The Right Way to View Competing Political Horrors

[thoreau]

And I'm saying that I'm sorry for what your friends went through, but we're supposedly not talking about how much people are afraid of antifa or BLM or Trump or Qanon, because someone is terrified of each of those. We're talking about whether one side or the other is actually worse

Ah. I see the confusion here. Yes, I agree that the Capitol rioters are worse. My point about the person in Minneapolis was in a comment that went off on a tangent and said the following:

Nonetheless, moral high ground is a precious thing, and I know too many people who freaked out at any hint of criticizing the violence and arson. You'd have to layer on disclaimer after disclaimer about the cops before you could even begin to say that burning down a business district is a bad idea.

A friend has relatives who lived less than a block from a gas station that burned down. They were scared to go outside, but scared to stay home lest the fire spread or the rioters come to them. They told someone that fear and got chewed out for their white privilege. Because they were afraid of arson during a riot.

I was commenting on the public discourse, not on the relative badness of the rioters. (And, again, I think that lethal violence to stop a vote count is about as bad as political violence can get in a democratic society, so I agree that the Q-Cult protests are worse than the BLM protests.)

[Warren]

Warren come on.

Not to give T any ammunition or anything but it sounds a lot like you are acting like a physicist. You know the math on it so you are oversimplifying a LOT of variables. And wow it works. Theres your answer. Not so hard.

And it's wrong.

But it's hard as fuck. It's people. To many variables. It feels like everything that holds the system together keeps getting fucked with. Not the overall society. The riots and fires were the same in the 60s. I've seen those pictures and read some of those stories. Are we as a group going to point out, "Yeah those civil rights being enforced are good but what about all the property damage? Unconscionable!! And some people even died!!"

I'm trying to understand you brother but it makes no sense no matter how I try to put on your hat. And to a lesser extent, JasonL.

I'm really trying man. I swear. But I don't. It's way more complicated and I dont understand how you two can look at the summer and only see some property damage.

I'm just reacting to losing friends over FB posts. Like "I don't want to know you anymore". Some people have unfriended me, some people I unfriended. It's a big shit sandwich.

Moreover. I don't see ANY movement away from All Sportsbar all The Time. We're already farther down this path than I thought it could go. And when it got to a point that I was all "They've gone too far, this is not sustainable, it's going to collapse any minute now." both sides doubled down. And then they doubled down again.

Jason is trying to make sense of something that doesn't make sense. He's making an appeal to reasonableness to unreasonable people. I wish him well but I think it's folly.

[lunchstealer]

I'm saying "joining a mob to break some shit and maybe loot" and "joining a mob to murder specific people" are fundamentally not the same thing in any sense. And, if you're part of a mob chanting "kill Mike Pence" while in the next room from Mike Pence, and you then subsequently tell me "I didn't actually want to kill Mike Pence," I'm not sure what exactly about your behavior warrants the benefit of the doubt.

How about "joining a mob where some people are threatening/committing crimes while other people are exercising their constitutional right to protest" vs. "joining a mob where some people are exercising their first amendment right to protest while others are threatening/committing crimes?" Fundamentally not the same in any sense or?

I think it's fair to compare, but I think one is being disingenuous if one doesn't also contrast. There are a lot of things that were different about the capitol attack than the Minneapolis precinct attack or any of a number of other acts of lawlessness.

Violence and destruction of property is bad.

Violence and destruction of property and attacking the people carrying out the heretofore mundane task of transferring power between executives and apparently coming prepared to drag Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, etc away to a lynching with the goal of installing your favored strongman is bad and has some Venn overlap but there are some significant parts of the latter that extend far beyond the former.

[Eric the .5b]

Ah. I see the confusion here. Yes, I agree that the Capitol rioters are worse. My point about the person in Minneapolis was in a comment that went off on a tangent and said the following:

Yeah, I read it.

I regret replying.

[Warren]

Anyone suggesting complete overlap or complete separation of BLM protests and whatever we are calling buffalo dude insurrection isn't really taking analysis seriously.

