Qanon

[Sean Hayden]

Maybe. But there's really no need to minimize this threat in order to make your point about another. That's politics.

[JimC]

Cunt, what's your motivation in saying the protection level is too high?

Maybe you and others of your ilk would like the level much lower because it would offer...

...opportunities...?

[NineBerry]

[Cunt]

Cunt, what's your motivation in saying the protection level is too high?

Maybe you and others of your ilk would like the level much lower because it would offer...

...opportunities...?

What an awful thing to say.

[JimC]

Certainly a real possibility, that right-wing extremists would love to have a better chance of disrupting the change of power...

[Brian Peacock]

I would have expected balanced responses to riots/civil unrest.

This q-clown 'insurrection' looked a lot less dangerous than other recent events.

Riot police weren't decamping from ATCs to fire rubber bullets into the crowd and people on the fringes weren't being dragged into unmarked cars by burly men who didn't identify themselves. So I can understand why you might think it didn't look that dangerous. Of course, judging it on how it looked doesn't touch on what those leading the crowd were hoping to achieve, who they were and what they did before and on the day, why Capitol police officers where hung out to dry for so long, or even the deaths that occurred.

[JimC]

See Saw Margery Daw,
Jacky shall have a new master;
Jacky shall earn but a penny a day,
Because he can't work any faster.

[Cunt]

right-wing extremists

Are we talking the 1%-furthest-right? 49.9% of the population to the right of centre?

How many are there?

[Brian Peacock]

How many is too many, or is many not enough?

[Hermit]

right-wing extremists

Are we talking the 1%-furthest-right? 49.9% of the population to the right of centre?

How many are there?

How many right-wing extremists would love to have a better chance of disrupting the change of power? You count them.

[Cunt]

Right, left or Hobbiton-extremists would all love to, I'm sure.

But I wasn't questioning that, just how many extremists he was referring to. No matter.

[JimC]

right-wing extremists

Are we talking the 1%-furthest-right? 49.9% of the population to the right of centre?

How many are there?

Simple. However many there are who believe that the ends justify the means, however violent...

You might have a better chance of counting them than me...

[Cunt]

Ya...I can't find much to rally around besides 'no violence', but that's an easy one to agree on.

Violence belongs in a ring, with pay-per-view. (and proper covid protocols, of course)

[rainbow]

So these are the guys that nearly overthrowed the US?

Tens of thousands of guardsmen should do the trick.

Indeed. Of course your sources would've told you that millions would be at the WH, marching onto the Capitol demanding that the election be overturned.
The Senate would then call on Pence to delay the count, and Trumpy wouldn't fall.

...so what went wrong?

[Brian Peacock]

If we're concerned about acquiring a balanced understanding of the Capitol riot then we're supposed to be seeing things from the other side of the aisle. If we can't do that then we're simply expressing our prejudice and bias. So here goes...

The protestors just wanted to stop the official counting of certified electoral college votes that would confirm Biden as president, because they believed that the election was flawed and the result was therefore insecure. In light of this they believed that the elected members of the House and the Senate should overturn or void the constitutional requirement of the count and that the Republican nominee, Donald J. Trump, should be declared the rightful winner of the election and thus remain in office for another four years. This was made clear by many Republicans who spoke publically in the run-up to the rally, those who spoke at the rally, and from firsthand accounts of those who supported the rally, who attended the rally, and who marched on the Capitol building on the day, eventually breaching the police cordon by force to gain access to the building. Their actions may have been foolish, illegal, and deeply undemocratic but their beliefs were mostly honest and sincere.

Unfortunately, the beliefs of the protesters were founded on false representations of the facts promoted by those who had a direct personal and political interest in overturning the election result. As the senior Republican in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, said yesterday, "The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people."

Now, there's two things that spring to mind in response to that. One, neither Trump and/or his supporters ever seemingly feel inclined to see things from the other side of the aisle - in which case where does that leave the obligations they place on others in the name of balance? And Two, in pointing out that the protestors and the country were misled about the outcome and security of the election by powerful people who had a vested interest in overturning the result, as McConnell did yesterday, one automatically places oneself in opposition not only to the narratives of Trump and his supporters but in direct and personal opposition to Trump and his supporters themselves - thereby marking oneself as prejudiced, biased, untrustworthy, and therefore undeserving of the same consideration Trump and his supporters demand of others.

It is in this way that Trump and his supporters maintain that the only fair and balanced view is the one that agrees with and endorses them, that the only fair and honest election is the one they win, and that the election result and its confirmation by the House and Senate is an act of violence and/or oppression by the state, the media, and Democrats and their voters which warrants and requires reciprocal action in return.