This did not happen. Trump asked his supporters to march on the capitol, and then when shit got out of hand, he asked them to go home. Anything else regarding his words is a "reading between the lines" that's going to involve a lot of loaded, partisan-biased, and worst of all unfalsifiable claims.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/donald-trump-incitement-vi...

Snopes is here holding up the president saying he'd punch someone who rushed onto the stage as "encouraging violence at his rallies", which is such a willfully disingenuous attempt at poisoning the well it calls the entire article into question.

That is not the same thing, not what we're talking about here, and it is not honest to equate them. People who disrupt rallies absolutely deserve to be removed from those rallies with appropriate force.

Had you actually watched the videos: no, every single one of those people did not attempt to rush the stage, that happened exactly once. And in that occurrence he didn't even call for violence until the NEXT DAY, when a normal Presidential candidate would've had time to gather themselves and act like an adult... No, every single one was not arrested by secret service.

He spent MONTHS telling his supporters that the election was "stolen from them" and that they need to "fight like real patriots", but again, because you support him that's not a call for violence. Nevermind the end result: the violence he called for - you just don't agree that's what he wanted. Which of course is why he refused to condemn it while it was happening, and took a full day to say anything meaningful after every one of his political allies condemned him.

This is a lie by omission. He "called for violence" against people who attempted to physically disrupt his rallies, and I would go so far as to call the "violence" that ensued in all of those cases (forcible removal from the venue) justified.

Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.

>Which of course is why he refused to condemn it while it was happening,

He literally told the people assembled there to go home.

You keep moving the goal posts to try to justify abhorrent behavior. First he didn't call for violence, until I provided proof he did. Then the violence was justified because "they rushed the stage" - which they didn't. Now it's OK to advocate assault because someone is peacefully protesting?

I'll be honest: it's pretty sad the lengths you're going to in order to justify actions that wouldn't be tolerated in a kindergarten classroom.

>Using this standard, I could accuse anyone against the Capitol "protestors" as "calling for violence against their political opponents", except we both know that characterization omits a great deal of critical context. So it is here.

No, you really couldn't without the same mental gymnastics you've been going through to ignore reality. The Capitol "protestors" physically assaulted badged police officers while breaking into a federal building. The protestors at Trump's rally paid for a ticket to enter a place they were lawfully allowed to be - peacefully spoke out in protest, and then left when they were told to. In the process they were assaulted.

The fact you'd try to equate the too shows a complete lack of honesty and integrity on your part.

>He literally told the people assembled there to go home.

Hours and HOURS after the damage had been done, and the police had the situation back under control, he issued a taped message telling the rioters that he loved them but they needed to go home.

At some point it's obvious you condone physical violence against people that have different political views than you do, and you should just own it. But you also should take a long, hard look at history. The founding fathers didn't agree with your point of view. The constitution doesn't agree with your point of view. The majority of Americans don't agree with your point of view. Our Democracy is founded on a peaceful transition of power, and intelligent thoughtful discourse on policy. Your violence has no place in America.

You are outright lying about what I said. I said that the "violence" called for in the article linked wasn't any more than kicking disruptors out of a private event with force (something justified in that case), and the exact words I used were *IN ONE CASE* regarding the stage-rushing incident. It's up thread for all to see.

The fact that you have to lie to make your point means that this conversation is over. I stand by my original point that the original march was legitimate, and that Trump told the crowd to go home. Trump DID NOT tell any of those assembled to storm the capitol, violently or otherwise, and to insist that he did is a further lie.

You edited your post after being called out, and that's now your scapegoat.

It is literally never justified for a politician to ask his supporters to physically assault a peaceful protestor. Full stop. You can squirm, gyrate, and try to justify it, but it's not OK.

> I stand by my original point that the original march was legitimate, and that Trump told the crowd to go home.

You can stand by whatever you want. Trump released a pre-recorded video that "we love you, but go home" - 6 HOURS after the Capitol was stormed. HOURS. At that point it didn't matter, reinforcements had arrived and the building was already cleared. Furthermore, telling violent insurrectionists you "love them"??? Really?

Again you lie, because HN won't let you edit a post more than 2 hours old. Those words were there when the post you reply to was originally made. Stop lying.

But saying that punching a peaceful rally attendee is "very, very appropriate" and the kind of action "we need a little bit more of" is not.

And asking police to be more violent when handling suspects is encouraging violence ("when you see these thugs being thrown into the back of a paddy wagon, you just see them thrown in, rough, I said, please don’t be too nice.")

On Greg Gianforte, the Montana Governer who assaulted a reporter ("Any guy who can do a body-slam ... he’s my guy.")

Then he joked about shooting immigrants:

> In his remarks, he asked, “How do you stop these people?” A woman at the rally reportedly yelled “shoot them” in response. Trump then joked, “That’s only in the Panhandle, you can get away with that statement.”

Then there's the pattern of statements by trump that predict violence against the groups the attacks are aimed at:

- Trump calls Covid the "Chinese virus" and plays up its origin to stoke anti-Chinese sentiment. A random Asian family is attacked in a Texas Walmart because they're "infecting people with the coronavirus".

- Trump attacks "the Squad" (congresswomen AOC and co), they see an uptick in racist attacks and threats

- Trump says "Liberate Michigan" and criticizes the governor for her coronavirus lockdown. Months later, a group of militia members is uncovered with a conspiracy to kidnap and kill her.

- "You also had some very fine people on both sides."

- "Stand back and stand by"

etc.

He has a pattern of tacitly encouraging violence and then making halfhearted condemnations when the violence actually happens. It's why when so many people commit violence, they think Trump is asking them to.

When you put violence against property and literal murder on the same moral footing you are being an apologist for more severe violence. Property can be replaced. Businesses can have insurance. The murdered police officer and the 4 other dead people aren't coming back.

People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.

Right, thankfully no one is doing that (I've seen you around other threads and straw man arguments like this one are beneath your usual high standard of discourse). Everyone here agrees that the people responsible for murdering the police officer ought to be held criminally accountable for murder but not for treason. But this was almost certainly a small number of people and its reprehensible to hold the entire mob responsible, and certainly not for treason. We don't hold every BLM protester accountable for the BLM riots and we don't hold every BLM rioter accountable for the murders that took place during the riots, and we should hold the same standard here.

Elsewhere you remarked that 1 murder constitutes a larger proportion than the BLM murders, but of course you can't extrapolate anything from a sample of 1.

> People really need to stop equating BLM with what happened on 1/6. Not all violence is created equal. 1/6 was much more egregious.