I feel like there's a decent-sized overlap between BLM riots and "Qultists smashing federal buildings" riots, but almost no overlap between either of those two and what happened at the Capitol. Though clearly I find the Qult idiotic and repugnant, the federal building stuff was focused on property, and the destruction thereof. For whatever reason, American protests tend to get kinetic, and a lot of groups on both sides destroy property when things get too heated. But the Capitol stuff wasn't about expelling rage on a building. It was about hunting down and murdering Congress. They built a a gallows outside the Capitol. Think about that; guys showed up with lumber, tools, and rope, and built something to either lynch people, or make them think that's what they were there for. They went in with zip ties and chanted about killing specific people they didn't like. They beat one cop to death, and attacked at least one other with literal American flags. This isn't people who don't like what the system is doing and want to change it. This is people who want the system razed to the ground. That's not the same thing as the other stuff that's been happening, and acting like it is diminishes the severity of what happened on the 6th.

Unless you're claiming that everyone in the DC insurrection was there to murder legislators or that no one in the summer protests was torching police precincts and looting stores with the intent to raze the system, then you're kind of making Jason's point for him.

According to the FBI, the guy who torched the Minneapolis police precinct was actually a far-right Boogaloo Boy posing as a left-winger.

He was captured on video shooting 13 rounds at the police building while people were inside on the night of May 28, according to the complaint, which also said he helped set the building ablaze.

'Helped' implies he did not act alone.

Protestors also tried to burn down a Portland precinct.

Arson was a staple of the summer protests. Well beyond Portland, where by the way, they burned more than the PPD precint.

[thoreau]

Ah. I see the confusion here. Yes, I agree that the Capitol rioters are worse. My point about the person in Minneapolis was in a comment that went off on a tangent and said the following:

Yeah, I read it.

I regret replying.

I'm sorry if my response was rude.

[Pham Nuwen]

Anyone suggesting complete overlap or complete separation of BLM protests and whatever we are calling buffalo dude insurrection isn't really taking analysis seriously.

I feel like there's a decent-sized overlap between BLM riots and "Qultists smashing federal buildings" riots, but almost no overlap between either of those two and what happened at the Capitol. Though clearly I find the Qult idiotic and repugnant, the federal building stuff was focused on property, and the destruction thereof. For whatever reason, American protests tend to get kinetic, and a lot of groups on both sides destroy property when things get too heated. But the Capitol stuff wasn't about expelling rage on a building. It was about hunting down and murdering Congress. They built a a gallows outside the Capitol. Think about that; guys showed up with lumber, tools, and rope, and built something to either lynch people, or make them think that's what they were there for. They went in with zip ties and chanted about killing specific people they didn't like. They beat one cop to death, and attacked at least one other with literal American flags. This isn't people who don't like what the system is doing and want to change it. This is people who want the system razed to the ground. That's not the same thing as the other stuff that's been happening, and acting like it is diminishes the severity of what happened on the 6th.

Unless you're claiming that everyone in the DC insurrection was there to murder legislators or that no one in the summer protests was torching police precincts and looting stores with the intent to raze the system, then you're kind of making Jason's point for him.

According to the FBI, the guy who torched the Minneapolis police precinct was actually a far-right Boogaloo Boy posing as a left-winger.

He was captured on video shooting 13 rounds at the police building while people were inside on the night of May 28, according to the complaint, which also said he helped set the building ablaze.

'Helped' implies he did not act alone.

Protestors also tried to burn down a Portland precinct.

Arson was a staple of the summer protests. Well beyond Portland, where by the way, they burned more than the PPD precint.

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

[Warren]

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

Okay, but 'mostly bullshit' is like 'mostly peaceful'. There was a lot of arson this summer. Nightly fires in the CHAZ ZONE.
Here in St. Louis there was something set ablaze every weekend for a while.
The Local News had people standing in front of a burning vehicle with vandals and looters running wild complaining how the cops aren't showing up.
But when the drone cam pulled up you could see lots of patrol cars with their lights rolling two blocks away as the cops were dealing with some other shit. It was chaos and anarchy.

[lunchstealer]

I feel like there's a decent-sized overlap between BLM riots and "Qultists smashing federal buildings" riots, but almost no overlap between either of those two and what happened at the Capitol. Though clearly I find the Qult idiotic and repugnant, the federal building stuff was focused on property, and the destruction thereof. For whatever reason, American protests tend to get kinetic, and a lot of groups on both sides destroy property when things get too heated. But the Capitol stuff wasn't about expelling rage on a building. It was about hunting down and murdering Congress. They built a a gallows outside the Capitol. Think about that; guys showed up with lumber, tools, and rope, and built something to either lynch people, or make them think that's what they were there for. They went in with zip ties and chanted about killing specific people they didn't like. They beat one cop to death, and attacked at least one other with literal American flags. This isn't people who don't like what the system is doing and want to change it. This is people who want the system razed to the ground. That's not the same thing as the other stuff that's been happening, and acting like it is diminishes the severity of what happened on the 6th.

