pqhwan

Funny, I’m pretty sure it just did, as it has for the last 4 years of abject defeats the judiciary has been handing out to Trump. Good luck with your lynching fantasies, sounds like you’ll need it to get through the next 4 years.

first of all, plenty of democrats own guns.

I’m aware of that, I was just going along with gp’s fantasies.

I never compared jumping off cliffs and breaking into Congress.

You’re not a child, I think, so I can’t scare you with made up stories about what happens when you lie. But seriously, it’s not good for you, or those around you.

So now your position is that it’s okay to occupy a capitol building as long as you don’t break windows, break into representatives offices, and/or some small percentage of them have weapons on them?

No, but it’s the bare essentials to stick to if you don’t want to be taken for an insurrectionist.

Was it immoral when BLM occupied and damaged the Ohio capitol?

Yes! Whoever thought that was a good idea is a goddamn punk. Although, they weren’t trying to change the outcome of an election; that’s a pretty significant difference. There’s few things in a democracy worse than interfering with its election, I’m sure you agree, except maybe literally blowing it up.

your argument that we ought to condemn the actions of the trump supporters because the rest of society has done so is not a rational argument.

I’m not arguing that at all, I’m just telling you what the rest of the society is doing; that pressure you feel to change your opinion is coming entirely from within yourself.

was it immoral when the women’s March protesters took the capitol?

I’m not sure, let me check: did they break windows and doors to gain entry into the capitol building? Did they break into representatives’ offices? Were there weapons and detaining tools found on their persons?

Why not pay attention to the hundreds of thousands of Americans who came to DC to protest but had nothing to do with the storming of the capitol?

Because they didn’t break into congress? There’s a special type of attention you deserve when you form a mob and storm national legislatures (as seen on TV!), and neither the peaceful protesters from the Trump rally or BLM did that.

That actually is a pretty good argument. I have indeed been playing fast and loose with the terminology; yes, it wasn’t a military coup, but it is still an unprecedented attack on the federal government, a riot.

That argument is as valid as arguing that jumping off cliffs for no reason and admitting that breaking into congress is bad are equivalent.

Clearly not. But it’s a clear example of where the rest of this society is drawing the line.

when the women’s March protestors stormed the capitol.

What the heck are you talking about?

I find it odd that no one on the Democratic side is stopping to think what a civil war in which one side has disarmed themselves because they think weapons are evil and the other already is ideologically aligned with most of the police and military would look like.

That, my friend, would be a senseless massacre. You find it odd that most Americans don’t spend their daily lives worrying about getting literally murdered by Republicans? Why? Should they?

Btw even Matt Gaetz can’t defend that one, which is why you see him hallucinating under command on national television about them being antifa.

It’s possible you’re underestimating the sheer practical and symbolic significance of the building they broke into (and the people who work there). Which, actually, is kind of the whole problem. Can you provide an example of an evidence that would make this a coup for you?

...breaking and entering into congress?

Now you’re just helplessly denying. I just want to remind you that you’re free to change your opinion, no one will think less of you if you do. I’ve done it before, it can be pretty exciting to turn your world around and re-evaluate things every now and then.

Are you stating that as an unrelated hypothetical, or are you claiming that Trump forced Twitter to censor himself?

Yes, the definition of tolerance in a society is often a function of its existing social consensus. So if your social consensus is flawed, tolerance of it is also flawed. But when the consensus in question is something like “you shouldn’t mob up and storm the legislature because you lost an election,” yes, the paradox of tolerance applies, unironically.

Despite the often exaggerated claims of singular victimhood, I actually do realize that the current right-wing rage does come from real suffering, and sympathize to an extent. What makes me wonder is that extent to which this rage is directed at the new wave of black civil rights movement; they both have roots in economic or cultural marginalization of certain populations, and from what I can tell, they’re not competing for some common resource. Which, in my mind (and many others similarly puzzled), leaves racist hate as a likely candidate.