They aren't the same, but they're not so different that we can justify glorifying violence for one and exaggerating it for the other.

FWIW, I personally think the Capitol Hill riots were worse in the sense that they were incited by a sitting President and that the security was concerningly inadequate. The President should be held responsible for insurrection, there should be accountability among the police as well (although I don't know enough to venture into details about what kind or degree of accountability), but the rank and file rioters are only guilty of rioting, trespassing, etc (those who assaulted need to be held accountable for assault, those who murdered for murder, those who planted bombs for planting bombs, etc). But this isn't "a coup" nor were the rioters "traitors". They were misled into believing their candidate lost the election and they were angry, but I can't imagine they seriously expected to break into the capitol and forcibly reinstate Trump (apart perhaps for the mentally ill).

So yes, the Capitol Hill riots were worse, but not so much that the BLM rioters (including those who assaulted people or killed people) deserve to escape justice nor that the media should be forgiven for their incitement and later apologetics of the violence. Nor does it merit exaggerating the violence on Capitol Hill.

You seemed to do that further up this thread. When confronted with questions about the violence on 1/6 you responded with references to the violence perpetuated by BLM protesters. However I can't find a single instance of collective violence at the BLM protests that comes close to a mob beating a police officer to death like happened in DC.

As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders". In a previous comment a few posts up I directly asked you how many murders occurred at these BLM protests and you didn't respond. Is that because you know that the person to person violence that occurred at these events was routinely instigated by the police, other right leaning people, or people using deadly force in response to looting?

And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side.

I appreciate the complement and agree with most of the second half of your post, but it isn't just the origins or motivations for these two groups that differentiate them. One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.

Correct, I was comparing the violence in general. This is different than your original claim that I was comparing BLM property damage to the Capitol Hill murder.

> As far as I have seen, there were no murders committed by BLM protesters as part of any protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them. Even in this post you are still referring to "BLM murders".

I'm thinking of incidents like Michael Forest Reinoehl (Antifa). He murdered a right-wing activist and was very explicit that he did it because he believed the right-wing was a threat to Black lives. In any case, we're not going to learn much by looking at the outlier instances of violence; in both cases there are much more uniform trends of lesser degrees of violence spanning from trespassing to property damage to assault. All I'm asking (indeed, all anyone is asking) is that we hold BLM rioters to the same standard as MAGA rioters, BLM assailants to the same standard as MAGA assailants, etc.

> protests, riots, or whatever you want to call them

To be quite clear, I'm distinguishing between the protesters (and protests) who are by definition peaceful and rioters (and riots) who are by definition violent.

> And like I said previously, we are already comparing millions of people protesting over months in cities around the country to thousands of people in one city protesting on one day. There were vastly more opportunities for violence at the BLM protests and yet the only person to person violence seen appears to be in response or initiated by people on the other side.

The murder is an outlier, you can't conclude on the basis of this single event that the broader group is uniformly more dangerous. I don't know what value there is in even trying to compare how dangerous either group is; what's important is that we're holding violence to the same standard and not glorifying some violence and condemning others on political grounds.

> One was much quicker to instigate violence against people.

What? How do you get there? There were tons of assaults recorded on camera during the BLM protests going back to probably 2014 including many unprovoked assaults. In ~2016 one guy went on a killing spree, explicitly targeting white police officers (and as I recall, WaPo or someone released a sympathetic portrait article rationalizing the mass murder). I don't have tremendous sympathy for MAGA folks, but there's half a decade of clips of people getting the shit beat out of them for wearing a MAGA hat in the wrong place, virtually none of which featured prominently in the media.

Again, this isn't about which group is more violent, it's about consistency. Even if MAGA folks are more violent, it doesn't justify us completely letting BLM violence off scot free. If you (universal) failed to condemn years of BLM violence, you have very little credibility to demand justice for an afternoon of MAGA violence.

I guess I simply don't like the "in general" part as it inherently equates the two. Like I said, I believe there is a fundamental difference between violence against property and violence against people and categorizing them all as "violence" sets up a false equivalency.

>I'm thinking of incidents like Michael Forest Reinoehl (Antifa). He murdered a right-wing activist and was very explicit that he did it because he believed the right-wing was a threat to Black lives. In any case, we're not going to learn much by looking at the outlier instances of violence; in both cases there are much more uniform trends of lesser degrees of violence spanning from trespassing to property damage to assault. All I'm asking (indeed, all anyone is asking) is that we hold BLM rioters to the same standard as MAGA rioters, BLM assailants to the same standard as MAGA assailants, etc.

That was a violent confrontation that happened because armed alt-right counter protesters showed up to the BLM protests to start some shit. We have no clear picture of how the confrontation started, in part because Reinoehl was also killed by police under suspicious circumstances. The same type of confrontation happened with Kyle Rittenhouse except it was people on opposite sides that ended up dead. If we are going to blame BLM for Reinoehl than it only seems fair to start a tally of extreme right violence that includes Rittenhouse and runs through the riots in DC. That extreme right violence would have a much higher body count.

>The murder is an outlier, you can't conclude on the basis of this single event that the broader group is uniformly more dangerous. I don't know what value there is in even trying to compare how dangerous either group is; what's important is that we're holding violence to the same standard and not glorifying some violence and condemning others on political grounds.

I am not just basing it on the single murder. I am basing it on the video I have seen of how people behaved at the scene. I have not seen that type of mob violence at an BLM protest. That Reinoehl example was a single person getting in a confrontation. That is fundamentally different than the type of collective behavior seen here[1]. The former is an individual that is acting independently of the crowd. The latter is numerous members of the crowd joining together to take a cop to the ground and beat him. I am much more comfortable drawing large scale conclusions about the group based off the second example.

>What? How do you get there? There were tons of assaults recorded on camera during the BLM protests going back to probably 2014 including many unprovoked assaults. In ~2016 one guy went on a killing spree, explicitly targeting white police officers (and as I recall, WaPo or someone released a sympathetic portrait article rationalizing the mass murder). I don't have tremendous sympathy for MAGA folks, but there's half a decade of clips of people getting the shit beat out of them for wearing a MAGA hat in the wrong place, virtually none of which featured prominently in the media.

Once again you are expanding the scope of of what we are considering as BLM violence to basically any extreme left violence and once again I think the violence from the extreme right exceeds violence from the extreme left for basically any time period you want to choose.

