the police, breaking and entering into the Capitol, people cheering and laughing at everyone trespassing, breaking barricades. Definitely no signs of disapproval or concern for the police, the Congress, public property, or even the optics of the situation. There were of course a couple of instances of "don't hurt the cops" but they were completely outnumbered by the "this is OUR HOUSE"/1776 crowd. * If you just watch the last 2 hours of video - when the National Guard arrived, pushed people out of the building, then off the Capitol, out of the Mall, and so on - the videos turned extremely angry, negative, "f*k the police", "traitors!" etc it is absolutely clear that the only reason you have such a positive vibe about the first half of the videos is because there was such little resistance to their actions during the first half. If there had been armed National Guard presence there from the outset, this would've been much uglier, without the "waving flags and chanting" you see.
  - hajile 6y ago
    There were 100-200,000 people. Less than 100 were wanted for entering the capitol. Less than 30 of those got charged with more than some variant of unlawful entering. NONE got charged with the stuff people have been talking about (I go into the details in another post on this thread). Even with the National Guard and the anger at being disrupted, they still left and the violence didn't hold a candle to most protests (You should look up videos of the Antifa attacks on the Federal Government in Oregon or any of the other large protests over last summer and you'll see what I'm talking about).
- deeviant 6y ago
  > As I said before, I have zero tolerance for the violent people at the Capital. As you spend your entire comment denying the huge amount of violence that happened that day. Man you are really sold on ignoring any of the violence that happened that day, aren't you? https://d2hxwnssq7ss7g.cloudfront.net/x2GqSN2kAGY3_cvt.mp4 https://d2hxwnssq7ss7g.cloudfront.net/x2GqSN2kAGY3_cvt.mp4 There are a great many more videos of violence happening that day, but really you only need one video of insurrections, in the capitol building after they broke in, fighting as a mob against an out-numbered group of frantic police officers, to conclude the event was violent. You can't have a group of people nearby or inside the capitol building literally beat a police officer to death and "undo" said violence by having a lot of people outside the building standing around outside innocently shouting, "Hang Mike Pence!" Also, although it seemed like everybody posted every video they took that day, that probably isn't true. It's reasonable to believe that these people had some inhibition from posting videos in which their side obviously looked bad, which would bias the corpus of videos to be that much more "friendly" to the insurrectionists.

hajile 6y ago

Five times and no comments on anything. I wonder why such a trove isn't worthy of discussion? I suspect because if people watched those videos, they'd come away with a very different perspective. Pretty much all you see is people standing around waving signs and chanting -- literally textbook non-violent protesting. Once you see them enter the Capital, you still don't see waves of violence and destruction. There are a couple-dozen aggressive/violent people at most (and those people should definitely be arrested and charged). In contrast, I've seen hundreds of videos of other riots throughout the year where you get hundreds of videos of the violence (along with the videos of people getting chased down and beaten up for violating the "no cameras rule" because they don't want to be filmed doing horrible things. Most of those didn't have large groups just standing around waving signs and chanting -- almost everyone was involved in the violence and destruction. There was an interesting article I read that the riots this year caused more property damage than any in US history by property insurance claims. That's not including people hurt/killed, all the property damages under 10-20k per building where it costs more to file than to pay out of pocket, vehicles totaled, government buildings ruined (that the people's taxes have to pay to repair), etc. As I said before, I have zero tolerance for the violent people at the Capital. I also have zero tolerance for those beating up and hospitalizing thousands (probably tens of thousands) throughout the summer. This is in stark contrast to most news organizations and even prominent politicians who stated that the massive violent protest was a necessary and acceptable idea while then decrying the couple dozen violent protestors at the Capital as the basest kind of evil when all of it was evil political violence and was all wrong.

trident5000 6y ago
This is exactly what I was thinking when I watched the videos. It stands in stark contrast to the media narrative.
steve_adams_86 6y ago
I agree. For days I thought perhaps hundreds had been protesting. I was blown away to hear it was thousands, and immediately realized that the media was latching onto perhaps dozens of bad apples, so to speak. I think it’s plain to see that most Americans don’t want to murder politicians. The Republican voters who feel disenfranchised aren’t all sharpening their axes right now. I think it’s insane what happened. It just isn’t representative of republicans. Not sure what to do with that. I’m Canadian so I suppose it doesn’t matter much. I only see what the media gives me and I don’t personally know a lot of Americans, let alone republicans.
