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Putting the merits of the case aside entirely (since I'm in the camp supportive of punishing both the January 6 rioters and left-wing rioters), it just seems like an open-and-shut case of right-wingers behaving similarly badly to faceh's description of left-wingers, and the right-wingers being let off because their side happened to get control of the levers of authority.
I don't put much stock in psychoanalytical explanations, like being "addicted to losing" or somesuch. I think it is probably true that, to use some of the categories from the famous Days of Rage review, that the right is less interested in mobilising 'shock troops' than the left, though perhaps Trump and his group are trying to form ICE into a source for that. However, personally that's one of the things I like about the right, because I think that thuggish nonsense like this is actively bad for civilisation. I don't rate "the left does this bad thing so we ought to do it too", and I reject the implication that thuggery helps the left win. Rioting and thuggery net hurt the left in 2020, it net hurt the right in January 2021, and to the extent that Trump is doing it now (or at least with a veneer of institutional authorisation via ICE), it is hurting him and his cause as well.
So my feeling is that the answer to corruption is not more corruption. When violent idiots try to use your cause as cover, you cast them out. The left failed to do that, and the right is increasingly failing to do it as well.
I agree with you for the moment, but let's ironman this.
Thuggery loses when there are still neutrals (who might join the other side) and when things haven't just slid into complete civil war. If the lines are drawn, and battle's joined, then there is about to be a lot less of a public, and he who's better at thuggery is he who gets to decide which half of the public is sending postal votes from Hell.
There are a significant fraction in the USA, on both sides, who think this can no longer be salvaged, that "now we're all sons of bitches" and what's left is just to kill the other tribe before they can kill you. Some of those people post on this forum! I'm not one of them in the strict sense... but, well, much of that's not due to being an optimist, but just an equal-opportunity pessimist who thinks the point's likely to be made moot by the Blue Tribe dying in nuclear fire or everyone dying in AI apocalypse. "They are already on a course for self-destruction; they do not need help from us. We need to redress our wounds, help our people, rebuild our cities..."
The PR implications for the Democratic Party are not relevant if the Democratic Party is dead or crippled beyond repair three years from now. In boring times, things like that are unthinkable and the assumption that they won't happen is invisible. It's becoming visible, and thinkable. I'm not saying send me to Bayes' Hell if it doesn't happen, and I'm certainly not encouraging thuggery, but the people who are are trying to play a wholly-different game than "win free and fair elections by being better than the other guy".
I'd probably want to nuance it a bit - I'm not sure that it's a significant fraction of the USA, but it is definitely a significant fraction of politically engaged Americans who believe, basically, that coexistence has failed and that they are in a desperate war to the death with an opposing faction that wants only to wipe them out entirely. This fraction exists on both sides. As far as I can tell the majority of actual Democrat or Republican voters do not feel this way, and most are at least somewhat checked-out, but both major parties have minority factions that consider the other party to be a purely malevolent force that must be fought against at any cost. We can see evidence of the Republican/right-wing version of this group just up-thread from here; and there is plenty of evidence of the Democrat/left-wing version of it elsewhere on the internet. These more extreme groups tend to be disproportionately influential in media and in politics itself, since they are more highly-motivated to be involved in politics.
I suppose my soapbox here is:
Both these groups are factually in error, and their portrayal of the malevolent other side is mostly delusional.
Neither of these groups will achieve their goals. The Democratic party will not be destroyed or crippled within three years; likewise the people's glorious revolution against the oligarchs is not just around the corner.
Nonetheless both of these groups are actively engaged in making America worse. Neither have practical solutions to problems facing America; and even if they did, neither of them are able to take power or implement any solutions. What they do contribute to is low-level violence and unrest that occasionally boils over and results in tragedies, like the ICE incident we are currently discussing.
So, a pox on all relevant houses, really.
Anyway, I agree that the people I'm describing are trying to play a different game to the one I think they ought to be playing. I can't criticise them for being bad players of a game they're not trying to play. I can, rather, criticise them for attempting to play a game that they should not. So that's worth precisifying. They're not pursuing a good strategy badly. They're pursuing a bad strategy.
I think I agree with all of that except part of #2 (civil war in the USA is non-negligible, and nuclear war is highly significant; both of those are still definitely worse than the present situation even for the "winner", though) and maybe your assessment of the amount of these people (we might be using "significant" to mean different things; I think it's probably single-digit percent of Americans that are on Team Thug although a lot less have the initiative/courage to actually go out and do thuggery).
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I think it's relevant that the pardoned Jan 6 people, most of whom were nonviolent, had already served far more time in custody at the time of their pardon than almost any lefty protestors did. I happen to agree they should have been charged but the sentences were absurd.
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