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I'm not justifying Jan 6. I'm merely pointing out that it was an expression of frustration and that it's not anywhere close to the civil war, as some politician

I'm not justifying Jan 6. I'm merely pointing out that it was an expression of frustration and that it's not anywhere close to the civil war, as some politicians have put it. I think the same is true of other domestic terror violence we've seen. The Civil War is still the worst domestic insurrection in history. The two are not even comparable. That this comparison is even humored shows a major problem. > The only teaching necessary is some history: even in the darkest hours of the civil war, the enemies of the Constitution never managed to sack the US capitol. I'm sorry you're being ridiculous. The US capitol has been bombed and parts destroyed by domestic terror groups in living memory. Those attacks were way worse than this. US congressmen have been shot at by radicalized domestic terrorists as well. Considering (1) Jan 6 resulted in minimal property destruction (certainly no structural damage) and (2) no politician killed (the only person dying directly as a result being Ashli Babbett, a rioter), it's safe to say that the bombings were worse (due to worse property destruction) and the shootings were worse (due to imminent potential of death to the victims) Perhaps you have some learning to do.

mullingitover 5y ago
Minimize it all you want, the facts remain: if the attackers had succeeded in their aims to overturn a legitimate and fair election, that would've been the end of the United States as a constitutional republic. Their motivations and 'frustration' are irrelevant - frustration with the outcome of an election is not a free pass to tear up the Constitution.
- OwlsParlay 5y ago
  The rioters had no coherent "aim", they basically treated like a tourist trap, and were practically let in by the police.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    No coherent aim, people just coincidentally had human restraint-grade zip ties with them at a peaceful protest? Nope, don't try to whitewash this. Thirty seconds of google searches easily puts these efforts to lie. > In the weeks before supporters of then-President Donald Trump assaulted the U.S. Capitol, TheDonald.win forum commenters debated how best to build a gallows for hanging — or simply terrifying — members of Congress deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber? What kind of rope? And how many nooses? > “The website, TheDonald, played a far more central role in the January 6th Capitol insurrection than was previously known,” he said. “There are thousands of posts — with tens of thousands of comments — detailing plans to travel to Washington and engage in violence against the U.S. Capitol. The ultimate end goal of this violence was, on behalf of Trump, disrupt the Congress and overturn the presidential election.” [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedonald-capitol-attack-advance-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedona...
    - iammisc 5y ago
      > TheDonald.win forum commenters debated how best to build a gallows for hanging — or simply terrifying — members of Congress deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber? What kind of rope? And how many nooses? And wallstreetbets debates how to please your wife's boyfriend. That is to say both /r/thedonald and /r/wallstreetbets (who has also harmed people via their encouragement of gambling the markets) have similar cultures of irreverence, hyperbole, trolling, and joking with the intent of setting people off. They find it funny when taken out of context and used to terrify people. For example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan jokingly made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand sign, thus causing a moral panic. I'm not saying one way or the other as to whether the comments here are right. But you're dealing with a forum that trolls people by posting cartoon frogs, mocking the OK sign, and calling each other centipedes.
      - mullingitover 5y ago
        > For example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan jokingly made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand sign, thus causing a moral panic. A lot of the 4chan dynamic involves people starting with something edgy as a dumb joke, and then the site's large subset of actual idiot racists taking it seriously. The OK sign was a great example of that - some people started it as a dumb joke and then actual racists enthusiastically embraced it. Hell, 4chan's racism in general started as a dumb joke and ended up with 51 people being murdered in Christchurch. So I wouldn't use the fact that some subset of people have an edgy sense of humor as a license to hand-wave away other violent idiots who were serious as a heart attack with their planning.
    - remarkEon 5y ago
      >human restraint-grade zip ties Which were found on a table, not brought in to the "insurrection". Anyway, the entire narrative of the "insurrection" is a useful tool for the larger state security apparatus to justify ever increasing and intrusive technological surveillance - this time on US Citizens ("domestic war on terror" anyone? [0]). Which explains why the lie about the death of the Capital Police officer[1] was so useful that it wasn't corrected, even though it was verifiably false the entire time. I'm not aware of a single person who's been charged with "insurrection" in this alleged "insurrection" that took place. Happy to be proven wrong here. Lots of trespassing, assaulting a peace officer, and felony rioting though. The point I'm trying to make is that the technology a lot of us work on allows violent lies to spread with unprecedented ease, but there isn't a real way for them to be walked back after they're out in the open. >Nope, don't try to whitewash this. There's also some historical context that everyone seems to be forgetting. Puerto Rican nationalists shooting congressmen from the House balcony in the 50s (Carter pardoned them), the Kennedys, all the Weather Underground bombings in DC in the 70s, more actual assassination attempts in the 80s, various far-right and far-left terrorism here and there. This is to say that events like this are not exactly unique, and it's been really weird for me since I spent most of my early 20s studying this kind of thing (history, terrorism both here and abroad) when I was in the Army. It's like I'm watching everyone collectively want to LARP that this is the "worst thing ever" so that they can be a part of history. "Insurrection", for me at least, carries a very specific definition, and what happened on 6JAN2020, while awful, certainly doesn't fit into that category. Felony riot, absolutely. It surely isn't the worst thing ever, yes you are a part of history (however you want to define that), and the Republic is carrying on just fine. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Nation... [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