- kadoban 6y ago
  There were more than what I'd call dozens, there's already been over 100 arrests and it's early in the investigation. Also basing this on the videos I've seen. There were hallways full of people packed behind barriers, streams of people going by different locations, etc. I wouldn't say violence of this sort is representative of Republicans, but Republicans are too accepting of the extremists that this event grew out of. One of them is the leader of their party.
  - steve_adams_86 6y ago
    You're right, it was more than dozens. I think my mental model is something like: - Dozens of severely bad actors - many of which actually did intend abduction or murder. These people are terrifying. - Hundreds of bad actors. People attempting to subvert democracy which, despite sounding alarmist or cheesy without proper context (You need to see the videos to understand, I think) is also very scary. These people will hurt you for their political cause. - Thousands of people convinced that their political system, their democracy, isn't serving them. This is alright with me - I think they were convinced by the bad/severely bad actors, and I believe this happens on all political spectrums. I know many "left leaning" folks with arguably insane ideas about politics and society in general, so this isn't a republican disorder. I don't resent them or even myself for coming to unreasonable conclusions and I believe they're actually trying to improve their situation in the way they know how. Being wrong in and of itself isn't a crime, I suppose. Protesting on bad information is unfortunate, but not criminal. I have sympathy for all of these people. Things seem pretty awful for them right now, whether it should or not. It all seems very self-inflicted. Regardless, it seems a lot of manipulation has been involved. It's very cult-like. Power hungry folks have recruited disenfranchised individuals to serve their agendas. It's really sad. The rest of the republican voters will be a mix of these groups, but I suspect they've come to terms with the election despite disappointment. They don't want to zip tie anyone in congress or illegally overturn the election. The bad actors really should experience consequences. They are a rot that contaminates the people around them. Whether they intend that or not, have good intentions or not, they have become so unreasonable and dangerous that they need to be contained at the least. I believe that includes Donald Trump most of all.
IfOnlyYouKnew 6y ago
Storming parliament is fundamentally different from walking down some street with signs. That's true even if the same amount of violence somehow happens at those events. Which it didn't: These people had functioning gallows, yelled "kill Mike Pence", actually beat a police officer to death, managed to trample four of their own to death, brought zip-ties to take hostages, etc. And you consider that peaceful?
- hajile 6y ago
  You should look at the actual charges for the things you mention. ZERO charges of rioting. ZERO charges of attempted kidnapping. ZERO charges of insurrection. ZERO charges related to congress-people in any way, shape or form. Zip-tie guy (the retired Lt. Col) and other zip-tie guy: entering a restricted building, violent entry, and disorderly conduct. NOTHING about your kidnapping claims. Likewise, Viking Dude, West Virginia Rep, confederate flag guy, Auschwitz guy Olympic Gold Medalist, and around 60 others: entering a restricted building, violent entry, and disorderly conduct. Sometimes restricted building charge is swapped for obstruction, picketing in the Capitol, trespassing, or dropped completely Molotov guy: 16 DC unregistered weapon violations, 2 federal violations (probably Molotovs), but he wasn't actually in the Capitol as far as I can tell, so any mention of those completely lacks intent. Other big weapon guy: Making threats and unlicensed weapons, but again, not actually charged for being near the Capitol. Guy sitting in Pelosi's desk, fur coat guy, and podium guy: violent entry, disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, and theft of public money, property or records. Police officers: not sure about charges, but claim the DC police let them in which would probably mean nothing sticks. Another guy got a curfew and unlawful entry for standing in a parking lot. Got to pump up the numbers somehow. Now, we DO have 1 murderer (killed police officer with fire extinguisher). We have around 18 people wanted for "assault" (which includes simply shoving an officer -- serious, but nothing unusual during protests). We have 7 other people wanted for a police beating that ARE serious. Finally, we have a seemingly unrelated pipe bomber who was likely using the event for cover. He/She (unlike everyone at the Capitol) made sure to cover their face and targeted the DNC/RNC headquarters rather than being involved in the "stop the steal" protest. That's at MOST 30 people who did anything more than wandering around the capitol. Notice also that they didn't even try to charge with rioting. That's three orders of magnitude LESS than a single percent of all protesters. Meanwhile, Antifa was blowing up firework cannonballs in the faces of police in Oregon for MONTHS at a FEDERAL courthouse. They called to kill all kinds of people -- including the president and vice president. There's videos of them doing stuff like lying in wait with hammers until police tried to go through the door. They tried to block police inside a precinct and burn it down. They beat scores of police to a bloody pulp. I don't care how you try to paint it, that was a way worse event both by the percent of protesters involved in violence and by the raw numbers of hospitalizations, permanently disabled or dead people at their hands. As to trampling, it's sad, but people have gotten trampled to death at all kinds of events and it doesn't really indicate very much. For example, in 2019, 3 people got trampled to death in a St. Patrick's Day line. Around 150 people got trampled to death in 2020, and that's just the ones recorded on Wikipedia. This isn't a good argument for anything and might have happened anyway. I hold that all 30 of those people at the Capitol should be found, arrested, and charged. I don't agree that a couple hundred thousand other people should be tarred and feathered along with them. I especially dislike the hypocrisy that the worst political violence in the US since the Civil War should be labelled as perfectly acceptable just because you agree with their end goal because the end does NOT justify those means.