Unless you're claiming that everyone in the DC insurrection was there to murder legislators or that no one in the summer protests was torching police precincts and looting stores with the intent to raze the system, then you're kind of making Jason's point for him.

According to the FBI, the guy who torched the Minneapolis police precinct was actually a far-right Boogaloo Boy posing as a left-winger.

He was captured on video shooting 13 rounds at the police building while people were inside on the night of May 28, according to the complaint, which also said he helped set the building ablaze.

'Helped' implies he did not act alone.

Protestors also tried to burn down a Portland precinct.

Arson was a staple of the summer protests. Well beyond Portland, where by the way, they burned more than the PPD precint.

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

And comparing arson over June/July 2020 with the same time periods from 2015-2019, and 2020 is still the highest year, but only beats 2017 by about 10%.

[Pham Nuwen]

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

Okay, but 'mostly bullshit' is like 'mostly peaceful'. There was a lot of arson this summer. Nightly fires in the CHAZ ZONE.
Here in St. Louis there was something set ablaze every weekend for a while.
The Local News had people standing in front of a burning vehicle with vandals and looters running wild complaining how the cops aren't showing up.
But when the drone cam pulled up you could see lots of patrol cars with their lights rolling two blocks away as the cops were dealing with some other shit. It was chaos and anarchy.

I'm going to blow your mind here but St Louis is mostly not on fire most of the time. I guarantee you there were multiple fires just this last weekend. You're asking me to believe that things are radically different when people arent taking to the streets to protest a perceived wrong by the government. Is it all puppy dogs and rainbows in St Louis right now in your worldview?

[Warren]

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

Okay, but 'mostly bullshit' is like 'mostly peaceful'. There was a lot of arson this summer. Nightly fires in the CHAZ ZONE.
Here in St. Louis there was something set ablaze every weekend for a while.
The Local News had people standing in front of a burning vehicle with vandals and looters running wild complaining how the cops aren't showing up.
But when the drone cam pulled up you could see lots of patrol cars with their lights rolling two blocks away as the cops were dealing with some other shit. It was chaos and anarchy.

I'm going to blow your mind here but St Louis is mostly not on fire most of the time. I guarantee you there were multiple fires just this last weekend. You're asking me to believe that things are radically different when people arent taking to the streets to protest a perceived wrong by the government. Is it all puppy dogs and rainbows in St Louis right now in your worldview?

No dude. I am telling you. This wasn't that.
This was massive lawlessness. There aren't fifty patrol cars and half the PD out on one street on any give night of the year.
It was beyond anything I've seen in my adult life. And WTF? This isn't some secret. The summer unrest was well documented in cities across the country.

[Pham Nuwen]

I recall this article. It's mostly bullshit. Fireworks and normal accidents outside the protest area are the vast majority of those "arson" claims.

Okay, but 'mostly bullshit' is like 'mostly peaceful'. There was a lot of arson this summer. Nightly fires in the CHAZ ZONE.
Here in St. Louis there was something set ablaze every weekend for a while.
The Local News had people standing in front of a burning vehicle with vandals and looters running wild complaining how the cops aren't showing up.
But when the drone cam pulled up you could see lots of patrol cars with their lights rolling two blocks away as the cops were dealing with some other shit. It was chaos and anarchy.

I'm going to blow your mind here but St Louis is mostly not on fire most of the time. I guarantee you there were multiple fires just this last weekend. You're asking me to believe that things are radically different when people arent taking to the streets to protest a perceived wrong by the government. Is it all puppy dogs and rainbows in St Louis right now in your worldview?

No dude. I am telling you. This wasn't that.
This was massive lawlessness. There aren't fifty patrol cars and half the PD out on one street on any give night of the year.
It was beyond anything I've seen in my adult life. And WTF? This isn't some secret. The summer unrest was well documented in cities across the country.

I saw a lot of fires and looting. Lawlessness. But I also saw a lot of lawlessness from the law. I've read about the civil rights marches that arent as famous as the ones you normally see in history books. Those pictures matched up with pictures I've seen of Portland and St Louis.

In short, I dont see this summer as some sort of Hannibal ad portas. I think its just things finally and inevitably boiling over.