  - khazhoux 5y ago
    I would encourage you to watch these two videos and then re-assess whether they were "practically let in": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZvp-Dv0gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZvp-Dv0gg (crush inside the building) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGthdTzedk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGthdTzedk (mob trying to break in, and beating officers with flagpole and other objects)
- brandonmenc 5y ago
  > if the attackers had succeeded in their aims to overturn a legitimate and fair election, that would've been the end of the United States as a constitutional republic. Hyperbole to the Nth. Do we really want to go down the path of judging and punishing people for what they'd have been able to accomplish if they hypothetically had unlimited resources they really wouldn't ever have access to? Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all instances of just about anything.
  - mullingitover 5y ago
    "I shouldn't be be held accountable for this bad thing I didn't even succeed at doing" is certainly an argument many current inmates have made.
  - HelloMcFly 5y ago
    > Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all instances of just about anything. Now that's hyperbole to Nth degree. That's the slippery-slope fallacy all the way down to the most extreme conclusion. Let's instead stick to what we know: 1) Many of the rioters had an intent to de facto overthrow the government. They had guns, nooses, there were chat logs, etc. This is not conjecture. 2) Many of the rioters had the resources to do what they intended: they easily outmatched the Capitol Police forces, and backup forces were slow to respond. The physical barriers rioters encountered were not sufficient to the task. 3) What they they lacked was the knowledge of where to go to accomplish their aims. They were too slow to the chambers, and couldn't locate their targets. When they got close, those at the front lacked conviction after seeing their friend justifiably shot. I'm think it's quite appropriate to consider January 6th a "near miss" for our country as we know it, but given comments like yours and the revisionism happening before our eyes it doesn't quite seem we're out of danger. It is very appropriate to me to punish people for their actions, and sometimes for their intended actions. "Attempted Murder" is a crime for a reason, just because they failed to complete their task doesn't de facto exonerate them of wrong doing!
    - iammisc 5y ago
      Honestly, I'm at the point where I hope you get your way. It'll hopefully lead to a proper secession of states so that the increasingly obvious fact that the country has split into two irreconcilable societies can be made a reality and we can all live in peace. Let's hope that the separation happens peacefully.
spoonjim 5y ago
Jan 6 had worse intent than the Civil War -- the Confederacy only wanted to secede while the Jan 6ers wanted to install an illegitimate government with jurisdiction over the entire country. Just because they were hapless and unsuccessful doesn't mean they aren't guilty of an attempted murder of American constitutional democracy.
- iammisc 5y ago
  Oh my goodness. this is simply something else. This is why the country is so divided. Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a government [1] for a few days before American forces reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe that it was in any way an actual threat to American sovereignty. Or when protestors broke into the Supreme Court to overturn the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, no one compared it to the civil war. How hyperbolic can we get? And yet, hyperbole like yours is not only tolerated by mainstream news sources, it is parroted by elected officials, other news outlets, and regular people. It's absolutely insane. [1] By all measures, Raz the warlord's occupation of chaz qualifies as having been, for a few days, the sovereign government of that area. They enforced a law, punished criminals, taxed people, and provided safety, all the while preventing other forces from doing the very same. This meets any reasonable definition of sovereignty.
  - spoonjim 5y ago
    Did the Chaz idiots have 147 of 435 House members vote to certify their independence from the US?
    - iammisc 5y ago
      I'm afraid I don't understand what you're referencing exactly.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    > Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a government [1] for a few days before American forces reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe that it was in any way an actual threat to American sovereignty. Right, it was a (trivial, both in scale and plausible durability) threat to territorial integrity, not sovereignty or Constitutional order. Unlike Jan. 6, which sought to enforce the President's stated desire to overturn his electoral defeat, a desire in which the insurrectionists were joined by a substantial number of lawmakers, and sought to coerce or remove key opponents (most critically the Vice President acting as President of the Senate, under a theory that electoral votes could be arbitrarily discarded by whoever was serving in that position, which the President and his allies endorsed and advocated but the VP had publicly rejected.)

mullingitover 5y ago

Minimize it all you want, the facts remain: if the attackers had succeeded in their aims to overturn a legitimate and fair election, that would've been the end of the United States as a constitutional republic. Their motivations and 'frustration' are irrelevant - frustration with the outcome of an election is not a free pass to tear up the Constitution.

