[oblib]

This is a tough issue for a government. We do have crazies out there and we do need to investigate potential dangerous groups and individuals and reel them in before they do something crazy.

On my FB feed I have seen friends and friends of friends call for armed revolt many times over the past few years. Most all of them are blowing steam and many are in their 60s or older and couldn't run a block in gym shorts, and much less if they were carrying any kind of real military gear, but they like to think they can. We all grew up with "Rambo" movies.

But some of those who's comments I've seen I don't know at all.

The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that needs to be monitored. Most of those who went there were not armed or dangerous, but there were enough kooks to cause some real damage and lives were lost. And last year we had the guy who blew himself and his motorhome up on a Downtown street.

If we had another "Timothy McVeigh" event people would be howling, and if we had several they'd be freaking out and demanding something be done.

We all have good reason to be wary of "Big Brother" type surveillance but we also have to acknowledge that we have a problem with people getting crazy and shooting into crowds and blowing things up.

There's not always a good solution to a shitty situation.

[TheBlight]

FWIW, the protestors at the capitol didn't kill anyone.

[throwaway99x99]

Why was this downvoted? It's completely factual. Officer Sicknick passed away from natural causes (the narrative that his head was bashed in with a fire extinguisher evaporated a couple of days ago[0]). Two of the protesters had heart attacks and one apparently had a meth overdose. The only person who was killed was shot by police. If you have evidence to the contrary, please cite it.

0. https://www.politifact.com/article/2021/apr/20/update-capito...

[seriousquestion]

Most people may not have heard, or don't want to hear, that the narrative collapsed.

[rubyist5eva]

As far as I know, the only person that actually killed anyone was the Secret Service agent that shot Ashley Babbit.

[getlawgdon]

Person you're replying to didn't say that the protesters killed anyone directly.They said "lives were lost." But it is obviously highly probable that those death occurred due to their activities.

[slaymaker1907]

This is a dumb argument because they were at least trying to IMPLEMENT A COUP. It seems pretty clear to me that they would have assaulted and killed representatives if they would have gotten the chance which they very nearly did.

Also, don't call them "protestors". The nicest term I can think of for them would be rebels since they were in open rebellion to the United States. Some people at the capital that day were protestors, but the people who stormed the capital went far beyond protest.

[concordDance]

I think it's worth bearing in mind a few things:

1. Coups don't have to be violent.

2. The hypothetical coupers would not have believed it to be a coup, merely reinstating the rightful president.

3. Those invading the capitol were likely mostly just doing because they could rather than because they had a concrete plan on what they'd do if they found Pence and the representatives. I expect the vast vast majority would have done nothing more than shout slogans.

4. In general, when it comes to ones Outgroups there's a strong tendency to assume the worst at every opportunity. You might want to work to counteract that tendency (if only so you can better understand said Outgroup).

[ClumsyPilot]

Back in the day, my grandparents told me people get killed at rock concerts if they get caught in the moshpit.

This reads at a similar level of credebility. Compate the footage from the capitol with footage of Ukrain protests back in the day.

[TheBlight]

Funny "coup" where none of the plotters were armed.

[anigbrowl]

No, not really. Quite a few successful coups have been essentially bloodless and relied on a combination of surprise and bluff. Napoleon's actual seizure of power was disorganized to put it mildly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coup_of_18_Brumaire

Also, there are charges pending against people who had a stash of firearms in a hotel in Virginia, just across the Potomac, and planned to bring them over at a later stage. Firearms are largely banned in DC so the idea was to take over the Congress first and then establish a defensive perimeter.

Now, I didn't say it was a good plan.

[guerrilla]

Does incompetence and failure bear on intent? I don't think that usually flies in court.

[TheBlight]

Is it remotely plausible to believe a group of unarmed protestors were seriously attempting to gain control over the most powerful superpower the world has ever seen with their barehands? This narrative strains credulity, counselor.

[unishark]

It's plausible that it's what some people were personally thinking (or a better word might be "LARPing"). But for the reasons you point out, it's not realistic to suggest that the loftiness of the goal implies the danger was historically-serious, or requiring some kind of revolutionary increase of law enforcement (beyond handling protests at the capital more wisely next time).

[guerrilla]

That does seem to be the intent they announced.

[Thorrez]

> 17 charged with weapons crimes

> These include people arrested outside the Capitol grounds with weapons like guns and Molotov cocktails

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/02/04/us/capitol-ar...

[stjohnswarts]

They probably would have if they got their hands on people and they also beat several cops which could have potentially killed them. They were definitely out to hurt people and take over Congress.

[concordDance]

> They probably would have if they got their hands on people

You cannot know this. You should be suspicious of thoughts that say your Outgroup is worse than what you have concrete evidence for. Confirmation bias is a hell of a thing.

[colllectorof]

>The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that needs to be monitored.

Unlike, say, nightly riots in Portland, that require neither monitoring nor federal response of any kind?

It would be one thing if posts like the one above honestly argued for some necessary level of general surveillance in good faith. It's entirely different story, however, when they sneakily imply a certain set of hyper-partisan assumptions.

If you can't demonstrate to me that surveillance of social media is politically neutral and aims at preventing harm, rather than suppressing speech through harassment, I'd rather have no surveillance of that kind at all.

