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The Proud Boy sentences being quite severe is on my mind today. 22 years for Tarrio who was not there on Jan 6. He does have text saying it was them who did it. A few others got in the high teens sentences who were there.
I will admit I respect the Proud Boys and agree with a lot of their statements. I do believe the 2020 election was stolen. The lack of a secret ballot thru mass mail-in voting violates every principle of Democracy. Without violating the secret ballot Trump would have easily won in my opinion. The Proud Boys official position from memory was a desire for a new election following Democratic principles. Seems fair to me. So I feel they are directionally correct even if they took things too far.
The right won’t get equal treatment in the court. It seems like the key courts are in cities that are going to have unsympathetic juries and judges. If you flip these courts to rural areas then my guess antifa types are getting 20 years and Proud Boys 2 years. In rural areas they would have judges very sympathetic that the election wasn’t proper and their anger was justified in the same way BLM protestors get courts sympathetic that America is a racists nation.
I think the left is making a mistake with these massive sentences. If they gave them a couple years I would feel it was fair as they went too far. But now I want them pardoned. If Trump pardons them as he should then it’s a slap in the face of the court decision. Delegitimizes the court to have the court decide these are really bad people deserving long sentences for overturning Democracy but then have the next guy release them. It feels very third worldish to me. With other lawfare attempts it seems as though any future POTUS should do mass pardons. I’m not sure how balance of powers can survive this.
The punishment for Proud Boys seems to have some connection to the debates and Biden declaring them “white supremacists” and Trump telling them to “stand by and stand down” (which felt coded). It made it important these guys got long sentences to confirm that they are the bad guys because then a court confirmed what they told you. Same thing with Floyd officers and long sentences which confirmed that they were bad murderous cops. A jury convicted therefore we know it’s true.
It’s another example of punishment for exercising your right to a jury trial.
I agree with Garrett Jones books “10% Less Democracy” and America would be better with less activision and less voting. But America looks more and more like a third word spoils system. Win you get the spoils, lose you go to jail. Which makes elections far more important.
Links aren’t important just sometimes people asks for articles.
https://www.npr.org/2023/05/04/1172530436/proud-boys-jan-6-sedition-trial-verdict
https://apnews.com/article/enrique-tarrio-capitol-riot-seditious-conspiracy-sentencing-da60222b3e1e54902db2bbbb219dc3fb#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20—%20Former%20Proud,for%20the%20U.S.%20Capitol%20attack.
https://www.amazon.com/10-Less-Democracy-Should-Elites/dp/1503603571
https://reason.com/2023/09/06/with-22-year-sentence-ex-proud-boys-leader-enrique-tarrio-pays-hefty-trial-penalty/
Edit: Focus on the punishments and any results from the severity. I used a certain frame to put it in their view. We don’t need to discuss election legitimacy again.
Somewhat uniquely it seems, I'm finding these events to be a white pill. So despite the complete abnegation of the right's political class to audit the 2020 election, its plebians showed up to carry the banner as far as they could. Of course they lost every possible tactical battle (no recount, no trump, were shot to death on tv, persecuted, humiliated, brutalized) they may have won the strategic war in terms of what could have possibly been achieved on that day to set the foundation for change.
First, the brouhaha of the protest forced the hand of the establishment into doubling down on the righteousness of an election where procedure was at best a complete aberration. The bodies are buried all over the place here, and many actors have credible knowledge that can tell you where to dig them up. In essence a now much larger faction of the left's power players are vulnerable to a special commission into election corruption. That's a completely legitimate superweapon that might not be picked up by yesterday's or today's congress, maybe not even tomorrow's either. But the threat of it is certainly a bargaining chip from here on out to encourage compromise. Just like how D's like to think out loud about court packing when they want to influence decisions.
Second, the official legal system now has blood on its hands too. Other means of control - riots, lockdowns, and mandates - were plausibly deniable from the court system's responsibility. Not so here; every obscure legal trick trotted out, every partisan and prejudicial comment is now on record. And now the face of this chicanery is a charismatic black man being held for decades on purported terrorism charges, but where its rather obvious even to causal international observers that he's more a political prisoner. Wait, haven't we seen this one already?
Finally, for as dumb as the right can be, it seems like they learned a lot from this action. They saw their enemy utilize their advanced weapon systems on what was at best a light expeditionary force. As an insurgent, you must not funnel into your opponent's strength. What those strengths are, and an instinct for the warning signs that indicate they are incoming is much better understood and communicated than it was before.
There's something that feels desperate and weak about the establishment response to Jan6 and Canadian truckers protest. Let's not get carried away and say we've got 'em right where we want 'em, just yet. But somehow, someway, a bunch of boomers, e-grifters and one or two shamans have made every branch of government in DC role around in the mud with them. I respect the great sacrifice many are now paying for to win this outcome and think their actions will be seen in the long view as extremely beneficial.
It's actually even worse than that. Sometime not a long time ago, I think on the 20th anniversary of 9/11, George Bush Jr. gave a speech at the memorial site of the Flight 93 crash, and used that occasion to specifically condemn Ashli Babbit as a dangerous right-wing extremist terrorist, and with that she condemned and dishonored a woman who volunteered to the army after 9/11 because she wanted to answer his patriotic call to action. This means she was duped by, and driven into debt bondage by, and eventually shot dead by the Deep State, and she did all this in the belief that she was a patriot. This is where we're at. (I've heard this on a right-wing dissident podcast.)
This is exactly my point: J6 got GWB to "disrespect the troops". Respect for troops was the single political legitimacy card that guy had left when he left office. And he just used it up...for that.
Think about British police in India, or Alabama police swinging their clubs in the 60s. Sure the police won physically. And yes the protestors had more sympathetic backing and portrayal in the media than MAGA does. But the major source of legitimacy for British rule in a colony like India was that their administrative services were considered far more restrained and civilized than anything a third world country like India could muster on its own. Gandhi's activism forced that frame to break, revealing savagery where cool competence was assumed by most of the public. Babbit likewise did something almost impossible, made the shooting on an unarmed white woman by a black guy the lead story on CNN for weeks (something there had been a lot of but never mentioned, or if so only briefly then memoryholed). And they had to figure out how to get their audience to cheer it on.
If you want a white pill: Babbit getting shot on the Capitol steps easily did one thousand times as much to advance her values then getting blown up in Kabul would have done.
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