>Again, this isn't about which group is more violent, it's about consistency. Even if MAGA folks are more violent, it doesn't justify us completely letting BLM violence off scot free. If you (universal) failed to condemn years of BLM violence, you have very little credibility to demand justice for an afternoon of MAGA violence.

I can't argue against that on principle. However there are numerous parts of this that have lacked consistency. This starts with the preparation for the various protests and how the people in the capital were allowed to leave the scene while numerous peaceful BLM protests ended with police kettling and mass arresting protestors. It also includes how people on the right respond specifically to the violence directed at police. Could you imagine the outrage in right wing circles if the protesters in Portland mobbed police, literally beat one with an American flag like in that previously linked video, and beat another to death with a fire extinguisher? If we are going to ask for consistency, lets be consistent in asking for it.

[1] - https://twitter.com/CalebJHull/status/1348334770103660553

The apologetics for rioting over the summer were also bad.

Conspiracy theorists would say it was less security to allow for chaos, which in turn gives further justification to pushing legislation / controls that take away freedoms.

All of us will say that it's horrible and just like the rioters, looters, murderers and general agents of chaos of the past year, they made a deliberate and reasoned choice to be a part of the chaos.

What I don't like is that statement that all protestors were part of the incident. Just as all of the BLM protesters weren't a part of the riots, evidence shows the same is true for those that rallied.

The bottom line is based on votes, the U.S. is clearly split on perspectives and each side sees things in a near opposite viewpoint.

Certainly. If you protested and didn't breach the perimeter, you were doing exactly what BLM protestors were doing. Disclaimer: I say this as an objective statement on the action, and not a commentary on the relative merits of either movement.

You breached the perimeter, and entered the Capitol? Now we're somewhere else.

The security forces then get rid of the protesters and the new set of officials move in.

It's just how it works.

No hypotheticals - this one actually happened, and the resulting undemocratic government was seen as legitimate and retained power. (To be clear, democracy once lost can be regained, but it was unambiguously lost.)

These are serious white supremacists. Simmons summarized the party's platform when he stated: North Carolina is a WHITE MAN'S STATE and WHITE MEN will rule it, and they will crush the party of Negro domination beneath a majority so overwhelming that no other party will ever dare to attempt to establish negro rule here. They form organizations called the "White Government Union" and such.

There is a trumped-up issue of black men raping white women: Many newspapers published pictures and stories implying that African-American men were sexually attacking white women in the city. A suffragist said in a speech that, of all the threats farm wives face, there was none greater than "the black rapist", due to the failure of white men to protect them. She advocated that white men should resort to vigilante justice ... "if it needs lynching to protect woman's dearest possession from the ravening human beasts – then I say lynch, a thousand times a week if necessary."

Then, In response to Felton's speech and the danger it imposed upon black men, 32-year-old Alexander Manly wrote an editorial, refuting it and asserting that white women have consensual sex with black men. And: Within 48 hours, white supremacists, aided by newspapers across the South, used Manly's words – though reprinting incendiary distortions of them – as a championing catalyst for their cause. Waddell, and other orators, began inciting white citizens with sexualized images of black men, insinuating black men's uncontrollable lust for white women, running newspaper stories and delivering speeches of "black beasts" who threatened to deflower white women.

On deplatforming: Prior to this editorial, The Daily Record had been considered "a very creditable colored paper" throughout the state, that had attracted subscriptions and advertising from blacks and whites alike. However, after the editorial, white advertisers withdrew their support from the paper, crippling its income. His landlord, M. J. Heyer, then evicted him. For his own safety, Manly was forced to relocate his press in the middle of the night. ... He had planned to move to Love and Charity Hall (aka Ruth Hall), on South Seventh Street, but it declined to take him as a tenant because his presence would have greatly increased the building's insurance rate.

Then there's a rally of 300 "Red Shirts", with Waddell giving a speech ending thus: We will never surrender to a ragged raffle of Negroes, even if we have to choke the Cape Fear River with carcasses. A few days later, there's an event with 8000 attendees, with several speakers: Waddell followed by accusing blacks of "insolence", "arrogance", which he claimed was overshadowed only by their "criminality" [etc....] Once again, he concluded his speech assuring them that white men would banish blacks, and their traitorous white allies, even if they had to fill the Cape Fear River with enough black dead bodies to block its passage to the sea.

Followed by violence: Waddell's speech so inspired the crowd that the Red Shirts left the convention and started terrorizing black citizens and their white allies, in the eastern part of the state, right away. They destroyed property, ambushed citizens with weapon fire, and kidnapped people from their homes and whipped them at night, with the goal of terrorizing them to the point where Republican sympathizers would be too afraid to vote, or even register to do so.

On November 1, 1898, Dowling led a parade of 1,000 men, mounted on horses, for ten miles, through the black neighborhoods ... The next day, Dowling led a "White Man's Rally". Every "able-bodied" white man was armed. Escorted by Chief Marshal Roger Moore, a parade of men began downtown, again marched through black neighborhoods – firing into black homes and a black school on Campbell Square – and ended at Hilton Park where a 1,000 people greeted them with a picnic and free barbecue.

Leading up to the election, these gatherings became daily occurrences; the white newspapers announced the time and place of meetings. Free food and liquor were provided for the vigilantes...

Eventually: The day before the election, Waddell excited a large crowd at Thalian Hall when he told them: "You are Anglo-Saxons. You are armed and prepared and you will do your duty ... Go to the polls tomorrow, and if you find the negro out voting, tell him to leave the polls and if he refuses, kill him, shoot him down in his tracks. We shall win tomorrow if we have to do it with guns."

To the election: Most blacks and many Republicans did not vote in the November 8 election ... as Red Shirts had blocked every road leading in and out of the city, and drove potential black voters away with gunfire.

The governor came by to try to calm things down. However, when his train arrived, Red Shirts swarmed his train car and tried to lynch him.

When the day was over, Democrats won 6,000 votes, overall, which was sizable given that the Fusion Party won 5,000 votes just two years prior. Likely due to the intimidation tactics plus fraud (cited article "M. F. Dowling Swears To it" says he, in a deposition, confessed to: stuffing the election board with Democrat party members, improperly erasing hundreds of Republicans from the registration lists, instructing election officers "how to deposit Republican ballots so they could be replaced", and more).

They publish a "White Declaration of Independence", part of which demanded for Manly and his press to leave the city. Manly had already shut his press down and left town when he was alerted, by a white friend, that the Red Shirts were going to lynch him that night. ...

