anti_dan
21hr ago
Admittedly, had there been appropriately massive deployment of lawful authority to maintain a perimeter, there would not have been a breach and perhaps no fatalities -- but that is not what was happening.
It didnt have to be that large at all. There are only a few doors into the building. It is basically a fort on a hill. Against the crowd of what we know to be unarmed people with no real organization, 50 armed men would be more than enough if they did their jobs well.
anti_dan
21hr ago
I find your response seems to lack some understanding of what actually happened, and what actually goes around a person's mind in such a situation, so I will start with some context.
First, bordering on zero people in the crowd on that day agreed to participate in a riot, they were absorbed by a riot. This was not day 3 in a series of riots. Zero people brought incendiary devices to my knowledge. Same with firearms. Few had weapons, and even fewer appeared to have brought them as something outside of what they normally carry (few of the choice weapons of rioters were found like bricks, it was more utility knives and the like). This were all people there to engage in a protest, and that protest escalated into a riot.
Second, when it is a spontaneous riot, law enforcement actually is the main driver of what happens. If they build a wall, enforce it, and hold it, there is no riot. If they are weak, an opportunity for a riot to emerge exists. This is what happened. If lawful orders were issued and enforced with force no one even gets within 50 feet of the building.
Third, when a person gets mixed signals INDIVIDUALLY from law enforcement, that is usually the fault of LE, not that person. If one officer says hands up, and the other says dont move, this is a problem. And it is exactly what is depicted in the Babit video. Some are nonverbally communicating to her that her conduct is fine, and another guy shoots her.
Going to more specific points of yours:
Participating in a riot directed at country's legislative ...
As I said, no one thought they were doing so. They were protesting an illegitimate seizure of power via a stolen election. Most fully intended to comply with any clear orders given by...
and Powers That Be have called the armed police present?
Those armed police. Which are expected and always present whether you are allowed into the building or not.
Not only the armed police are present, they have barricaded a door?
This is a very charitable description of the door. Recall, Babit was just let through another door by officers doing nothing. At best this is a hastily assembled barricade. More realistically it is a mess that could have been caused by a very active toddler.
A century ago, any sane government would have had troops shooting indiscriminately until everyone is either dead or in custody.
We are not a century ago. The people who were there had just seen the police forces in the same city let people burn whole buildings and steal millions of merchandise with no resistance. Precedence matters.
It would have been correct and just, too. Insurrection (to prevent legal transfer of power) is not a thing that you can kinda maybe have or kinda maybe defend against.
Again, they don't think they were engaging in said act. Describing it as so is question begging in this context.
If they would have acted like peaceful protestors, there would have been no need for barricades at all.
Maybe is this was a PERFECTLY peaceful protest like the March For Life often is (or was before the counterprotests started), where the city somehow is magically cleaned of trash by thousands of outsiders silently carrying signs. But in reality, most protests get a little chirpy. The answer to this is good law enforcement that sets boundaries and enforces them. This is basic stuff, and it was all failed by Capitol Police on Jan 6. And heck, they didn't even really set barricades. They didn't lock the goddam doors of the building.
The US is too scared to oppose extra-legal politics, and consequently the society suffers for lack of respect for the law and its rightful authorities.
I mean, I agree. I think anyone on a sidewalk doing a "hey hey ho ho" chant should get 30 days in the stockades the second they bump into a citizen who's walk to work they impeded. But we don't live in that world. Police need to convey messages to people so those people know what norms they are actually operating under, and the failure to do so is, fundamentally, the real story of the Jan 6 riot.
anti_dan
22hr ago
I've heard a theory that this was the problem: if even modern wheels are of dubious quality and capability, how much worse would they have been a hundred years ago? I'm not sure that makes sense, though. The invention of wheeled luggage is at roughly the same time the transition of roller skates from all-metal wheels to hard polymer wheels (which were lighter and smoother-rolling and less expensive), but all-metal wheels aren't that much worse in utility and they were probably better for durability. The most important invention for small wheels is ball bearing support, and that's more like 100-150 years old (at various levels of quality and expense).
Ball Bearings have been around for a long time, but they have been improving all of that time in size, quality, reliability, and price. Just taking your example of rollerblades is pretty illustrative. I had a very good pair in high school that were pretty top of the line at the time. I played outdoor hockey all the time, blading was a pretty common date in my small town with few other places to congregate, etc. If I go to Wal Mart and try on a pair, they roll even better than those ones used to. Same with the skateboard bearings, they are cheaper and better now. By a lot.