OwlsParlay 5y ago
The rioters had no coherent "aim", they basically treated like a tourist trap, and were practically let in by the police.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  No coherent aim, people just coincidentally had human restraint-grade zip ties with them at a peaceful protest? Nope, don't try to whitewash this. Thirty seconds of google searches easily puts these efforts to lie. > In the weeks before supporters of then-President Donald Trump assaulted the U.S. Capitol, TheDonald.win forum commenters debated how best to build a gallows for hanging — or simply terrifying — members of Congress deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber? What kind of rope? And how many nooses? > “The website, TheDonald, played a far more central role in the January 6th Capitol insurrection than was previously known,” he said. “There are thousands of posts — with tens of thousands of comments — detailing plans to travel to Washington and engage in violence against the U.S. Capitol. The ultimate end goal of this violence was, on behalf of Trump, disrupt the Congress and overturn the presidential election.” [1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedonald-capitol-attack-advance-democracy/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/04/15/thedona...
  - iammisc 5y ago
    > TheDonald.win forum commenters debated how best to build a gallows for hanging — or simply terrifying — members of Congress deemed disloyal. What kind of lumber? What kind of rope? And how many nooses? And wallstreetbets debates how to please your wife's boyfriend. That is to say both /r/thedonald and /r/wallstreetbets (who has also harmed people via their encouragement of gambling the markets) have similar cultures of irreverence, hyperbole, trolling, and joking with the intent of setting people off. They find it funny when taken out of context and used to terrify people. For example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan jokingly made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand sign, thus causing a moral panic. I'm not saying one way or the other as to whether the comments here are right. But you're dealing with a forum that trolls people by posting cartoon frogs, mocking the OK sign, and calling each other centipedes.
    - mullingitover 5y ago
      > For example, it's the same thing behind how 4chan jokingly made the OK sign into a white supremacist hand sign, thus causing a moral panic. A lot of the 4chan dynamic involves people starting with something edgy as a dumb joke, and then the site's large subset of actual idiot racists taking it seriously. The OK sign was a great example of that - some people started it as a dumb joke and then actual racists enthusiastically embraced it. Hell, 4chan's racism in general started as a dumb joke and ended up with 51 people being murdered in Christchurch. So I wouldn't use the fact that some subset of people have an edgy sense of humor as a license to hand-wave away other violent idiots who were serious as a heart attack with their planning.
  - remarkEon 5y ago
    >human restraint-grade zip ties Which were found on a table, not brought in to the "insurrection". Anyway, the entire narrative of the "insurrection" is a useful tool for the larger state security apparatus to justify ever increasing and intrusive technological surveillance - this time on US Citizens ("domestic war on terror" anyone? [0]). Which explains why the lie about the death of the Capital Police officer[1] was so useful that it wasn't corrected, even though it was verifiably false the entire time. I'm not aware of a single person who's been charged with "insurrection" in this alleged "insurrection" that took place. Happy to be proven wrong here. Lots of trespassing, assaulting a peace officer, and felony rioting though. The point I'm trying to make is that the technology a lot of us work on allows violent lies to spread with unprecedented ease, but there isn't a real way for them to be walked back after they're out in the open. >Nope, don't try to whitewash this. There's also some historical context that everyone seems to be forgetting. Puerto Rican nationalists shooting congressmen from the House balcony in the 50s (Carter pardoned them), the Kennedys, all the Weather Underground bombings in DC in the 70s, more actual assassination attempts in the 80s, various far-right and far-left terrorism here and there. This is to say that events like this are not exactly unique, and it's been really weird for me since I spent most of my early 20s studying this kind of thing (history, terrorism both here and abroad) when I was in the Army. It's like I'm watching everyone collectively want to LARP that this is the "worst thing ever" so that they can be a part of history. "Insurrection", for me at least, carries a very specific definition, and what happened on 6JAN2020, while awful, certainly doesn't fit into that category. Felony riot, absolutely. It surely isn't the worst thing ever, yes you are a part of history (however you want to define that), and the Republic is carrying on just fine. [0] https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/National-Strategy-for-Countering-Domestic-Terrorism.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Nation... [1] https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-about-officer https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the-media-lied-repeatedly-a...
- khazhoux 5y ago
  I would encourage you to watch these two videos and then re-assess whether they were "practically let in": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZvp-Dv0gg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZvp-Dv0gg (crush inside the building) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGthdTzedk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEGthdTzedk (mob trying to break in, and beating officers with flagpole and other objects)
brandonmenc 5y ago
> if the attackers had succeeded in their aims to overturn a legitimate and fair election, that would've been the end of the United States as a constitutional republic. Hyperbole to the Nth. Do we really want to go down the path of judging and punishing people for what they'd have been able to accomplish if they hypothetically had unlimited resources they really wouldn't ever have access to? Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all instances of just about anything.
- mullingitover 5y ago
  "I shouldn't be be held accountable for this bad thing I didn't even succeed at doing" is certainly an argument many current inmates have made.
- HelloMcFly 5y ago
  > Everyone would deserve a death sentence in all instances of just about anything. Now that's hyperbole to Nth degree. That's the slippery-slope fallacy all the way down to the most extreme conclusion. Let's instead stick to what we know: 1) Many of the rioters had an intent to de facto overthrow the government. They had guns, nooses, there were chat logs, etc. This is not conjecture. 2) Many of the rioters had the resources to do what they intended: they easily outmatched the Capitol Police forces, and backup forces were slow to respond. The physical barriers rioters encountered were not sufficient to the task. 3) What they they lacked was the knowledge of where to go to accomplish their aims. They were too slow to the chambers, and couldn't locate their targets. When they got close, those at the front lacked conviction after seeing their friend justifiably shot. I'm think it's quite appropriate to consider January 6th a "near miss" for our country as we know it, but given comments like yours and the revisionism happening before our eyes it doesn't quite seem we're out of danger. It is very appropriate to me to punish people for their actions, and sometimes for their intended actions. "Attempted Murder" is a crime for a reason, just because they failed to complete their task doesn't de facto exonerate them of wrong doing!
  - iammisc 5y ago
    Honestly, I'm at the point where I hope you get your way. It'll hopefully lead to a proper secession of states so that the increasingly obvious fact that the country has split into two irreconcilable societies can be made a reality and we can all live in peace. Let's hope that the separation happens peacefully.