Waddell's "Committee of Twenty-Five" summoned the Committee of Colored Citizens (CCC), a group of 32 prominent black citizens, to the courthouse at 6:00 pm. They told the CCC of their ultimatum, instructing them to direct the rest of the city's black citizens to fall in line. When the black men asked to reason with them, and pleaded that they could not control what Manly did, or what any other black person would do, Waddell responded that the "time had passed for words."

They give a member of the CCC a deadline for a written response to deliver in person. He put it in Waddell's mailbox.

When Waddell and the Committee did not receive a response by 7:30 a.m. on November 10 (it is unclear when Waddell checked his mailbox), about 45 minutes later, he gathered about 500 white businessmen and veterans to the Wilmington's armory. After heavily arming themselves with rifles and the Gatling gun, Waddell then led the group to the two-story publishing office of The Daily Record. They broke into Manly's building, vandalized the premises, doused the wood floors with kerosene, set the building on fire, and gutted the remains. At the same time, black newspapers all over the state were also being destroyed. ...

Following the fire, the mob of white vigilantes swelled to about 2,000 men. A rumor circulated that some blacks had fired on a small group of white men a mile away from the printing office. White men then went into black Wilmington neighborhoods, destroying black businesses and property and assaulting black inhabitants ...

The governor calls in the Wilmington Light Infantry and the federal Naval Reserves, taking them into Brooklyn to quell the "riot". They intimidated both black and white crowds with rapid-fire weapons, shooting and killing several black men. ...

As the violence spread, Waddell led a group to the Republican Mayor, Silas P. Wright. Waddell forced Wright, the board of aldermen, and the police chief to resign at gunpoint. The mob installed a new city council that elected Waddell to take over as mayor by 4 p.m. that day.

Waddell later wrote an article for Collier's Weekly, denying everything bad (to hilarity). We wrecked the [newspaper] house. I believe that the fire which occurred was purely accidental; it certainly was unintentional on our part ..., Since this trouble many negroes have come to me and said they are glad I have taken charge ... , There was no intimidation used in the establishment of the present city government. The old government had become satisfied of their inefficiency and utterly helpless imbecility, and believed if they did not resign they would be run out of town ... , etc.

The success of the coup: Subsequent to Waddell's usurping power, he and his team were re-elected in March 1899 to city offices. Waddell would hold the mayorship until 1905. Four of those involved became Governor of the state, one became a senator, etc.

Also: Although individuals of both races pointed to Democrat-backed violence as the driver behind the incident, the national narrative largely cast black men as aggressors, legitimizing the coup as a direct result of black aggression. For example, The Atlanta Constitution justified the violence as a rational defense of white honor, and a necessary response against the "criminal element of the blacks", furthering stereotypes of black violence. DARVO, always DARVO.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in there. Now, I've only given a brief glance at a couple of secondary sources, and since it seems there is an alternate narrative, it would be responsible to do further research before taking it 100% seriously. Still, assuming it's true... One takeaway: fake news riling up a mob into violence is not new. (With a population of 25,000, it's likely there was at least one real case of a black man attempting to rape a white woman, but it seems some newspapers blew it way out of proportion.) Another takeaway: there were many explicit calls to violence—"lynching", creating "dead bodies"—and many occasions of actual violence, which escalated from one to the next.

The only thing that saved us from this was Trump's cowardice.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25843947

> All: I know this is a little late, but those of you posting ideological flamewar comments to this thread are breaking the site guidelines. We're trying to avoid hellfire here, and we're banning accounts that feed it. Please don't feed it.

> HN is not for all types of discussion. It is specifically for curious conversation. Here's a test you can apply: curiosity is equally open to what's true, false, or interesting about anything. If your position is that your side is right about everything while the opposing side is wrong about everything, you have left the spectrum of curiosity gratification and are functioning in the spectrum of political battle. Those do not overlap.

My ongoing issue, the "axe I grind", the "dead horse I beat" (refer to my history), is this very thing: the constant and obvious degradation of the quality of discourse on HN when it comes to Culture War topics. Most specifically: the homogeneous culture of refusal to even consider what is actually true. Not only is there little interest in what is true, but the very notion seems to be considered highly inappropriate for discussion, and anyone who dares mention it is considered an immoral heretic.

This trait has been sweeping through Western culture for years, if not decades - like a virus of the mind. HN was an outlier for quite some time, but as you know the infection has spread to here, and is flourishing.

From my perspective, there are at least two noteworthy issues in play:

1. The orderliness of HN forums.

2. The orderliness of the USA, and in turn the entire planet.

I imagine you may be less concerned about #2 than I am, but I happen to subscribe to the theory that "with great power, comes great responsibility". What if there was an approach that could plausibly "solve" (to a worthwhile degree) #1, and possibly also contribute to the solving of #2?

And if no one does anything different, where is the world going to be 5, 10, 20 years from now? Where would the world be today if it wasn't for the actions of a few key individuals at key points in history?

I don't want to ban you but we really need you to post more thoughtfully (or put it this way: only post when you're able to post thoughtfully) and err on the side of respecting others.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I think it is plausible that if rational, computer programming types could regain the ability to discuss culture war topics at a level of discourse that has some regard for what is actually true (as opposed to mistaking one's ideological/heuristic opinion for fact, and losing one's temper when someone dares to ask "is that true?"), perhaps:

a) you wouldn't have to pass out so many warnings

b) we here at HN could perhaps bring some rationality to these issues, and perhaps come up with some solutions

c) if (b) succeeds, perhaps other communities could learn too

> It's not so hard to stick to the site guidelines if you choose to.

I assume it is this one that you believe I have violated: "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity."

Am I "pushing an ideology" when I ask someone if their ideological and rarely factual (but stated factually) comment is actually true? To me, engaging in "political or ideological battle" is pushing(!) an opposing political/ideological idea. I may at times point out an opposing idea, but I do not do it on ideological grounds, I do it on epistemological grounds.

> I don't want to ban you but we really need you to post more thoughtfully (or put it this way: only post when you're able to post thoughtfully) and err on the side of respecting others.

Dang, have you read any of the conversations I have been involved in, have you read the comments of the people whom I have engaged in discussion with? I simply cannot wrap my head around how it is I who should be posting more "thoughtfully", or need to "respect others". Go read for yourself! Compare what I say to others, and compare what they say to me. Compare the quality of the content of other's posts to what I say in response. Peruse the historic voting on my comments (90%+ of my comments get precisely "-1" - isn't that a coincidence!), versus the thoughtfulness/respectfulness of the comments.

On culture war topics, this place has become not much better than what you'd find in /r/politics.

