Trump supporters are storming Capitol Hill, breaking windows and gaining entrance to the building. The National Guard and State Police are using tear gas and flash bombs to disperse the crowd. The Insurrection Act has been referenced. A woman has been shot, and someone is inciting violence. This is absolutely horrendous. How could things get this bad?

A good portion of Americans are certifiably crazy (I'm speaking cross political affiliation). It's just the first time that I know of where we've had a president who is one of them.

Finally people like Pence have had enough. But really he had to be thinking "if I don't stand up now when I obviously have no power to do anything he is asking me to do, when will I?"

Trump's next move will be to talk to the military to see if they'll help him stay in power. They won't. They'll be kind enough to not leak the conversations though.

Then Trump will either rage quit a week before Biden takes office or he'll literally be escorted out by police. (I expect the former though. I don't think he'll be in DC much longer.)

Nothing today surprised me. It's what I expected would happen when you hold a rally for conspiracy nut jobs right outside the place you want them to invade and leave the door unlocked and send security home.

Republican Party is dead. The moderates will try to reclaim it but Trump has splintered them for good. I expect Trump will actually form his own party if enough Republicans denounce him.

Been trying to avoid the news lately to be honest. What is happening in Washington is mostly peaceful.

Well. That's how people who can not afford to loose are acting. Nothing amazing. It's just a demonstration of stupidity.
Just a thought: when it was the "black lives matters" strikes the repression was way more powerful than when it's a bunch of white right winged idiots.

The majority of people were peaceful. The majority of people during the summer riots were as well. But occupying federal buildings, destroying property, flashing weapons, shouting violent things is not peaceful. Everybody who entered the building did so with some violent pretense. I have no issue with people who stayed on the doorsteps.

Also, you cannot compare the reaction of Capitol police to city street police. The latter are always going to be more aggressive. Had DC police been stationed at the scene, I think more of the mob would have suffered injuries.

This is a disgrace for democracy whatever your political color is.
You may disagree on what path to follow but there should at least be some decency and respect...

Trump basically gift wrapped an exit for any sane Republican who was still backing him. Storming the Capitol Building to purposefully (with terror) interrupt and disrupt an active session of Congress isn't going to go well with most politicians. Too close to home.

And the best person to blame is Trump himself because, well, he legitimately is principally responsible and he's on the way out. It's pathetic that this is the moment that people like Lindsey Graham wait for to have a moment of self-righteousness, but it is what it is. Without such a clearly defining moment people like him would have struggled to separate themselves from the legacy of conspiracies and distrust of all election officials.

Anecdotally I've spoken with several staunch Republicans and followers of Trump who also have taken this moment to discredit Trump. When they saw that Pence himself (and Fox News) finally said in no uncertain terms that he cannot overthrow the election, their view of Trump was shattered. He lied about Pence being able to do that; what else is he lying about? I cannot say that those isolated experiences are indicative of a widespread anti-Trump movement within the party, but it shows that at least some people would have listened had other respected leaders clearly called Trump out on his BS over his entire presidency.

Yeah I saw a lot of comments that were saying things like "OMFG is it all he had to say ? Where are the proof he told us about for so long "

His proof was conspiracy Twitter comments that surfaced up to him that he then broadcasted back down to his fans.

If I had a big audience, I could get 1,000 signed affidavits overnight of people who swear they saw alien UFOs. Doesn't mean anything. And that's basically all they have: a bunch of mostly untrained civilians who think they saw something untoward upon being told in unequivocal terms that the election was stolen and that Trump won every contested state by hundreds of thousands of votes.

The fact of the matter is that Biden won lawfully. Now you can reasonably argue that Wisconsin (among almost every other state, including super-Republican ones) shouldn't have been able to change their election laws without legislation. Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that they could. So that is by definition, lawful. Don't like the laws and the interpretations of them? Then legislation needs to pass new laws.

You can argue that dead people, under age people, out-of-state people, etc, illegally voted. I'm sure that's true. However, the burden of proof is on you to prove that those people turned out en masse for Biden. In Trump's Great Commission of 2016, (to the best of my recollection) they tried fewer than 10 people nationwide on criminal charges of voting twice and only reached a guilty verdict on a few of them, and the split between Democrats and Republicans was 50/50.

As Senator Graham was saying last night (I paraphrase), "You said you had 100,000 fraudulent voters. I asked for names of just ten; I got one. This isn't evidence of widespread fraud."

