this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Yes, Trump and the GOP party leadership spent months plotting to overthrow a legitimate election, but when it came time to do so, one line in a speech sounded nice. Then the protest started getting violent and destructive. To be clear, they were doing this for him (in the sense that they wanted him to continue to be president). He could have shown up and told them to stop and they would have. But he didn't. He made no meaningful attempt to stop it at all. He did, however, say something nice earlier in the day. That's true.
Yes, I said murdered when I should have said manslaughtered. Sorry. The protest was still violent. I've seen the footage; they managed to make me feel sorry for a cop.
I did never make a claim as to the level of damage. I've never really thought about the dollar amount; it's more about the fact that they broke in. If someone broke into my house, I wouldn't be worried about the dollar amount of the damage. I'd be worried about what that means about their intent.
You are being obtuse. None of the differences you've pointed out are salient. None of the similarities you have implied are. The post you replied to never said "Democrats would never...", nor did I. And I disagree that Democrats actually did. The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th, except in facile similarities like the location of the events. I will say though, I agree that you aren't enlightened or morally superior.
My point was mainly proving that the idea that "Democrats would never storm the capitol" was wrong. Yes, January 6th was perhaps still more violent than Democrats' previous attempts to do so, but if it's about the amount of violence each party is guilty of, all we have to do is look at riots in the wake of George Floyd's death that happened a mere 6 months later in many cities across the US, and continued for a very long time. Those protests caused far more death, injury, and property damage than January 6th, and while you could claim that they weren't political in nature, it is a fact that it was overwhelmingly Democrat politicians who supported them, and Democrat voters who attended them.
I'm not really keen to get into an argument about which party is responsible for more violence, since counting up dead bodies seems rather sordid and probably won't help much anyways to convince either of us to change our opinion on anything, so I propose we call this one a draw and simply say "both parties are perfectly willing to use violence in pursuit of their political goals and have clearly demonstrated this in the past".
So, to recap:
Someone pointed out that Republicans did January 6th, a violent attempt to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You then gave examples of Democrats supposedly doing the same thing. I pointed out that none of the examples you gave were anything like January 6th. You then gave reasons why January 6th wasn't bad. I pointed out that none of those reasons changed the fact that it was a violent attempt by Republicans to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You still have not provided an example of the Democrats doing the same thing.
Now you say, well, people from both parties do violence sometimes, so let's call it a draw. I appreciate the wisdom of making a strategic retreat, but no. You made bad arguments. Now you have to admit you are wrong one of two ways. You could just be explicit, come out and say it. More likely you'll do it implicitly, by changing the subject or not responding at all.
I get it. I don't like getting into losing arguments either.
No, someone said “yeah I remember when those crazy Democrats got a bunch of their voters together to storm the Capitol” and then I gave 3 examples of when they DID, in fact, do that.
Basically, the claim was that “Democrats would never…”, so that’s what I set out to disprove.
All you’re doing now is moving goalposts in order to make those events appear more reasonable when it was your side doing them, so you can continue vilify the other side for doing the same thing. Which means you are excusing political violence while simultaneously opposing it.
That’s not tenable position, you understand? It’s just wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.
Moving the goalposts is saying the opposite of "the Democrats did" is "the Democrats would never" (when you first attempted this shift I pointed out that neither I nor the person you responded to made this claim, which is still true).
Moving the goalposts is saying that a peaceful protest that took place in the capitol is somehow "storming" the capitol in the same sense as January 6th.
Moving the goalposts is saying that a fringe group that never had the support of the Democratic party and was not made up of Democratic voters was the Democrats.
Moving the goalposts is ignoring an extremely important aspect of January 6th; an attempt to seize control of the government, which to my knowledge has never happened at the behest of the Democratic party.
You know what? Let's move the conversation a little in the direction you've tried to take it, if you really want. I'll affirm this:
No member of the current Democratic party leadership would never encourage Democratic voters to behave violently, to illegally occupy the capitol building, or to seize control of the government via undemocratic means. And, if some democrats do any of these, they will condemn it; if they have the power, they will stop it. By current Democratic party leadership, I mean Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and other similar figures. Candidates who are popular but marginalized in party structure do not count. For instance, I don't think Bernie Sanders would either (except maybe occupying the capitol building), but he's not part of Democratic party leadership. This is assuming that their views do not change significantly from where they are at present via unforeseen events.
And, I affirm this is plainly not true of Republican party leadership (Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy/Mike Johnson, Mitch McConnell etc.), given the events leading up to, on, and after the January 6th insurrection. (And I will point out that since I made the strong claim of "no member would" above, proving this claim/disproving that claim means "any member did")
Freudian slip or intentional exit loophole? Yes, you really wrote it like that, I just highlighted the double negation to draw your attention to it. But as it is written, I would agree, and here is why. Yes, not everyone in this video is part of the Democratic party leadership, some of them are just prominent members or supporters, but you'll definitely see some of the people you explicitly mentioned doing some of the things you'd say they would never do. And it's good to hear that you condemn all of this, but they DID say it, that is not up for dispute.
Now I'm looking forward to you showing me video proof of your claim about Republican leadership calling for violence on or around January 6th, because apart from Trump telling people to "fight light hell" (followed by the reminder to "peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard"), I haven't seen any. Doesn't mean it didn't happen, I'm well aware that I am biased and may have just as big of a blind spot as you do.
Ah, you caught me. Anyway, sure, you win. Have a nice life.
In that case, well played, Sir. Until next time.