Where is the thoughtfulness? Where is the concern for, or curiosity about, what is true?

If you have actually perused my history, and this is your take on the relative behavior here, that I, the one who is exerting effort to discuss these topics in an evidence-based manner, am the one you shall pick out of the crowd to be given a warning, then I will be absolutely shocked.

Aside: Asking for a hypothetical that doesn’t involve hypotheticals seems… off.

Comments like this on a computer programming forum, where one would expect logic (and an understanding of the importance of dependencies) to prevail, also seems "off".

I wonder, what might explain this apparent paradox, and the substantial quantities of it that can be found right here on HN? Does academia have any prior knowledge and study into this general phenomenon? Which domain would we search within to find answers to questions like this?

And that is how democracy dies in America.

What are you willing to give up politically to heal societal schisms?

Compromise = fact based middle ground between reasonable people. When one side consistently treats politics like winner-takes-all and lies out of their asses to get to power and to stay in power then the burden to compromise would be on them.

Politics isn't about rationality or facts or what one side thinks is "reasonable." Nobody approaches the Israel/Palestine conflict by asking "well who has the more rational argument here?" That would be silly. Politics is about power, and appeasing (or not) different factions.

Politics is all about facts and rationality, if it isn't then it will quickly cause your country of choice to slide down into the gutter of irrelevance. The essence of politics in democratic countries is people trying to self-govern with some kind of optimum outcome for the largest number of people involved.

And the Israel/Palestine conflict would improve lots if people started using facts rather than 'might makes right'.

Politics is only about power in some parts of the world, in other parts of the world people are actually trying to get along with each other.

The US doesn’t have that. My wife says we’re a “credo country” but it’s not clear to me we share much in the way of credo anymore either. Senator Ed Markey says the constitution, the closest thing we have to a social contract, is “racist, sexist, and homophobic.” What does someone in Kansas have in common with Ed Markey? A superficial consumer and television culture? What binds them together when they disagree intensely on policy?

But that doesn't mean that the USA needs to have a fact-free Republican party, it could easily change if it really wanted to, at the expense of not being in power for a couple of decades. It's the difference between John McCain and Donald Trump, the one a principled politician who believed lots of things that I would not subscribe to but who was fundamentally a decent human being. Trump is not a decent human being, never was and never will be and his legacy has the power to utterly divide and destroy the United States.

Coalition governments are a lot safer in that that respect because they take away the insane power of the small fraction that decides who is king in the USA. There also is a real problem with the president having as much power as they do.

I see the USA - as one of the oldest democracies - as deeply flawed, with a thin critical path to fixing itself. If it doesn't then one day maybe sooner, maybe later, it will fall apart in either two or maybe even three countries (2x coastal, mid). That will cause a lot of grief so better to avoid that fate, which will require some major overhauling of the constitution and some power removed from the states. Time will tell, for all my friends alive in the USA right now I sincerely hope that this can be postponed long enough that the country can first heal from the last attempt at splitting it.

If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable. Take, for example, the issue of religion. Americans are the most religious developed country by far—comparable to Iran. This drives Democrats crazy, and through the period during which they controlled the Supreme Court based on FDR’s appointments, they turned America into one of the most secular countries in the world in terms of the law. European countries far less religious than the US have far more public accommodation for things like religious instruction in schools. Imagine going into Poland or Hungary and declaring that Christianity has to be removed from schools, like in France. It doesn’t matter what you think of these policies. What do you think the societal reaction would be to that?

Or take abortion. Most of Europe’s abortion laws (in most countries, prohibiting abortions after 10-14 weeks absent some exigent circumstance) would be unconstitutional in the US under Roe. (Even Sweden’s 18 week limit would be unconstitutional.) Imagine, again, going into Poland and telling them that they have to have the same abortion laws as the Netherlands. (Even France is too conservative for this hypothetical.) Again, forget what you think of the policy. How would that play out as a matter of social and political dynamics?

> It's the difference between John McCain and Donald Trump, the one a principled politician who believed lots of things that I would not subscribe to but who was fundamentally a decent human being. Trump is not a decent human being, never was and never will be and his legacy has the power to utterly divide and destroy the United States.

I agree that McCain was a decent person and Trump is a very bad person. But apart from that, McCain wasn’t selling what Americans actually wanted. The Republican base is socially conservative, economically moderate, and wants the party to push back in cultural change. (Again, let’s keep in mind that America is conservative like Poland, not liberal like France.) McCain didn’t fight for any of those things. Trump, for all of his faults, was willing to do that. It’s unfortunate that he’s such a bad, undisciplined person, but there is a reason he got the second highest vote total of any President in history.

> Coalition governments are a lot safer in that that respect because they take away the insane power of the small fraction that decides who is king in the USA. There also is a real problem with the president having as much power as they do.

I agree Presidential systems are bad and encourage cults of personality.

> I see the USA - as one of the oldest democracies - as deeply flawed, with a thin critical path to fixing itself. If it doesn't then one day maybe sooner, maybe later, it will fall apart in either two or maybe even three countries (2x coastal, mid). That will cause a lot of grief so better to avoid that fate, which will require some major overhauling of the constitution and some power removed from the states. Time will tell, for all my friends alive in the USA right now I sincerely hope that this can be postponed long enough that the country can first heal from the last attempt at splitting it.

People say they don’t want the US to split, but nobody actually wants to do anything to prevent that. To circle back to my example, imagine your country is half Poland and half France and each side ends up governing about half the time. How would that turn out? Democrats don’t moderate themselves (on social and religious issues—the party self moderates on economic issues to keep its coalition together) because they’re convinced that they’re just one or two elections away from “demographic destiny.” And even if that’s true, France governing Poland by a permanent 53-47 margin isn’t going to lead to a happy unified country.

This isn't factual. Italy for example is more religious than the US. Germany, France and the UK are comparable to the US (each have ~25-28% nonreligious, compared to 25% in the US). Poland, to use your example, is 85% Christian and 8% nonreligious. Hungary is 20% nonreligious, and close to 75% Christian (60% Catholic).

The comparatively religious countries are approximately as secular. The US isn't unique here.

Also, it's worth noting that the constitutions of Poland and Hungary establish national religions. The Polish constitution specifically protects religious education in public schools, and the Hungarian constitution defines life to begin at conception.

The US on the other hand doesn't have that. The establishment clause doesn't have those carve outs. And as to your claim that the FDR court made the US particularly secular, I don't see that. Public funding for religious education had already been well established to be unconstitutional (with the majority of states having banned it explicitly in the 1800s). It's difficult to tell how common religious education in the style of McCollum was during the early 20th century, but I can't find anything to suggest that it was the norm in public schools.