Considering that luggage wheels have to be small to be practical, the timeline makes sense to me.
anti_dan
23hr ago
There is a sliding scale of "adequate". All the members of congress were unharmed and successfully certified the election despite a riot. Minimum viable standard, but still successful. Why would it be the responsibility of the Capitol police to handle an unprecedented riot better than the rioters themselves.
Riots happen, or rather they can happen. Why they happen is based on a confluence of factors, but the police deployment and response is always an important factor. People rarely riot when law enforcement is well deployed and competently managed. This riot was not unprecedented in any way other than it was comprised of Republicans. The failings of the police force is basically the only interesting part about what happened.
conspiracy
Its not a conspiracy. We generally know what happened. The chief of the Capitol Police has testified to this many times. His deputy (who was promoted to chief after he was let go) was briefed about an increase in the expected crowd size and an increase in potential agitators in the crowd. She did not give him that information. Regardless, he requested additional troops including overtime and National Guard. Those requests were denied by leadership (Pelosi and McConnel's offices), possibly because he did not have the additional credible threat information, possibly just optics. Then as the riot developed he requested National Guard again, and this time both offices took about 5-6 hours to give him a response.
And in any case, conspiracy or not, who benefited from Jan 6 clearly the Democratic party and anti-Trump Republicans, so we don't need epicycles, just knowledge of how media coverage works and insight into the minds of Capitol leadership, which is not hard to divine.
The fact that Trump had given orders to protect the rioters and thus National Guard was not in vicinity of Capitol puts a bit of evidence towards the first kind of conspiracy than the second kind.
Here is an actually conspiratorial idea, which is directly contradicted by tons of public evidence, but you seem to think its worth talking about.
anti_dan
1d ago
"Barricaded doors" is doing too much work here. The fact of the Capitol riot is that the police were intentionally undermanned, and also engaged in basic incompetence at nearly every phase of the event. The long and short of it is that they never actually barricaded anything. The Capitol is essentially a medieval fort, and over a hundred armed men let it get sacked by a bunch of unorganized people essentially engaging in Brownian motion in the general vicinity of said fort. The fact that the whole force wasn't fired is...questionable. The fact that all of leadership wasn't is conspiratorial.
What was the defensive setup? Well, most of the police were deployed behind small lines of these things which are used for directing orderly lines of humans into an entrance, they are not appropriate for riot control. These are not barricades.
Because the forces were isolated and far from the building, they immediately began panicking and ran to the door. The doors were never closed or locked. Hardly a barricade. Again, the slow pushing mass of unarmed people overcame this "defense". Then we had some chaotically strewn furniture in hallways. Not really what we'd call a barricade either.
In the end, Jan 6 is the answer to a very specific question: What would happen if an understaffed, poorly trained, and even more poorly managed police force faced a crowd composed of people who could easily kill them all, but had absolutely no intention of actually doing so? Is Babbit's payout comically high? Yes. But that always is the case with these cases. She certainly has a pretty good case compared to the average rioter case. If she wanted that officer dead, he would be. She was, by all accounts, a competent combatant when armed, which she was intentionally not.
anti_dan
4d ago
Before getting to the stealing, I'm more stuck on my aesthetic distaste to the vignette of a man on an early date telling the woman he's cold, and her giving him an article of clothing to comfort him (among the more feminine articles to boot). It's too perfectly set up as a subverted cliche, that I am 50-50 (edit on reflection, 70:30) that it's made up. I suspect many if not most of the people defending it are doing so on those very aesthetic grounds, and it's not remotely about agency, morals, or consequentialism. This is basically a manic pixie dream girl scene that crossed with light 'gender swapped' tittilation.
I also am struggling to get past the cold man part of the story.
anti_dan
5d ago
Power lines are all kinda important for those other things you mentioned. Maybe we should keep some cool people there.
anti_dan
5d ago
I suggest you go to the local courthouse and observe the number of women in felony rooms waiting for a man they are not married to to have his case called.
anti_dan
6d ago
While I dont doubt this is true, I doubt it is the driving force behind universities stressing graded coursework over exams. Instead I think that is a student-driven phenomenon, particularly female students who are now the vast majority at 4 year universities. Students are the customers for these courses, and this is a demographic that largely loathes high stakes exams. They vastly prefer being able to submit some homework 20 times over a semester and receive 20 grades rather than risk it all on a 90 minute final. In addition, no one grading homework gives out failing grades for completed assignments, so these students also perceive that this method ensures they get a good grade in their courses.
anti_dan
7d ago
They do not have such a hotline. This is a hypothetical. There are on-call states attorneys in big jurisdictions, but their job is boring stuff like reviewing charges, making sure witness statements are consistent, approving search warrants, etc
anti_dan
7d ago
I’ve always found it amazing just how out of touch the intellectuals in university are about what their institution actually means for students. To be blunt, college hasn’t been about education for a very long time, and it strikes me as hilarious that anyone who attended one writes these sorts of handwringing articles bemoaning the decline of education in college. 99% of students who were ever in university (perhaps with the exception of tge leisure class) have ever gone to college seeking the education for the sake of education. For most of us, it’s about getting job skills, getting a diploma, padding a resume, etc. if learning happens on the side, fine, but most people are looking at college as a diploma that will hopefully unlock the gates to a good paying job.
