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I'm constantly struggling over this both sides fig leaf people keep throwing out there for the sake of unity. This is only accomplished because they weigh January 6th against all the Floyd riots and all the Ferguson Riots, CHAZ/CHOP, the siege of the federal courthouse, attacks on the White House so bad they had to evacuate Trump during his first term, etc. It's a farcical comparison, but they keep making it. Even assuming Jan 6th was every bit as bad as they claim, they honestly believe it makes us equal? A single day of terrifying violence for legislators versus months and months of wondering if your town would burn down, or a mob would form outside your home, for years and years?
There is no unity, and there is no both sides. Nobody is afraid of the sorts of violence that erupts simultaneously in every city as when Democrats get restive. At most they are afraid someone might get it in their head to try to take a scalp of their own. But I'd be shocked if it succeeded. Remember it took the Left 2 attempts on Trump, a home invasion on Tucker Carlson's family, sending violent mobs after Supreme Court Justices, endless credible threats against Tim Pool and Nick Fuentes, before they finally got a kill. Charlie Kirk is just the 9/11 to the 1993 WTC bombing. They've been trying this whole time in a way the right hasn't.
They aren't even bombing transition clinics! Think about that. They consider violent extremism just saying "I don't think we should transition children". People used to blow shit up they didn't agree with. Thats how thoroughly they've framed the conversation, that your speech is considered violence on par with their actual violence. The only way the left could possibly get more violent is if their paramilitary troops (Antifa, BLM, etc) had actual military hardware instead of black masks and molotovs. Think about how much room the right has to get more violent before you start pulling "both sides" on me.
I didn't say anything about the relative grievances, that quote is merely descriptive of the structure.
If you want my position on Jan 6, it was barely a riot, certainly not an "insurrection". My father and brother were there, just not on the side where people went into the buildings. The only person to be killed was an unarmed middle-aged woman shot by security, the rest of the violence was very minor for a riot. Everyone involved even tangentially was punished all out of proportion to the offense. There's no equivalence to my mind between that and the regular drumbeat of destructive and violent riots the Left puts on, defends and refuses to punish.
You're illustrating my point, which is that it's hard for anyone who wants to argue the Right should not engage in mass political violence to make their case without running into the past fifty years of lefty activism, terrorism and assassination.
Tell that to the 140+ cops who got injured https://www.policemag.com/patrol/news/15310988/140-officers-were-injured-in-capitol-riot-officials-say
Including
One was beaten and tased until he passed out and another was attacking cops with a metal whip
...
Another threw a bomb at a group of cops.
There was also multiple pipe bombs planted by an unfound individual yet
One grabbed an officer by the back of their vest, pulled them down stairs and then beat them with a metal pole
Another hit cops with a baton he brought, and threw a speaker box at them
These are just a portion of the violence by Jan 6th protestors. And the property damage too, windows were smashed, offices were trashed and damaged and things were stolen off desks.
Total cost estimated around 2.7 billion dollars
Now of course, these criminals are just a small portion of the Jan 6th protest. There were tens of thousands of people there, many of whom were completely peaceful and not engaged in destructive behavior. Those people do not deserve blame for the actions of criminals just for existing in the same place together. Like members of any loosely formed group, people should be held individually responsible.
But that doesn't mean the criminals don't exist either. They do, and they were very violent and destructive. Both can be true, criminals exist and other protestors who didn't do crime aren't responsible for it.
That would make it what, 147th on the list of most violent/destructive protests in the past twenty years? Like I said, very minor.
If has about a 1 in 400 cop injury ratio seems pretty high, especially when it's significantly higher than even BLM (something else often called violent) and their cop injury ratio.
I agree with you, most participants are still peaceful. Most of any group are peaceful. And all those peaceful individuals deserve to be judged for their peace, not the behavior of criminal scum.
But relatively, yeah it was pretty high in the rate of criminal scum.
Great, make your worst-case scenario, let's take it all as gospel FTSOA.
The right has several thousand more fatalities and several trillion more dollars in damage to do before the ledger of riots is balanced in just my lifetime.
J6 was a minor riot that killed no one, and during which police shot and killed an unarmed middle-aged woman. There's no math that makes this the equivalent of even one weekend of BLM, much less the entirety.
Is the only violence that matters to you death? Beating up a cop is still wrong, even if you don't kill them.
You're being obtuse. Nonfatal violence is less serious than fatal violence. It wasn't nonviolent, there were felonies committed, and plenty of people should have gone to jail over it. None of that makes it as bad as six months of terror, murder, secession, looting and arson.
Less serious, sure. But actrocity math is not a great game to be playing. How many assaults are equal to a murder? How many thefts to equal a rape?
I don't think it particularly matters, they can all be bad things deserving of punishment. It can be interesting to compare, but that's where it ends.
You're absolutely right. It doesn't matter if it's murder or assault or whatever, they should have gone to jail for it if it can be proven in court, and they should properly serve their time.
Btw do you know what happened with all the violent criminals who attacked cops, damaged buildings or stole government property during Jan 6th?
And any individual who did those crimes and can be proven so properly deserves to be punished for it, just like any individual doing crime at any other time anywhere else in the country.
The US is a proud individualist country, with a long history believing in the idea of personal responsibility. As Ronald Reagan put it himself
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