> If Democrats held power for a couple of decades, the country would be unrecognizable.

You haven't described what, in particular, Democrats would do. What anti-religion policy do you suggest democrats would do if they held power for several decades (and, presuming that democrats were able to hold power for several decades, would this be any different than other similarly secular nations?)

The best example I can think of requires conflating Abortion policy as anti-religion policy, which it isn't, in the same way that legalizing gay marriage isn't anti-religious.

As to what Democrats would do—we already have examples. FDR-appointed Supreme Courts interpreted the Establishment Clause to create a “wall of separation” prohibiting, for example, things like optional religious instruction in public schools, or public support of religious schools. These things are quite common in Europe.

Abortion is another example. While European countries left abortion to voters (with comparably religious countries like Poland still prohibiting it) the Supreme Court created a constitutional abortion right so broad it rendered illegal many limits and compromises voters even in liberal counties like France have embraced. Voters in France only recently liberalized waiting periods, and those are still required in Germany. In the US, those have been unconstitutional for decades.

Going forward, I would expect major changes to include extremely divisive measures such as mass amnesty (which Biden just stated will be a top priority). Also entrenchment of public unions, and federal bailouts of blue state public pension funds.

On the legal side, I’d expect a war on religious exemptions. Countries like Germany have moved slowly on areas like adoption by same-sex couples. In the US, meanwhile, there is a movement to push out religious-affiliated adoption agencies that cannot, consistent with their faith, place children with same-sex couples. In another example, Democratic activist organizations are pushing the Department of Education to pull accreditation of religious schools that teach traditional views of marriage. By contrast in many European countries, religious schools are eligible to receive tax dollars from school vouchers.

I’d also expect another major battleground to be the discrimination laws. Liberals deem “race blind” approaches like those taken in France to be “racist.” In 2014, to liberal Justices voted to overturn a Michigan law that prohibited schools from giving preferences to certain students based on race. These sorts of preferences are unpopular with the public (including with racial minorities) but championed by progressive educators. I’d expect the Supreme Court’s existing standards on discrimination, which embody traditional “race blind” approaches, to be a target if Democrats ever won a Supreme Court majority.

No, that graph shows that Americans are far more Protestant. Weekly church attendance by Christians in Poland and the US are both 41% (actually another source shows ~55% attendance in Poland), given that Poland has comparatively more Christians, weekly attendance overall is higher too. Catholicism places a greater emphasis on weekly mass as compared to the informal daily prayer more common in protestant, and specifically in US Evangelical, Christianity. I'll admit that Hungary is less, their church attendance is lower.

> As to what Democrats would do—we already have examples. FDR-appointed Supreme Courts interpreted the Establishment Clause to create a “wall of separation” prohibiting, for example, things like optional religious instruction in public schools, or public support of religious schools. These things are quite common in Europe.

I made a major edit to my prior comment, which I'll summarize here: the two nations you cite have constitutional callouts for state sponsorship of religion and state religious education. So this comparison isn't apt. The constitutional axioms in the US and Poland or Hungary are totally different. They aren't secular nations, and the things you describe aren't common in secular nations in Europe.

And there was understanding that the establishment clause banned state support of public schools in the 19th century. McCollumn wasn't a particular leftward shift, it was an enshrinement of longstanding practice.

> Abortion is another example.

What changes would you expect to Abortion policy? I'd expect to see things continue roughly in line with Roe. Again, your contention was changes. I'm asking about changes.

> mass amnesty

Polling suggests that between 80 and 90% of Americans support a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants in the US. This number has been relatively consistent over the past 10 years. Search "over a period of time" on this page: https://news.gallup.com/poll/1660/immigration.aspx (there's, admittedly, weird effects based on the specific question, but the gist is clear).

> Also entrenchment of public unions

I've seen very limited (and only very particularly targeted) support of public unions from the left. Consider that police unions are not particularly loved at the moment.

> Liberals deem “race blind” approaches like those taken in France to be “racist.”

Only contextually. I'd expect, for example, that a race blind application process in France would be less (or, at least, differently) racially biased than a race blind application process in the US.

> Countries like Germany have moved slowly on areas like adoption by same-sex couples.

This seems to be a matter of it being perfectly legal (with some issues around surrogacy), but bias/conservative sentiment among bureaucrats in charge of administering the process that leads to it being slow. Still bad, but it doesn't appear to prevent a gay couple from adopting. And of course, France and the UK are already well ahead of us.

The crux of this line of argumentation (and your general lines of argumentation when we have similar discussions) seem to be that we should take Poland and Hungary, and other ex-soviet nations as examples of how the US should legislate. I don't get that. Do you think there's anyone in the US, Republican or Democrat, who thinks "yes, our jurisprudence and social norms should be modeled on two ex-Soviet states one of which is so unstable that it had its constitution rewritten a decade ago, and the other had a constitutional crisis in 2015 and has been called a "failed" democracy as a result?"

I don't understand why you keep pointing to those nations as good examples of anything. Like, when you describe things this way, my takeaway is "the us would continue to be socially moderate among western european nations, and more liberal than eastern european ones". That's, well, yes. And sure, there's some particular cases where the US is exceptional: guns (I note you didn't mention these), abortion, church taxes. But so what?

Weekly church attendance in the U.S. is far higher than in Western Europe: https://www.pewforum.org/2018/06/13/how-religious-commitment.... The U.S. is at 36%. (That ranges from 21% in Vermont to 53% in Utah.) According to Pew, Germany is at 10%. France is at 12%. The U.S. is much closer to Turkey or Iran in religiosity by that measure than to Western Europe.

> They aren't secular nations, and the things you describe aren't common in secular nations in Europe.

The U.S. isn't a "secular nation" either. The "Establishment Clause" prohibits Congress from establishing a national church, just like Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution in Germany (which is still in effect). At the time the Establishment Clause was written, and for decades after, a number of states, like Massachusetts, had established state churches! Public schools in the U.S. were invented to teach religion, and did so for 150 years until FDR-appointed Justices enshrined a "wall of separation" notion into the constitution.

To use the school example, the enforced secularism in the US is comparable to France, and to the left of the UK, Spain, Germany, or Italy. But the US is vastly more religious than any of those countries. There is a major impedance mismatch between our society and our laws, that was created by the Supreme Court. (57% of Americans still oppose that Supreme Court decision banning school prayer, all of these decades later.)

