Anyone Keeping Up With the January 6th Riot?

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Make that "an attempt at an insurrection" and I will agree. After all, they were there to overthrow the election.

But, "a legitimate attempt at an insurrection" kind of makes it sound like there was something okay about the coup they attempted.

(Just nit-picking)

Okay, I could have worded my post better. There was absolutely nothing legitimate about the insurrection attempt.

So, you're theory of the crime is that a group of conspirators on their way to murder the sitting Vice President of the United State along with other elected officials while overturning an election, didn't want to catch DC gun charges and couldn't figure out how to conceal firearms under winter garb in January? Even for you, that's pretty weak, there are these things called coats and backpacks that you can use to carry things in so other can't see them, things like guns.




I didn't say they weren't dangerous, any mob can be dangerous, and we saw plenty of political violence over the previous year, though mostly from your side of the aisle and not nearly so heavily covered. What I said is that you'd expect a group planning on overthrowing a government to have come a little more prepared, that's the dog that didn't bark here, the gun that didn't smoke, the metaphor that I'm not sure how far I can stretch.



Yes, actually, I think they were there to protest an election they viewed as illegal (another irony is that if you take these people at their word they were actually trying to protect democracy), Trump whipped them up, the capitol police were bafflingly unprepared, and it got out of hand. Now a more conspiratorial sort than yours truly might even suggest that they were allowed to get out of hand given the heavy penetration of these groups by federal law enforcement, the weirdly accommodating actions of the capitol police in many of the videos, and the sheer amount of reporters embedded with the rioters to document the whole thing, but I usually go with simple incompetence with these things.



People at protests bring all sorts of crazy props and yell nutty things, do I need to dredge up some videos of left wing protestors with guillotines calling for the head of Jeff Bezos or whatever plutocrat was the villain of the day? We sure have a lot of examples to choose from after last summer, after all, I could probably just stick to things from CHAZ in Seattle last year.

Her perspective from far away from the protest, never in any actual danger? I think I'm seeing that quite clearly.

Were they? I've yet to have a single person give a satisfying answer as to why a group bent on overthrowing an election, i.e. taking over the US government, would show up unarmed in the most heavily armed country on earth. Occam's Razor alone says the protest that got out of hand hypothesis is more likely, but that never is even considered, it was "the insurrection" from day one.

A right wing insurrection where not a single person brings a gun? Even Alex Jones would laugh at that theory.

They themselves said they were there to force congress to change the election results, and I take them at their word. Don't ask me whey they hadn't taken guns with them.
I have never said the violent actions of liberal mobs were justified. I will say this, though: at least BLM's complaints were based in the reality of police violence, whereas there isn't an iota of evidence to back of the notion that Biden stole the election. At least nothing based in sanity.

They had numbers and fear on their side. That's something. The police who had been physically assaulted certainly saw the rioters as insurrectionists.

I've never had any problem with backing the blue, as long as they don't shoot or beat to death citizens posing no harm, other than being the wrong color.

she never claimed in her video to have been in the main Capitol building, and the Cannon building was one of two buildings in the broader Capitol complex that was forced to evacuate.

Ocasio-Cortez feared she "could die" as police knocked on her door.when she heard "huge, violent bangs on my door." It was like "someone was trying to break the door down,"
Ocasio-Cortez said she ran over to her legislative director, Geraldo "G" Bonilla-Chavez, who told her to "hide, hide, run and hide."
Ocasio-Cortez said the person calling for her was actually a Capitol Police officer who did not identify himself — a fact she did not know as she hid.

Ocasio-Cortez said the Capitol Police officer told her to go to another building. She said she could hear "all of these rioters behind the glass of the door" as she and Bonilla-Chavez sought a place to take shelter.
Snopes reported. Videos and photos show rioters fighting with police, carrying zip-tie handcuffs and weapons, and chanting, "Hang Mike Pence."

"Assassinate AOC," one man facing charges tweeted hours after storming the building.

Sounds legit to me,. The criticism levelled at her reminds of the attempts by pro-Trump people to vilify assault survivor Dr Christy Blaisey-Ford

Protestors always say they're there to accomplish something, that doesn't follow automatically that they were there to violently overthrow the government, and the lack of firearms coupled with the way they behaved once inside the capitol, milling around, taking selfies, stealing podiums, etc suggests that they never had a plan for a violent coup. They may well have thought that showing up in force and demonstrating that they weren't going to accept what they saw as an illegitimate election would force congress to act in their favor, then it got out of hand.



You know what I'll give the capitol rioters even though I think there cause was stupid? At least they attacked a government building and not some innocent businesses that just happened to be in the area when they decided to get violent, I'll never understand that aspect of the Summer of Floyd protests, or left wing protests generally, and their defenders in the media. Do you remember "fiery but peaceful protests", or "property destruction is not violence, they have insurance"? I'd accept a lot more of the left wing hand-wringing over this event if I hadn't just witnessed that going on all year, with all the excuses being made for it. I'll even give you that protesting police violence is an inherently noble cause, but don't try and claim it's totally different when other groups use the same tactics and you don't like their cause.

If changing the results of a lawful national election wasn't an insurrection to overthrow the government, I'd like to know what is.
I never said burning businesses was legitimate. Then again, hardly every demonstrator had been involved in that. And as I already stated, at least their grievances were based in reality.

Nothing in that changes the fact that she was away from the action and never in any danger, and the zip tie thing has been thoroughly debunked (a cop discarded them at some point and a rioter picked them up). Do you think it's unusual for protestors to shout threats, or for people to tweet nasty things about politicians up to and including threats? I seem to recall Kathy Griffin catching heat for posing with a decapitated head of Donald Trump on Twitter, just off the top of my head, and I'm sure "kill the pigs!" or words to those effects were shouted a whole lot at violent protests last summer, it kinda comes with the territory.



Well, they did both make accusations that could not be backed up in any way, as I've alluded to several times I don't think Christine Blasey Ford could even prove she'd ever met Brett Kavanaugh during the time period his alleged attack on her occurred. There was even a pressure campaign on Ford's friends to change their testimony to support her allegations:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/friend-of- ... 1538715152

Protesting an election is not insurrection; do you not remember all the protests against Trump's election? You keep assuming facts not in evidence, that it was planned as a violent attack, when that isn't known, and what facts we do know make at least as good if not a better case for a protest turned violent.

For your theory to be true, you have to accept the idea that American right wingers, and we're talking the craziest of the bunch, some of the most heavily armed people on earth, showed up intending to overthrow the government with improvised weapons and bear spray, where as mine merely requires some nuts to have shown up to make some noise and things got out of hand. It's not even close with the evidence we currently have, and I'll happily admit to getting it wrong if some kind of master plan emerges at the trials, but I wouldn't bet on it, the media would be trumpeting it far and wide if there was any evidence at all.

The old circular arguement?


Maybe it was as squeaky-clean as some portray (although an election without some - however small - amount of fraud would be a rarity), but the appearance provided by those who claimed the 2016 election was marred by "Russian collusion" and demanding (and getting) investigations, then turning around and doing everything in their power to prevent investigations which would (based on their statements) have supported the assertion that there was no fraud, rather than welcoming the investigations, certainly didn't help matters and is probably the main reason why so many question the results now...