It's crazy to think that just yesterday morning Trump was claiming he would prevail. Pence (according to Trump's lies) had told him he would overturn the results. States were just waiting to reverse their votes. But a signed, irrefutable statement by Pence finally dashed that dream. The Trumptards were shocked.

Also Trump gifted Georgia two Democratic Senators and control of the Senate. That's incredible. He spent so much energy tearing down the Republican governor and other Republican officials over the last few weeks, and got the candidates to go along with him for one final trip down the toilet.

I expected fireworks from Trump, but not so many gifts to start 2021. Thank you, kind sir for finally doing something right.

Well resumed and informative. Thanks Matthew :-)

Honestly, I was hoping the Republicans supporting Mr. Trump were doing it to save face. But to let it get this far is just too crazy. My housemate is a rabid Trump supporter. I mentioned there was talk of invoking the 26th Amendment and he mentions Joe Biden as if it would be applied to him. How could people be so blind to what is going on that they still believe he is the greatest president ever?

Surely you mean the 25th amendment since the 26th is the one that lowered the voting age to 18 for all elections.

Trump uses weasel words to prevent getting trapped in lies and erroneous statements. People buy into that. But really for the first time he was directly contradicted by somebody trusted by conservatives who he cannot fire (Pence) in a short enough timeframe that there was no way to get around it.

The blind followers of the Republican party though will quickly dump Trump as soon as the majority of Republican politicians tell them to. It's just taken four years for that movement to gain enough steam.

Those who actively seek out conspiracy theories aren't going to change their minds. I think--hope--that's the minority of people. So maybe your housemate is one of them. There's nothing that can be done. All facts are part of the conspiracy.

And ultimately even if they do begrudgingly agree that Trump is a hack, the comeback is that all politicians are hack and ... look at (insert some other person). You know... "the emails" and other such nonsense. Redirecting away from Trump is their only defense.

the funny thing is nobody cared when the left did it multiple times.

hell, ANTIFA/left-nutjobs literally burned down the historic courthouse in my city. But that doesn't get massively reported on CNN/Salon/etc so it's not important

https://wsiltv.com/2020/06/01/arrest-in-historic-nashville-courthouse-fire/

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Screw anyone who burns down or smashes buildings. It takes DECADES to build cities, it only takes 1 a-hole to burn them down.

You linked to an article that claimed a man was arrested for the crime, so it seems like somebody cared.

But it seems obvious that there would be more attention placed on a riot that was essentially egged on directly by the president himself that occurred in a federal building that currently housed every American's elected representatives than arson on a historic, local building.

I also recall reading and hearing a lot about various BLM inspired riots.

Do you think the media can keep up with everything? No. For instance, we only hear about school shootings where at least 150 people die now.

coughs laughing

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Slanted headlines from media? Seen that before.

But I don't understand the line of thinking that because something else didn't get the attention you feel it deserves than neither should this. Two wrongs are worse than one.

Many complained that these rioters didn't get the beat down that BLM has gotten. When said from that perspective, it's not a good thing. Unless force is necessary it shouldn't be used. Police were wrong then. Police at the Capitol did a better job, outside of woefully being unprepared. These criminals should face justice in court, not at the hands of police.

I literally said both matter. It's just you come into the conversation with so much priming from your consumption of mainstream media that you assumed I was arguing for one side.

also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

There are reports that leftists from Antifa etc... were posing as Trump supporters that started this and that some Trump supporters were actually trying to help the police and stop them. How true this is is anyone's guess. I heard this from a woman that attended. Live video from certain news agencies showed mostly peaceful.

Ah well. What happens, happens. I haven't been following much of the news lately as I have about had it with it. Been busy pushing myself to do more programming and avoid the news like the plague. Been working on isometric again, still working on detecting the mouse tile click when varying height tiles which seems more involved, but that's another topic.

There are reports that moon men from Mars were behind it all too. Nobody can prove they weren't. It's more likely that Trump supporters pretend to be antifa than the other way around.

The reality is that US congressmen, diehard Trump supporting veterans, leaders of well known right wing militias, etc are all known to have taken a major part in this by virtue of their own live streaming. That's all fact, and trying to minimize that by speculating over outlandish scenarios is yet another redirection tactic that Trump supporters resort to when some indefensible thing has occurred.

Plenty of people are caught on camera, so the beauty of that is we don't need to guess who may or may not have been involved. They will be identified, arrested, and tried in court. After that, then we can revisit the topic with 20-20 vision with full harmonious agreement.

It's not fair to say that this mob represents the majority of Trump supporters. But to pretend that they came from somewhere else is to deny reality.