> And there was understanding that the establishment clause banned state support of public schools in the 19th century. McCollumn wasn't a particular leftward shift, it was an enshrinement of longstanding practice.

McCollum was a dramatic departure. Justice Story made clear in 1830 that the constitution was not understood to prohibit non-preferential government support of religion: https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendI_re.... What happens in say Germany, where Muslim children can get Islamic instruction in schools, and Catholic children can get Catholic instruction in schools, is squarely within what is allowable under an original understanding of the Establishment Clause.

> Abortion is another example. What changes would you expect to Abortion policy? I'd expect to see things continue roughly in line with Roe.

Roe is already a significant departure from American and European public opinion (under 30% of people in the U.S. support generally legal abortion in the second trimester and beyond, which is mandatory under Roe, most people support various restrictions and waiting periods which are impermissible under Roe). I would anticipate further efforts to strike down popular restrictions such as parental consent rules, which are not atypical in Europe.

> I've seen very limited (and only very particularly targeted) support of public unions from the left. Consider that police unions are not particularly loved at the moment.

Biden, thanks to Jill Biden, is hugely supportive of teachers unions. Democrats have advocated for shutting down charter schools, which are broadly popular.

> The crux of this line of argumentation (and your general lines of argumentation when we have similar discussions) seem to be that we should take Poland and Hungary, and other ex-soviet nations as examples of how the US should legislate. I don't get that.

No, you miss the point entirely. I'm not talking about how the U.S. should or should not legislate. I'm talking about how Democrats have and want to legislate in the U.S., by comparison to European countries that have similarly high levels of religiosity to the U.S. This isn't a discussion of policy, but of the polarized political dynamics in the U.S. My point is that, particularly due to the Supreme Court taking various decisions on social issues away from the electorate, the laws in the U.S. with respect to churches, abortion, etc., are much further to the left compared to other highly religious countries.

The point is to try and understand how that is driving political polarization in the U.S. Hence the hypothetical about what if we applied French-style secularism to a country as religious as Poland. How would we expect Poles to react? And does that give us any insight into the current situation in the US?

> I’m trying to figure out if anyone actually want to heal societal schisms? And the measure of that is what folks are willing to compromise on?

...you reply:

> How about that one side stops peddling conspiracy theories and following every idiot that promises them what they want to hear in terms of gun rights, abortion and immigration.

...which involves no compromise on your part.

> Compromise = fact based middle ground between reasonable people.

Let's check...

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/compromise

compromise - verb compromised; compromising

1a : to come to agreement by mutual concession

b : to find or follow a way between extremes

see also: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/concession

> When one side consistently treats politics like winner-takes-all and lies out of their asses to get to power and to stay in power then the burden to compromise would be on them.

Perhaps, if this was an accurate description of reality.

But for the sake of discussion, let's say that this characterization is indeed correct - if you could influence Democratic party strategy, and behavior of their followers, would your recommendation be to stick with the same general approach of the last decade, including generous deployment of misleading rhetoric like:

> How about that one side stops peddling conspiracy theories and following every idiot that promises them what they want to hear in terms of gun rights, abortion and immigration.

(Which also may run afoul of your "[fact based] middle ground between [reasonable people]" statement above.)

I think Biden is doing an admirable job keeping a lid on the reprisal/deprogramming talk. The media should follow his lead. Obama's administration fought a bunch of gratuitious fights, like suing nuns. I anticipate Biden will keep people on a tighter leash, just as a longtime legislator who is going to be thinking harder about the fights he wants to pick.

It was an insurrection attempt by incompetents and LARPers, but absolutely an insurrection attempt.

If you want to compare it to something, I would recommend the fall conspiracy to capture the Michigan governor, put them on a mock trial and then publicly execute them for their "crimes": https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/08/politics/fbi-plot-michigan-go...

How would they have done that? Nobody would listen to a bunch of hooligans pronouncing orders from the House rostrum. In a coup, someone like a general is waiting to hear the signal to throw in with the coup leaders, providing actual institutional power to the usurpers.

There was no institutional power behind these people -- do you think some general at Andrews was waiting for the phone call to signal his support for the guy in the viking hat?

This was an act of vandalism, and maybe burglary or "home" invasion robbery.

Attempted murder is still a felony, even if's a very dumb attempt. The same is true for coups.

> In a coup, someone like a general is waiting to hear the signal to throw in with the coup leaders, providing actual institutional power to the usurpers.

The Q folks think this is exactly what the military is going to do.

In order for a coup to be successful, institutions need to endorse the new order or have their heads replaced with loyalists. Capturing the symbolic seat of power, or even killing elected representatives doesn't accomplish that. In this scenario there would've needed to be a body of bureaucrats and officers in every branch and every agency who would see the house leader lynched on TV and then said, yes I'm ready to do the bidding of the usurping administration.

This would be hundreds of people, if not thousands, in the highest ranking civilian positions who would all have to endorse or be arrested. Then because this is a federalist system, local governments would all have had to endorse the new system or be replaced. Also, the judiciary. Also, all branches of the military.

Unless you believe we were on the precipice of this happening, it wasn't a coup, and if you do think we were anywhere close to seeing this happen, you're insane and wrong. It was at best a bumbling terrorist attack. More accurately IMO, it was mob violence resulting from an epic failure of crowd control.

There were a number of different, complementary means envisioned, the simplest of which was reflected in the chant “Hang Mike Pence”, which existed because the pro-coup political intelligentsia had proposed that the Vice President could and should simply refuse to open the certificates from selected states, denying the Democrats a majority of counted EVs, or alternatively could choose unilateral to accept “alternate” slates of electors from some of those states, an approach Mike Pence rejected. Removing Pence would result in a different presiding officer who might be more amenable to the plan.

And, sure, that still seems like a pretty dumb plan, but an insurrection doesn't stop being an coup attempt because the plan is stupid.

> In a coup, someone like a general is waiting to hear the signal to throw in with the coup leaders.

You’re thinking of a coup in favor of a faction that doesn't already hold the cheif executives office. An auto-coup, which is what was intended, usually involves some mechanism to provide a pretext to either extend power beyond it's lawful limits or extend it beyond it's legal term, not to seize it from the current holder. The only person you need to ready to do anything is the existing executive, who just needs to accept the offered pretext to retain power. Which Trump already announced his support for this theory and his anger at Pence for refusing it, which was a major contributor to the insurrection.

They didn't need a general waiting in the wings, they just needed the President who was already sitting in the WhiteHouse.