I would think these kind of essays, which a genre older than I am, are defensive in nature. Lets be honest, the more an institution is a skinsuit, the more defensive it is going to be of itself. If Harvard was a bunch of white boys from Boston's upper class playing squash for bragging rights against Yale and their rich New Yorkers they would feel no reason to pen such an essay. But since universities have been transformed into giant apparatuses whose purpose is hoovering up federal funding, they will be very defensive.
anti_dan
8d ago
hurts anyone but themselves.
Well it doesnt hurt them at all, otherwise it wouldn't be cheating. The injured parties are non-cheating competitors (although good luck finding one in these majors methinks), and society, which is ostensibly being tricked into thinking they are looking at a slip of paper that shows this woman can do a lot of mind numbing gruntwork, but in fact just scrolls tictok all day.
anti_dan
11d ago
Will it be “post-modern corrosion” or will it be time? Genghis Khan Is believed to (1) have caused the deaths of enough people to slightly alter climate, and (2) have been the most-prolific rapist of which we are aware. And, currently, there are a couple of restaurant chains named after him here in America.
I am not aware of any of these three things being true.
anti_dan
11d ago
I mean, why else besides being one of those or married being the reason for a name change strikes me as silly
anti_dan
11d ago
If any federal regulation actually exists which would prohibit REAL ID cards from being issued in a person's actual legal name, when that name was acquired by a common-law name change—and so far this is just speculation, no-one has found any such rule*—then
REAL ID requires you submit one of many documents with your current name, which would be your common law legal name in such a case. But to do that you need to get a passport or one of various other documents that only is issued by the US government under that name, or a birth certificate issued to your name. OR a chain of custody set of documents from your birth certificate name to your current legal name. Those are:
- Certified marriage certificate.
- Adoption documents that contain the legal name as a result of the adoption.
- A certified name change document that contains the legal name both before and after the name change.
- A certificate, declaration or registration document verifying the formation of a domestic partnership/civil union.
- A certified dissolution of marriage/domestic partnership/civil union document that contains the legal name as a result of the court action.
All 5 workarounds also appear to require a federal passthrough document. Basically a SSN, or the equivalent. At this point the other way to Alabama being REAL ID compliant is known as the ridiculously stubborn way.
So what I'm seeing is, there is probably an easy way to get a non-Star ID that is presumably legal under this interpretation of the law, but there is no good faith reason to challenge the Star ID reqs, but you wouldn't have standing to do that, because its cheaper to do the thing that makes you eligible.
**I seriously expect these will never be discontinued anyway, because discontinuing them would harm the voting block of “people who live a lifestyle rendering them incapable of fulfilling the REAL ID requirements”.
I disagree. If the Republican coalition continues to go more working class, maybe, but if it veers back in the 2012 direction without picking up urban blacks, any Republican state would have good reason to end this. Not only would it disenfranchise legitimate enemy voters, it would make the fraudsters that vote using the information of people who dont vote significantly harder.
anti_dan
11d ago
Sadly, I already took this “coward's way out” cutting a check to the local probate court rather than raising the matter the hard way, and am now far too satisfied with my legal name to fuck with it any further; someone else with a similar impulse will need to tackle this.
Its hardly the coward's way out even if Catherine Taylor hasn't been superceded by legislation. Which it may well have been. Given that Alabama issues real IDs that seems likely.
In addition, even if you won, I think you still end up at square one. Now what you've done with your extensive ACLU legislation is, essentially, repealed any rulings, regulations, and indirect legislation that enable Alabama's implementation of REAL ID. Now your whole state is mad at you AND you have to pay for a passport, AND you have get the court ordered name change to do that.
Overall, the initial ruling strikes me, given the date, as an intentional giveaway to Birmingham and other machines in Alabama. Partisan and poorly reasoned.
anti_dan
11d ago
But why do we want to surrender a freedom we currently have to the government?
Well, voting is directly implicated, and that is your "freedom" to restrict other people's freedoms. So it isn't a black/white sort of question.
anti_dan
14d ago
What would be the ideal solution is to not use colleges as the source of knowledge and government policy. If you no longer have direct access to the ear of the king, the position no longer is useful for pushing ideology. If journalists investigated beyond just quoting the first professor they come across, again, it’s not useful to push ideology. At that point, the academy goes back to being a place where you do dispassionate research and teach students how to think for themselves.