Shrug. The needle doesnt move really in this country without that awfulness. Nothing else will get through to most people. I'm optimistic that something good will come from it. Possibly setting myself up for disappointment

[Shem]

It was beyond anything I've seen in my adult life.

Oh, when did you make it to see CHAZ?

On the other hand, I did make it to CHAZ. Place was not burning every night. It wasn't that big; if it had been burning that much, it would have been a cinder long before the cops moved in on it. The news reports you're basing this on were ridiculously biased toward the police, who, in Seattle, are largely bigoted trolls. This was decades of cops being assholes while most people who didn't live in cities immediately gave them the benefit of the doubt.

[Hugh Akston]

I'm saying "joining a mob to break some shit and maybe loot" and "joining a mob to murder specific people" are fundamentally not the same thing in any sense. And, if you're part of a mob chanting "kill Mike Pence" while in the next room from Mike Pence, and you then subsequently tell me "I didn't actually want to kill Mike Pence," I'm not sure what exactly about your behavior warrants the benefit of the doubt.

How about "joining a mob where some people are threatening/committing crimes while other people are exercising their constitutional right to protest" vs. "joining a mob where some people are exercising their first amendment right to protest while others are threatening/committing crimes?" Fundamentally not the same in any sense or?

I think it's fair to compare, but I think one is being disingenuous if one doesn't also contrast. There are a lot of things that were different about the capitol attack than the Minneapolis precinct attack or any of a number of other acts of lawlessness.

Violence and destruction of property is bad.

Violence and destruction of property and attacking the people carrying out the heretofore mundane task of transferring power between executives and apparently coming prepared to drag Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, etc away to a lynching with the goal of installing your favored strongman is bad and has some Venn overlap but there are some significant parts of the latter that extend far beyond the former.

That's exactly the point that JasonL made upthread and that I'm defending now: The two situations differed in relevant ways, but they also shared some similarities. They both had bad actors who committed acts of violence and destruction for political ends. It's a fairly modest point that should be a no-brainer for anyone with a modicum of intellectual honesty. But intellectual honesty is the first thing out the airlock when you approach any situation from a partisan point of view.

[Shem]

"Glancing away from the road and running someone over, leaving them dead" and "entering into a murderer for hire plot" share some similarities too. Still doesn't make comparing them anything other than a debate over how many black bloc members can dance on the head of a pin.

The planning online for the 1/6 event was remarkably consistent in its violent rhetoric. And if the choice is between taking the word of the people who planned the event, or people who are insisting that the people leading the event were lying, I'm going to listen to the people who actually did it.

[Ellie]

This was massive lawlessness. There aren't fifty patrol cars and half the PD out on one street on any give night of the year.

Police presence is a very poor metric to use for crime/damage in this case. They weren't out there in response to 911 calls. They were out there preemptively, looking to start shit, intimidate protesters, and give the appearance of widespread lawlessness to garner sympathy and justify the skull-cracking they already planned to do.

Def not saying nothing ever went down, some amazing Black-owned businesses got torched here in the Twin Cities in the collateral damage. But in this case, density of cops says little more for the amount of crime occurring than it would at the Policemen's Ball. Cops were there because they wanted to be there.

[nicole]

I'm saying "joining a mob to break some shit and maybe loot" and "joining a mob to murder specific people" are fundamentally not the same thing in any sense. And, if you're part of a mob chanting "kill Mike Pence" while in the next room from Mike Pence, and you then subsequently tell me "I didn't actually want to kill Mike Pence," I'm not sure what exactly about your behavior warrants the benefit of the doubt.

How about "joining a mob where some people are threatening/committing crimes while other people are exercising their constitutional right to protest" vs. "joining a mob where some people are exercising their first amendment right to protest while others are threatening/committing crimes?" Fundamentally not the same in any sense or?

I think it's fair to compare, but I think one is being disingenuous if one doesn't also contrast. There are a lot of things that were different about the capitol attack than the Minneapolis precinct attack or any of a number of other acts of lawlessness.

Violence and destruction of property is bad.

Violence and destruction of property and attacking the people carrying out the heretofore mundane task of transferring power between executives and apparently coming prepared to drag Pence, Pelosi, Schumer, etc away to a lynching with the goal of installing your favored strongman is bad and has some Venn overlap but there are some significant parts of the latter that extend far beyond the former.