spoonjim 5y ago

Jan 6 had worse intent than the Civil War -- the Confederacy only wanted to secede while the Jan 6ers wanted to install an illegitimate government with jurisdiction over the entire country. Just because they were hapless and unsuccessful doesn't mean they aren't guilty of an attempted murder of American constitutional democracy.

iammisc 5y ago
Oh my goodness. this is simply something else. This is why the country is so divided. Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a government [1] for a few days before American forces reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe that it was in any way an actual threat to American sovereignty. Or when protestors broke into the Supreme Court to overturn the confirmation of Judge Kavanaugh, no one compared it to the civil war. How hyperbolic can we get? And yet, hyperbole like yours is not only tolerated by mainstream news sources, it is parroted by elected officials, other news outlets, and regular people. It's absolutely insane. [1] By all measures, Raz the warlord's occupation of chaz qualifies as having been, for a few days, the sovereign government of that area. They enforced a law, punished criminals, taxed people, and provided safety, all the while preventing other forces from doing the very same. This meets any reasonable definition of sovereignty.
- spoonjim 5y ago
  Did the Chaz idiots have 147 of 435 House members vote to certify their independence from the US?
  - iammisc 5y ago
    I'm afraid I don't understand what you're referencing exactly.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > Despite my dislike of left-wing insurrections, like seattle's chop, in which they actually did install a government [1] for a few days before American forces reclaimed it, it would be absolute hyperbole to believe that it was in any way an actual threat to American sovereignty. Right, it was a (trivial, both in scale and plausible durability) threat to territorial integrity, not sovereignty or Constitutional order. Unlike Jan. 6, which sought to enforce the President's stated desire to overturn his electoral defeat, a desire in which the insurrectionists were joined by a substantial number of lawmakers, and sought to coerce or remove key opponents (most critically the Vice President acting as President of the Senate, under a theory that electoral votes could be arbitrarily discarded by whoever was serving in that position, which the President and his allies endorsed and advocated but the VP had publicly rejected.)