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Extreme minimization of the symbolic importance of a mob invading the seat of government. According to this perspective, the march on rome was just a health-conscious bald man taking a stroll with friends. Any state in such a situation is justified in using lethal force, and lots of it, way earlier than the US actually did here. It's a threat to democracy in a way burning the whole city of minneapolis to the ground isn't.
This happens routinely. Hell, it happened yesterday. For some reason it doesn’t seem important to the powers that be.
I’m just telling you what a self-respecting sovereign would do in his house. Put one of those ‘we don’t call 911’ signs at the entrance, and machine-gun anyone who enters without knocking.
That's honestly what I'd always assumed would happen if someone tried to jump the fence at the White House until this weird incident:
In retrospect, my perspective seems childish, but I legitimately thought that leaping the fence and running towards the White House would get you sniped, or attacked by guard dogs, or... well, at least something.
I don’t think it’s childish, it’s necessary. Current responses are too soft, dare I say, decadent. It is not unthinkable, and it has happened in history, that one day a mob will just waltz in there, slap the president around a little, declare they’re in charge now, and everyone will go: ‘What are we supposed to do, spill blood? We are civilized, let’s just do what they say and hope for the best“.
It comes down to the same disconnect I talked about last time, that somehow public life does not matter, only your private red lines. This is a gigantic collective red line, representing an almost unfathomable amount of lethal force directed at everybody. If it is not defended, nothing ever should be.
The government isn’t a place, it’s a bunch of people. Occupied Capitol and White House? Send in the National Guard and some highly militarized Capitol Police, clear them out; or just let them have the buildings and reconvene elsewhere. America doesn’t have a magic throne or a Darksaber, the Q Shaman sitting in the Speaker’s seat doesn’t make him Speaker, and the Army won’t obey a mob.
It would take an assault strategically equivalent to that shown in Olympus Has Fallen to move the needle on government compliance with a mob.
I can't tell if you guys are blinded by partisan bias or if you actually believe this. Might as well hand them your ‘monopoly on force’ card right there. What if they start putting people in ‘prison’ like the bolsheviks 1917? Just negotiate for their release by granting the rebels taxing rights over fisheries in northern maine?
And this from people who are vociferous supporters of castle doctrine and stand your ground laws in any other context.
By your argument, the government already lost its monopoly of force card in 2020, so there's nothing left to discuss regarding Jan 6th. You think the riot has to be responded to or further riots are emboldened. Well, they didn't respond and further riots have, in fact, been emboldened; having tolerated and even endorsed well over a hundred riots within the last few years, there is no reasonable argument remaining why this one riot, far less violent than many and perhaps even most of the previous examples, is finally the point where the line must be drawn.
The actual problem is that it isn't actually possible for you to credibly advocate cracking down on riots in the abstract, because everyone watched massive, nation-wide riots not get cracked down on for more than a year, and then this one day of mild scuffling got treated like a national disaster. Your options are between no enforcement, or enforcement on only one side. If you choose the latter, the people on that side will recognize that your appeals to law and order only apply when it's to their disadvantage, and they will be increasingly inclined to decline their consent to our social system generally. This outcome is significantly worse than establishing a norm that low-level violence will be tolerated impartially, but people apparently believe that the integrity of the social system itself is essentially impervious. By the time it's obvious that they're wrong, it will be much, much too late to change course.
Oh no? The other riots should be crushed too; it’s nonsense to let it happen because they have ‘legitimate grievances’. Preferably by military-police, but backing rittenhouse style ‘vigilantism’ also works. But if you have only one unit available, definitely send it to the seat of government power first, even if those rioters are less violent, cause less property damage (which definitely is the case here). The challenge to state authority is of a much more grievous nature. Far more emboldening for any other group.
Do you not see the distinction between the riots? In minneapolis, a rioter says: ‘I am angry, I want to destroy, I’d like free stuff’. In washington, ‘Let me rule over you’. It's an attack on your power, a threat to your rights, not just criminality.
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