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sundin13 said:
Bofferbrauer2 said:

Protest, yes.

Riot, violently forcing entry into fucking Congress of all places, threatening the security forces trying to protect the site, trying to apprehend and lynch Pence and several other politicians like they did? Hell no!

Similar things happen in other countries somewhat regularly, where a despot cheats an election and is thrown out by the people. Then, we in the United States look at them and say "Good on them, fighting for democracy". If the election was stolen, I am of the mind that it would not be beyond the pale for the people to take action, even if that action was violent. This country is built upon establishing democracy through violence and our founding fathers were not above advocating for further violence in the name of protecting our democracy.

That is why Trump's rhetoric is so dangerous. By falsely asserting that the election was stolen and that the democrats pose an existential threat to this country, you are inherently advocating for violence. If you listen to people on the radical right, you regularly hear this, often through the quotations of our founding fathers. Even if you disagree with me when I say that violence to protect democracy is justified in certain circumstances, I do not believe there is any argument that it is to be expected. If you call someone a threat to democracy, this country's founding principles indicate a belief that violence is a justified response to that threat. 

The lie itself is incitement enough. The assertions from Trump and his allies that we need to go and "fight" are just icing.

Note: This is somewhat of a tangent, so don't feel like I am trying to argue directly with you. Just something I wanted to say.

I agree that what Trump is doing is very dangerous, and he's demolishing barriers and kicking doors open for future wannabe dictators. I hope the people will get to see over the next years that what he did and tried to do was really that dangerous, and make sure it won't happen again.



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Bofferbrauer2 said:
KLAMarine said:

If they're convinced the election was stolen, their intentions are misguided but good. It's in their rights to protest what they perceive to be a wrong. Our job should be to hear out the misguided and show them how they're wrong.

Protest, yes.

Riot, violently forcing entry into fucking Congress of all places, threatening the security forces trying to protect the site, trying to apprehend and lynch Pence and several other politicians like they did? Hell no!

Wholeheartedly agree.



https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-2020/joe-biden-inauguration-executive-actions-b1788423.html

Biden will make the US a communist utopia within his first year in office, just to own the cultists.



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vivster said:
KLAMarine said:

If they're convinced the election was stolen, their intentions are misguided but good. It's in their rights to protest what they perceive to be a wrong. Our job should be to hear out the misguided and show them how they're wrong.

The plane hijackers at 9/11 thought what they were doing was right. Donald Trump thinks what he is doing is right.

You talk as if these people could be reasoned with. If they could be reasoned with people wouldn't have died. When you reason with them they just double down, how do you think this escalated? People have been trying to reason with them for over 4 years. At some point you have to act so people don't get hurt. The time to reason is OVER. The time to act against them is now.

Or you tell me how you reason with people who don't want to reason. I mean you don't want to reason either and see what that brought us. A lot of wasted time and frustrated people.

The crux of the issue isn't that they wanted to protest. The issue here was trespassing public property. That is grounds for immediate arrest. Will I drink from the alarmist Kool Aid and call it an insurrection? No. An insurrection would've involved at least 10x more people gunning down the place or setting it to go big boom (and not a pathetic attempt at making an IED), but they still committed a major criminal offense. 

Nor is it the worst or an unprecedented event in US History (the White House literally got torched down once, for goodness sake!) 

But I did remember the string of Tweets coming from Donald Dumb and nowhere did I find grounds for the charges of sedition. This is per US Anti-Sedition Law. 



AsGryffynn said:
vivster said:

The plane hijackers at 9/11 thought what they were doing was right. Donald Trump thinks what he is doing is right.

You talk as if these people could be reasoned with. If they could be reasoned with people wouldn't have died. When you reason with them they just double down, how do you think this escalated? People have been trying to reason with them for over 4 years. At some point you have to act so people don't get hurt. The time to reason is OVER. The time to act against them is now.

Or you tell me how you reason with people who don't want to reason. I mean you don't want to reason either and see what that brought us. A lot of wasted time and frustrated people.

The crux of the issue isn't that they wanted to protest. The issue here was trespassing public property. That is grounds for immediate arrest. Will I drink from the alarmist Kool Aid and call it an insurrection? No. An insurrection would've involved at least 10x more people gunning down the place or setting it to go big boom (and not a pathetic attempt at making an IED), but they still committed a major criminal offense. 

Nor is it the worst or an unprecedented event in US History (the White House literally got torched down once, for goodness sake!) 

But I did remember the string of Tweets coming from Donald Dumb and nowhere did I find grounds for the charges of sedition. This is per US Anti-Sedition Law. 

So are you saying there was no coordinated effort to obtain either Pelosi or VP Pence during the storming of he capitol.  That there were not people who entered the capitol who intentions were more than just protest or even the basic riot but to perform an act of terrorism.  The question would be what if any of these people, including the people who just stormed the capitol to take a selfie were able to actually get their hands on Pence, Pelosi or any Dem that was a target of their frustration.

So your basic concept is that its the number of people to call it insurrection instead of the actions of the people itself.  That really does not make sense.  What if only 5 people were able to get their hands on multiple Senators and executed them.  Hell, we do not even have to go that far, lets just say they beat the crap out of them and told them their family's are next if they do not vote to give Trump 4 more years.

That the reports of bombs, the people with hand ties and all the rhetoric that was on Parler before the riot were just simple baseless things stated in frustration but had no meaning or action behind it.  What it seems to me s that you are willing to throw out anything that does not conform to your opinion.  Just because there were worse situations in US history doesn't mean this doesn't get categized as an incident of insurrection just because the crowd size did not meat your standards.  The only thing that changes this subject to something totally different is that none of the people in Congress especially the ones on people target list was actually taken.  I am sure if they were successful, we would be having a much different conversation.