So they just sit there doing what exactly? Universities have always produces knowledge and influenced government policy. They do in Korea and Mexico as well. They aren't captured by woke there because woke isn't a salient interest, but AFAIK they are captured institutions that are out of touch with the mainstream citizens of those countries.
anti_dan
14d ago
There's nothing "classically liberal" about the notion that an institution is entitled to receive money from the taxpayer while not being accountable to said taxpayers' elected representatives. But that's the "classical liberal" brain-worm.
I 100% agree with this. There is no constitutional right for progressives to have their ideology subsidized by taxpayers, which is what has been happening to the tune of trillions of dollars over the last 3+ decades. This is one of those "sniff tests" so called centrists need to pass. If you can't comprehend that there is no free speech at modern universities, there hasn't been, and we need to force them 10 steps right before there will be a chance for free speech at universities, you just have missed the mark.
Another (right now) is if someone uses "woke right" unironically. If you are talking about the "woke right" you have fundamentally misunderstood the world. The actual woke was Google and Harvard discriminating against white men openly. They still are doing it, just a little less openly. The "woke right" is frogs on twitter, they have no hope of doing anything. If the right won for 20 years in the institutions then, perhaps, there would be reasonable reasons to worry about overreach by right wing extremists. As of now it is frankly laughable.
anti_dan
16d ago
I like this reply since it has a little edge to it, but I am left wondering, to what extent does empathizing with young men just translate to validating their crippling anxiety and fear over interacting with the opposite sex? Does that do them any good? To me a lot of the replies about fear of getting 'cancelled' just seem like an overblown and hyperbolic expression of that anxiety and fear. The real question should be why that anxiety and fear exist in the first place. And to what extent the responsibility to overcome it rests on young men rather than someone else.
While its been a while since I was in high school, I do recall quite vividly that the anxiety to asking out a girl was very strong even back then. Overcoming this and asking girls to prom/homecoming/etc has always been a thing many boys struggle with. What has changed isn't that situation, it is the girls. Frankly, the options out there seem middling. The stats are in. The girls are fat now. The ones that aren't are getting 10000 swipes on Tinder, yes even the high school girls. They lie to the app and purloin booze from some 21 year old "loser" instead of going to prom at all. Its not just the stats, I believe my lying eyes. I used to live next to a high school. The hotness recession is real. I had little to no lecherousness that needed suppressing.
By the way, the guys are fat and ugly too. They know this, thats additional points for their anxiety about being rejected being justified.
How to fix? Take PE seriously. Make BMI and 5k times into strict graduation requirements for women, and pullups and 400M times for men. And then stick to them. The law is a teacher after all. Currently it teaches bad things. We should have it teach good things.
anti_dan
18d ago
Isn't Baltimore also much more black than Maryland as a whole? Demographically they have many more traffic fatalities, so that might be the cause of all or most of your stat.
anti_dan
18d ago
I am pro car, and think the anti-car people are generally correct about the safety issue not being as big a deal. But I think they are utterly stupid about the convenience part. Most of my car rides to see friends/family are 20-60 minutes. With public transit, assuming 0 minutes wasted at transfers, those balloon to 60-200 minutes, often with a required taxi at at least one end of the trip. This is not merely about underfunding or city design, its about the fact that people don't live in segregated ethnic communities in America. As much as you might love it, your mom doesn't live 3 blocks away, and even if magically she did, your wife's mom almost certainly does not. Mass transit is exactly that, MASS. It can't operate niche routes such as "MaiqTheTrue's house to his sister's house", but you need to make that trip 10, 15, 20 times a year. And that is just one of many.
anti_dan
19d ago
That doesn't solve the problem. For transit to work the way the anti car people want, it has to replace, not supplement. You not only need to get to work on time, without being stabbed, you need to be able to get your groceries home AFTER you got your kids home from school and put them to bed. You need to be able to visit grandma at noon on a Saturday. In practice, this only works not only if transport is safe, reliable, and frequent, it also needs to be cheap and ubiquitous. It is never cheap now, and it isn't sufficiently automated to be ubiquitous. I mean, you could get around the last part by making laws so only people with kin in a neighborhood can move to that neighborhood, whence removing most people's need to go from place to place in cars, but that will not be very popular with anyone, even the anti car people.
You do realize the wall in that rant is metaphorical? And that said officer was upset about shitty performance by a person whos performance was akin to the Capitol police officers' performance on Jan 6?
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