Edit:

It's bizarre that despite all these "concerns" about social media there is no investigation (that I know of) into the origins of the whole QAnon degeneracy.

[frabbit]

The ordeal at our Capital proves there's a problem that needs to be monitored.

They were monitored. To the extent that the lead of the Proud Boys was actually supplying intel to the feds and the Status Coup youtube channel (which I think was taken off line for some Kafkaesque reason) was recording various pro-Trump people in public calling for such actions.

More monitoring is not needed. Monitoring did nothing to stop the 9-11 Saudi allies from carrying out their mission. The only thing monitoring does is to make people fear to express their thoughts online in case they get into trouble.

[betwixthewires]

Out of curiosity. Why do you think that people disliking and even hating their government is necessarily a bad thing? Or is it only expressing that feeling that you have a problem with?

[oblib]

I think it's obviously a bad thing when they express their hate by murdering random and innocent victims. When and wherever that line is crossed it is a bad thing. There are no exceptions to that.

[betwixthewires]

Alright, so to take the most obvious example, and one that might not be adjacent to the one we are talking about but is still useful, the rebellion of the 13 colonies in the late 1700s included people being killed. Not just military. Regular people died. Was that rebellion wrong?

Also bear in mind that nobody was killed by anyone at the capital except for a participant, by a police officer. Also, you didn't answer either of my questions.

[oblib]

"Also, you didn't answer either of my questions."

I didn't answer your questions because they are bullshit questions.

!. "Out of curiosity. Why do you think that people disliking and even hating their government is necessarily a bad thing?

I didn't even come close to saying or implying that.

2. "Or is it only expressing that feeling that you have a problem with?"

I didn't even come close to saying or implying that either.

[015a]

It doesn't need to be monitored. It needs to be deescalated. The left wants to believe its blameless, but there's a massive portion of America that, per their believe foundation, disagrees with the policies they are putting in place. We live in a Democracy; the only "right" way forward is the one we all agree with, and we can't agree on anything right now.

I don't know how to deescalate it, but its beginning to feel like the most sensible solution is transferring significantly more resources and power to the States (which is precisely how our country was founded). Many states do, internally, have division, but broadly speaking California would be happier to run itself more independently of Donald Trump, as much as Mississippi would be happier to run itself more independently of Joe Biden.

It doesn't feel like this is optional; some amount of fractionalization will happen, possibly in four years, possibly in fifty, but it is inevitable. The choice in front of us is to either, ease ourselves into it using the democratic framework we have in place by significantly reducing the power of the executive branch and transferring more tax-originating resources from the federal to state & country levels, or; some form of civil war.

And, I beg you, don't form this idea of "civil war" in your mind to resemble the first one; it won't. For all the ugliness of our first Civil War, our second will be far uglier. One possibility may take the form of a second Trump-like presidency destroying the Federal faith of left-leaning states, causing the west coast to secede. Another; domestic terrorism, cyber warfare, untraceable and unstoppable flash attacks on critical infrastructure such as electricity and water, splinter military groups.

As left-leaning as I may be, we can't come out of the Trump presidency and Biden election thinking all of this is over. We can't ban Parler from AWS then wash our hands clean and say its a job well done. This rage is real, its everywhere, and there are four hundred million guns owned by civilians in America [1]. Gun control? A fairy tale. Suppression of dissenting speech? Someone didn't read 1984, or the Constitution. The only solution is to fractionalize; if people feel anger at the President, the solution isn't to install a new President, it's to make the position of the President one that isn't worthy of Anger.

The scariest part about our future as a country lies in the reality that this will never happen. We are driving full speed toward a civil war, or worse, and the immutable system we've built won't allow us to do what is necessary to avoid it.

[1] https://wamu.org/story/20/09/18/how-many-people-in-the-u-s-o...

[oblib]

>> It doesn't need to be monitored. It needs to be deescalated.

I used "monitored" as verb to point out we need to be aware of who is plotting extreme violent events like the one Timothy McVeigh planned and executed and prevent them whenever possible in order to deescalate a trend towards others carrying out similar events.

"Q" is a thing, and we've seen quite a few citizens fall for it. That's a problem that any government could come up against and it is the government's duty to protect it's citizens.

[rocqua]

> there's a massive portion of America that, per their believe foundation, disagrees with the policies they are putting in place. We live in a Democracy; the only "right" way forward is the one we all agree with, and we can't agree on anything right now.

I mostly agree. Especially that the speed with which progressive policies have been adapted has alienated a lot of people. The same has happened with conservatives trying to roll back some of these policies alienating the progressives. This has weakened faith in democracy, which is rather bad.

My conclusion is that broad consensus and middle ground needs to be found. This requires having debate that has some good-faith. And requires some amount of empathy for the opposing side. How America could get back to that is hard.

I am not sure whether more state-authority would help that much. These fundamental disagreements also exists within states, and both sides care a lot about people outside their state. Democrats in California would not accept banning abortion in Arkansas. Nor would republicans in Texas be happy if Oregon bans firearm ownership. In fact, I fear that either case happening would only drive the polarization.

It would let either party vilify and generalize their opponents based on the in their view horrible things done by those parties in their states.