I 100% don’t think that particular heretofore mundane task is more sacred than the heretofore mundane tasks of filling prescriptions at a pharmacy, which was disrupted much more significantly here in Chicago thanks to a long weekend of murderous looting than anything that happened with the election certification process.

[JasonL]

I do feel like some peeps are driving particularly hard at the idea that the summer was NBD, and I don't think that's a reasonable take. It's somewhat connected to the other thing people are doing which is acting like police in large part were super aggressive in responses to the non events of the summer, which is also not a reasonable take. Louisville was a shit show. People dragged out of cars. Cars set of fire. Improvised projectiles of all sorts, some of them burning. Police given stand down orders. Kinda this:

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/11/ga ... -response/

[Warren]

I don't argue with Holocaust Deniers.
And I'm not going to argue with 2020 Vandalism/Looting/Arson Deniers.
I'm out *clap*

[Hugh Akston]

"Glancing away from the road and running someone over, leaving them dead" and "entering into a murderer for hire plot" share some similarities too. Still doesn't make comparing them anything other than a debate over how many black bloc members can dance on the head of a pin.

The planning online for the 1/6 event was remarkably consistent in its violent rhetoric. And if the choice is between taking the word of the people who planned the event, or people who are insisting that the people leading the event were lying, I'm going to listen to the people who actually did it.

I assume that if there were any such people on grylliade.org you would have called them out by name. I also assume that you didn't call anyone out by name because there are no such people at grylliade.org. This assumption is further supported by the fact that no one on grylliade.org ever made such a claim.

[Shem]

I do feel like some peeps are driving particularly hard at the idea that the summer was NBD, and I don't think that's a reasonable take. It's somewhat connected to the other thing people are doing which is acting like police in large part were super aggressive in responses to the non events of the summer, which is also not a reasonable take. Louisville was a shit show. People dragged out of cars. Cars set of fire. Improvised projectiles of all sorts, some of them burning. Police given stand down orders. Kinda this:

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/11/ga ... -response/

There's a difference between "this was a bad thing that happened" and "this is a thing that 'mattered' in a historical sense." A lot of horrible stuff happened, but ultimately, it wasn't substantively different than any number of other rolling riots we've had in this country. People got angry and belligerent. Cops got twitchy and impatient. The volatile situation exploded. It's not the unprecedented situation a lot of people think it was. The only real difference was in the past, people in charge tried to turn down the heat. This time, some of them viewed the chaos as being beneficial to their ends, so they kept feeding it.

[thoreau]

I do feel like some peeps are driving particularly hard at the idea that the summer was NBD, and I don't think that's a reasonable take. It's somewhat connected to the other thing people are doing which is acting like police in large part were super aggressive in responses to the non events of the summer, which is also not a reasonable take. Louisville was a shit show. People dragged out of cars. Cars set of fire. Improvised projectiles of all sorts, some of them burning. Police given stand down orders. Kinda this:

https://reason.com/volokh/2021/01/11/ga ... -response/

It is absolutely true that many rioters got kid gloves treatment during the summer. The article you linked demonstrates that. It is also true that many peaceful protesters got beat up and pepper sprayed. Plenty of footage demonstrating that. If I had to synthesize these seemingly contradictory observations I would say that too many cops are illiberal cowards who would rather work out anger on their best critics than take risks against dangerous criminals.

It is absolutely true that many Capitol police stood down. It is also true that many fought. Ample footage demonstrates both points.

In the face of these varied facts, everyone gets their narrative. I think some narratives are far less representative of the total picture than others, but persuading people of that is much easier from a moral high ground. Many critics of the cops rejected the worst narratives (rightly) but also chose simplifications that dismissed very reasonable concerns about rioters in the summer. That doesn't bring concerned people over to the better side in most cases.

I've seen cases where people chose to scold anyone concerned about rioters rather than empathize. Ironically, most of them were making identity-based arguments while YouTube was full of video of black women chewing out rioters

[Jennifer]

The day before the insurrection, the Republican Attorneys General Association sent out robocalls urging people to go to DC and "fight" Congress over Trump's bullshit stolen-election claims.

[dhex]

Fuck q and all that but, like, "fight for your rights/the cause" is rather quotidian political rhetoric.

I am vaguely hopeful this won't get us more patriot acty stuff but that hope is likely misplaced.

[Jennifer]

Fuck q and all that but, like, "fight for your rights/the cause" is rather quotidian political rhetoric.

Not when it comes from one of the two major political parties trying to overthrow the results of a legal election to keep Their Guy in power.