Point being, if your goal was genuinely to bring awareness to and address some real suffering in your community, you’d just do that; get out on the street, break a few windows, punch a cop, petition for legislation, like BLM does. That’s called civil disobedience. “Insurrection” starts when you try to override and overrule the very fabric of the system, like the federal legislature.

“If there is ever armed conflict between urban areas vs everyone else, "everyone else" in the U.S. will win overwhelmingly.”

I remember back in third grade when kids would argue about how their dad would beat the others’. As I grew up, I realized that that’s not how conflicts work, and certainly not how they’re won.

That’s an interesting take, but I was making a different point. Corporations will always do what’s necessary to thrive, and what they need to thrive is largely a function of what society demands. If the corporations are taking down their nationalist trappings, then it’s because we no longer demand them. As far as my globalist politics is concerned, that’s good and well.

No, it’s a comment on your suggestion that the police let the insurrectionists in deliberately; I’m saying it’s wrong.

It became unnecessary for survival.

Either Capitol Police were terribly incompetent at protecting one of the most secure buildings in the US, or they let this happen.

So that must be what all the pictures of wall-climbing and drawn glocks are all about. </s>

So we should vote for leaders that “the media” hates and scrutinizes? That is a sad, cynical view of the world. Also, you realize that the media in the US includes outlets on both sides, right? As in, every leader pretty much fits both characterizations?

You point this out as if it is some moral failing on the right.

It’s not a comment on conservative politics as a whole, it’s a reflection on my own past immaturity, and how I recognize it in others when I see it. And I’ve had 4 years to observe Trump’s tweets, Breitbart, alt-right, Qanon, Proud Boys, so if you want to convince me that there’s constructive, long-term thinking behind any of that, you’ll have to be a little more specific than “look harder”.

The comment is talking about how the gp has their priorities wrong. Separation policy, etc are actual problems, and more important than “my neighbors don’t love this country like I do: they don’t admit to being inspired by its founding myths, they don’t like to sing the anthem or say the pledge of allegiance”. Come on, in a country with a reputation for rough, independent individuals, that’s your top grievance? So the comment has a clear point, and it relates to what the gp stated. That’s a dialogue. You’re the one refusing to further engage with the counterpoint, which is how the dialogue was disrupted.

Growing up in a country where I was in the ethnic majority, I went through a period of right-wing political bent as a teenager. Then I came to the US, where I found myself in the minority and leaning left. So I feel that I have some personal insight into the mindset that pushes people right. But... maybe it’s that my past right-leaning self was a teenager with half-baked ideas about the world, when I reflect on what drove me that way, I cannot point to any coherent, constructive thought, mostly feelings of entitlement and an unwillingness to put myself in the other’s shoes. And that’s what I see in the right-wing of today in the US. I guess I empathize with their fear and anger better because of my experience, but I don’t buy that their arguments are just a “different” way of looking at the world; a narrower, myopic way, maybe.

If your conscience hasn’t been forcing you to face the fact that you thought “my kids can’t go to yale, and I blame minorities” was a badge of victimhood you can hold up against slavery and segregation... fellow human, you’ve got some reckoning to do. But it proves my point that you either have no solution to contribute, or you yourself know that your solution is wrong and are afraid to say it out loud. When I find myself in that fork, I take it as a signal that I should question my assumptions and values, before getting in the way of those who’ve come out with and committed to theirs.

Maybe the crime and poverty are direct results of centuries of racist oppressions. Slavery, segregation, denial of voting rights, economic opportunities... and maybe, the solution to racism isn’t more racism? How do you think we got here? And how do you propose we address the issues? You yell “look at the crime” and smugly pretend that the other side is blind to it; well, what’s your solution?

I haven’t seen what you’ve seen, so I’m not going to deny your experience/impression, but my opinion is that the only case where the races of those involved in a crime matter are when the crime is racially motivated. And that’s the standard I’ve seen major media adhere to, but obviously there’s grey areas. If you want every crime tallied up against the race of the perpetrator, I’ve got bad news for you; that’s what the kids are talking about when they take to the streets against good ol’ racism, my friend.