kthejoker2 6y ago
> Most of those didn't have large groups just standing around waving signs and chanting -- almost everyone was involved in the violence and destruction This is demonstrably false, and you should retract it. Second, it is qualitatively different to riot and break into one of our main bodies of government and threaten the lives of anyone (even if it was just a select few out of the larger whole) during an important part of the process of our peaceful transition of power. To simply equate this rioting to this summer's protests (and yes riots) and say "it's all wrong" is to almost miss the point entirely about what the impact, the risks, and the response to these two things should be. And while I would broadly agree that most of the content collected here is of angry, mostly harmless (and willfully misinformed) constituents asking for their voice to be heard, what I also saw was: * Largely unanimous support for attacking the police, breaking and entering into the Capitol, people cheering and laughing at everyone trespassing, breaking barricades. Definitely no signs of disapproval or concern for the police, the Congress, public property, or even the optics of the situation. There were of course a couple of instances of "don't hurt the cops" but they were completely outnumbered by the "this is OUR HOUSE"/1776 crowd. * If you just watch the last 2 hours of video - when the National Guard arrived, pushed people out of the building, then off the Capitol, out of the Mall, and so on - the videos turned extremely angry, negative, "f*k the police", "traitors!" etc it is absolutely clear that the only reason you have such a positive vibe about the first half of the videos is because there was such little resistance to their actions during the first half. If there had been armed National Guard presence there from the outset, this would've been much uglier, without the "waving flags and chanting" you see.
- hajile 6y ago
  There were 100-200,000 people. Less than 100 were wanted for entering the capitol. Less than 30 of those got charged with more than some variant of unlawful entering. NONE got charged with the stuff people have been talking about (I go into the details in another post on this thread). Even with the National Guard and the anger at being disrupted, they still left and the violence didn't hold a candle to most protests (You should look up videos of the Antifa attacks on the Federal Government in Oregon or any of the other large protests over last summer and you'll see what I'm talking about).
deeviant 6y ago
> As I said before, I have zero tolerance for the violent people at the Capital. As you spend your entire comment denying the huge amount of violence that happened that day. Man you are really sold on ignoring any of the violence that happened that day, aren't you? https://d2hxwnssq7ss7g.cloudfront.net/x2GqSN2kAGY3_cvt.mp4 https://d2hxwnssq7ss7g.cloudfront.net/x2GqSN2kAGY3_cvt.mp4 There are a great many more videos of violence happening that day, but really you only need one video of insurrections, in the capitol building after they broke in, fighting as a mob against an out-numbered group of frantic police officers, to conclude the event was violent. You can't have a group of people nearby or inside the capitol building literally beat a police officer to death and "undo" said violence by having a lot of people outside the building standing around outside innocently shouting, "Hang Mike Pence!" Also, although it seemed like everybody posted every video they took that day, that probably isn't true. It's reasonable to believe that these people had some inhibition from posting videos in which their side obviously looked bad, which would bias the corpus of videos to be that much more "friendly" to the insurrectionists.