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The white house was torched because we were at war with England in war of 1812. They arrested someone with molotov cocktails during the riot. I'm sure he didn't just bring them to have a good time trespassing.  The purpose of the riot was to overthrow the democratic elected results like trump wanted to.



I must repeat: The BLM protests were to bring attention to systemic racism. Their goal was to stop the inherently bigoted idea that black men in particular are more dangerous - something that appears to be an intrinsically widespread ideal across the US - and the subsequent added violence that comes with unnecessary force used against black men that can result in death. Their intentions were to stop violence, and their protests contained some acts of incidental violence that went against the grain. Whether the rioters and looters were a part of BLM or not is irrelevant, the BLM protests were organized to be peaceful protests. any time you get that many people together with such an incendiary unifying theme, there will be heat.

The DC hostile takeover was not done to end violence or for any semblance of social justice, it was a terrorist organization that violently opposed a democratically decided election and intended to scare the establishment into compliance. Their violence was a direct result of their plans.

If you honestly think these two are the same regardless of context or intent, then you might need to accept that you're either ignorant or bigoted. Either you don't understand how law works (Criminal intent causing violence is a far more serious charge than incidental violence or accidental harm), or you're being disingenuous because you for some reason think that systemic racism isn't real (it is) or that somehow Biden stole the election (He didn't). Either way, it's funny seeing the arguments because I've never seen an issue that was so cut and dry and plainly obvious be so deliberately misconstrued.

Abortion? There are arguments to be had on both sides and there is no right answer. There's plenty of discussion to be had concerning this topic. Euthanasia? Capitol Punishment? Religious freedom or restrictions? All topics that have very compelling arguments on both sides regardless of what side you chose. I have my opinions on all of them but concede that my opinions on the matter are in fact opinions and not solid, undeniable fact.

But this current issue with BLM and Antifa and the capital riots and MAGA folks and Liberals? It's so disgustingly one-sided that I genuinely do not see how people can fall for it. I do not understand how people can be like 'oh systemic racism isn't a problem' despite the many, MANY examples of it cropping up in our daily lives. Despite actual stats and papers being written on the topic by sociologists. Despite it being clear as day. Maybe it's not as blatant as the KKK lynching people, but it's so clearly obvious to anyone who's actually paying attention or specializing in the field. I don't know how you can have people who say Biden stole the election or that there was voter fraud just because they didn't like the results? How could anyone trust a thing Trump says when he lies and makes shit up all the time and clearly has no idea what the fuck he's talking about.

I get that some people like things the way they were. Nostalgia is a powerful drug for sure. I get that things used to be simpler and change is scary. I get that it's weird for some of you to see trans people as real people and two dudes kissing makes you uncomfortable. Nostalgia is powerful and change is scary. This is true but you can't base your entire worldview on the false idea that things were better in the past by simple virtue of it being simpler. The reality of the world is far more complicated than that. We understand a lot more about psychology now than we did 70 years ago, we know a lot more about biology and chemistry, we have far more perspective and far better technology now. Things are objectively better now for a wider group of people for many, many reasons.

Stop trying to slow our progress. Stop resisting change. Stop acting like things are worse when people of colour want to be treated better. Stop pretending the world is magically perfect because we can't arbitrarily get away with prejudice. You can't pretend systemic racism doesn't exist just because there aren't laws to encourage it anymore. The real world is far more complicated than that and requires a lot more introspection and investigation.

there's a reason I do not respect the MAGA movement. They're either completely ignorant of the facts, laws, and reality of the situation they got themselves into or they just don't care and would rather things be like it was in the past, when bigotry was more rampant instead of subtle, and they could get away with using racial or sexual slurs. Ignorant or malicious. One or the other.

And I do not understand how, in a world where almost everyone has infinite access to the world's collective knowledge at their fingertip, that someone could still delude themselves into believing with the MAGA folk do. It feels to me like you're all so convinced of your own delusion that you're like flat earthers that went to the ISS and somehow still don't believe the world is an oblong spheroid despite literally seeing it with your own eyes. How are we so divided? How do people completely misrepresent reality? Why is it somehow so easy for some people to outright deny facts and logic, then spout nonsense like 'facts don't care about your feelings' with absolute certainty and a complete and utter lack of self-awareness.



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The fact that republican senators now fear for their lives which is affecting their willingness to vote on things, proves it was an act of terrorism against democracy
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-lawmakers-afraid-for-their-lives-if-they-vote-to-impeach-house-democrat-says

Anyway what was the point of the 2nd impeachment? What's the point of the whole impeachment process in the first place? All seems very pointless.



SvennoJ said:

Anyway what was the point of the 2nd impeachment? What's the point of the whole impeachment process in the first place? All seems very pointless.

If Trump gets impeached, then he can't run for any form of elective office (in the US, at least) ever again. In other words, Trump 2024 will be dead before it even gets off the ground, unless he tries to set up Ivanka to run as his puppet president.

As for the point of the process, well, it's to get a clearly corrupt president out of office. Sure, the two-thirds of the senate bar is a high one to clear, but it's not impossible; Nixon resigned because all the evidence suggested any such vote would have gone about 85-15 against him, for instance.



The point of impeachment and hopefully conviction is to not reward a piece of human garbage who permanently damaged a country and killed 400000 people with a huge pension.



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