No one is pretending that the crazies on the left don't need to be accountable. There are those, of course, who believe that. But you are arguing against a point that hasn't been made--and most definitely one I did not make.

I'll say it myself, just to be clear: Anyone who riots (or foments an insurrection) needs to be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law after a fair trial.

I watched my friends businesses burn last summer, as well as many other businesses near my home. The common response was " "we're doing this because we have this right, we're frustrated at the system that did X or Y". None of my friends caused any real or perceived in-equality towards anyone, none of them are racist, all of them as well as I, support the right for individuals to love and marry whomever they want. They were by and large allies, yet someone arbitrarily determined that because their business was there, Insurance would cover and they could loot and burn it. They decided that when they responded in public days later, that they were white males and even if they weren't bad, it was retribution for whatever grievance someone held. Anyone that doesn't believe that those actions, that persisted for months, weren't abhorent and just as destructive to democracy and our country, then you're not being honest with yourselves.

The point is, the media is choosing to doom and gloom this situation when I would argue half of America has had this same perspective for a year. I'm not arguing the merits of either sides grievances, though I think both have many valid points.

https://www.wvlt.tv/2021/01/07/who-is-elizabeth-from-knoxvil...

Stealing a laptop from a federal government facility while attempting to overturn an election's results and possibly assassinate elected officials, is an "insurrection".

And that's what the point of this was. Terrorism to push more of Congress to not certify the election.

I'm also not inventing the whole thing out of thin cloth. People were arrested with caches of firearms near the Capitol. There is video evidence of gallows being constructed out front. You're ignoring reality to suggest these things never happened. These aren't fake reports, these are some of the few indictments which have so far been unsealed. I don't watch cable news, I don't get all my news from blogs. I read court documents. I read actual statistics. Go read the real, raw data.

As for the cop, it seems like you'd also argue car accidents don't kill people its the internal hemorrhaging that happens from completely unknown causes. Clearly the people beating the cop didn't intend to cause him harm, that's just how they say hello! You seriously think the protesters beating him with metal pipes didn't intend to cause him harm and potentially kill him? Do you go around being friendly and start hitting people in the head with metal pipes?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/15/police-offic...

They weren't trying to “topple the seat of government” in a destructive, undirected manner, they were trying to redirect the process being executed there of officially determining the winner of the Presidential election to their preferred outcome, and to retaliate against opponents (including the Vice President) who failed to play the role the mob and the President they saw themselves serving preferred they should in that process.

You’re exaggerating and it’s deliberate, which revels the intent of your argument is dishonest.

Well-documented events in the summer of 2020 kicked off unrest. There was no mass-looting before that.

Was is it? Did George Floyd have a lethal amount of fentanyl in his system at time of death? Did the medical examiner not mention any damage to Floyd’s neck? Did the video show Floyd asking to be put on ground after resisting getting in the vehicle like the police asked? Did Keith Ellison do everything he could to keep the video of the arrest from coming out? Was Breanna Taylor‘s name on the warrant at her active address? And despite it being authorized to be a no-knock rate, did the police announce themselves? Did CNN use the literal chevron “fiery but mostly peaceful protests“?

“Well documented” is a very misleading way to describe this summer’s violent unrest.

I’d say the murder of George Floyd was well-documented. That was my meaning.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-06-02/channel-7-journalists...

If the Trump supporters had similarly stayed outside of the gates, nobody would even remember the protest as more than a bit of trivia.

(Edit: I added “storming” to the first sentence to avoid any confusion about whether I was referring to the well-publicized bunker trip)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/secret-service-moved...

For people who aren’t familiar with the area, this area is normally open and there are often protests. I bike or walk through regularly and you’ll almost always see someone at the fence with a sign about something.

This is in sharp contrast to the coup attempt where the insurgents quickly blew through areas which are never open to the public – think about how many of the videos have alarms ringing in the background.

Note also that I’m not faulting the Secret Service – it’s not hard to imagine someone trying to breach the gate and it’s their job to protect the President. My objection is entirely due to presenting these as equivalents.

To act like the past year has had nothing in comparison to insanity .. is well insane. Theses Capital idiots are just that Idiots and they'll see time in court. What's not clear is why all of a sudden people that were supportive of aggravated protest to prove a point all of a sudden are surprised when the other side used the same tactics.

The other person was merely saying that such "insurrection" activities happened.

If you want to agree that they happened, but you simply think they were justified, well you are not disagreeing with the original statement.

From that you could easily draw the conclusion that I don’t approve of any use of violence or threats of violence against elected officials but I don’t expect you to since you’re pretty obviously more interested in playing whataboutism games.

It's all chaos and it's chaos that will be used as a means to reign in more control on freedoms and rights.

When did non-right-wing protesters invade a seat of government? When did they brandish guns while threatening political violence against politicians? When did they reject the results of an election? When did they invade a legislature trying to prevent normal government activities?

More importantly, compare the reactions: when that idiot in Portland started a fire in the street, did they get widespread support? Did pundits and politicians praise them? They faced rejection from local up to national officials: Biden condemned non-peaceful protests but Trump & his allies incited them.

There’s plenty of video evidence contradicting the rosy picture you paint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6uSYhyFao4

It's pretty long since it covers the build up and call for violence the day prior, but if you want a TL;DW, skip straight to 59:02

First Rudy with his trial by combat nonsense and then Trump with his "we're going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue and we're going to the Capitol and we're going to try and give -".

I encourage you to look up these quotes so you can appreciate them in context rather than repeating garbage lines from left wing cable news.

For example, if you watch Rudy’s speech or read the transcript you’ll be enlightened to realize he’s talking about putting his and Trump’s reputations up against Biden’s.

You might think the notion of either have a reputation worth wagering is silly, but to interpret it as a suggestion to viewers to commit violence is beyond disingenuous. If we’re going to eliminate all flowery speech and metaphor we might as well stop talking altogether.

It's not what you say, it's how you say it.

"Hey guys, there's a fire", said in a dull sarcastic tone is not the same as screaming it at the top of your lungs with a frightened look on your face.

But yes, encourage people to read the transcript and not watch the video with their own eyes.

And if we imagined the government doing such a thing and taking it to the Supreme Court, can you really imagine them coming to the conclusion that it was incitement to violence - having them consider all the legal precedent also.

Companies can do what they like. People can say what they like.

Is it good for society. I don't think so. And does the tech world stand for free speech - it can no longer be said. But students of history will clearly see the precedent that is developing although we are certainly breaking new ground.