And, btw, good luck with your game.

Sure... I think it's a good idea to be aware how media bias creates almost separate realities for people in the different camps, a site like this is a useful tool:

https://ground.news/

It's got a bit of bias in how they categorize media outlets, since they partly use a biased site called mediabiasfactcheck.com for that, but the base service seems good.

Out of curiosity I checked OANN. They cite Mo Brooks as saying Antifa terrorists infiltrated the demonstration to cause the riot. Mr. Brooks claims he was told this by another Congressman. Where did the other Congressman get his information? And on the flip side, if "Antifa terrorists" caused this riot, how do we know "MAGA terrorists" did not do the same in Seattle or other protests?

What would anti-fascist terrorists (i.e., anti-Trump) have to gain by sabotaging Trump's loss? It's just a ridiculous idea to believe without evidence. If they were going to do anything in that region that day it would have involved harming Trump himself.

The entire Republican party (or at least, the ones that supported Trump all 4 years) is pretty much laughable at this point. They don't get to pretend like Trump was fine for 4 years, and then still be considered reliable witnesses. He was obviously unfit, and they supported an unfit president harming international relations, embarrassing the entire nation on the global stage for 4 long, ever worsening years, polarizing the country and seemingly erasing decades of presumed progress.

Sure seems like Trump and Hawley should be facing domestic terrorist charges themselves for encouraging the "coup" as it happened. I think it's really shameful how quickly America fell under Trump. It seems like Americans think life is just a big game to be cheated. The jokes on them though because all they've done is sabotage their children's future. Considering there are still people butthurt about losing the Confederate war I can only imagine how much longer now these ignorant dummies are going to secretly hold a grudge.

I got banned from IRC because of Trump and his goons.

Andy Ngo says one guy is a far-left extremist:
https://parler.com/post/f6bad7d0295b40289bfeb16376439d79

Yes, and he freely admits to being there. He uses the same excuse that elected US Representatives have used for being there.

Bottom line is that anybody who was present should be charged for unlawful entry and riot related things. Everybody inside was part of the problem.

Huh?

Obviously. Mostly peaceful or not

There was at least one elected member of a state (not national) house that also recorded himself storming the Capitol. He claimed as "a member of the media." This BLM guy used the same general excuse.

Right... Weird times.

I'm not blaming everything on the left, but, the conservatives by definition and their nature tend to do things only after things are acceptable. They don't try new things, they're the conservative people who you have to pull and plead for them to try and support anything (like e.g. marijuana legalization or gay marriage). Everything you're seeing today, the left paved the roads for.

The last decade the nutjobs on the left have normalized burning down cities and storming government buildings with no real reprocussions (including attorney generals "dropping all charges against violent protesters")--and in some cases, even received praise. So now, the nutjobs on the right after (in their minds) being wronged and discriminated against, are now doing the same kind of crazy things the left has gotten away with for years.

The left, by constantly alienating and "shutting down" any chance for right-wingers to participate in the national discussion, they've forced the right-wing to create their own echo chambers where their own nutcases can flourish until they end up acting on their stupidity.

Remember, we had an entire block of Seattle turned into an autonomous zone? Name a single example in America where conservatives took an entire city block and the police just let it happen, even after multiple people were murdered the block stayed open.

Any discussion of "BLM rioters were treated worse" is a complete media-created farce. They burned down entire city blocks, and took over city blocks to create their own government (literally an insurrection).

Everyone looked the other way when left-wing nutjobs were destroying cities, government buildings, and attacked congresspeople's houses and surprise, surprise, when the right-wing nutjobs starts doing it.

I said the same thing on this very forum about Obama. The things you let him get away with will be abused when the next guy that you don't like gets in office.

The same thing applies to left-wing nutjobs getting a pass on things like screaming a black woman out of a restaurant for daring to be conservative.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-candace-owens-charlie-kirk-protestors-restaurant-a8480746.html

You don't make the world a better place by ignoring the crimes of people "on your side". Because the otherside eventually stoops to their level.

I don't think it has anything to do with a copycat mindset. Anarchists have always existed regardless of political ideology. But the right leaning version of that hasn't felt like they needed to act out because they felt like they were in power. (Notable exceptions for a few domestic bombings here and there.)

But more of the right feels like they are losing control, so the amount of anarchists willing to do something has grown.

I hope you're right. I haven't talked to many of the Trump supporters that I know lately, but I just don't hold out hope that they'll dump him just like that. It'll be some new insane conspiracy theory that the Republican party and Pence are rigged against him, blah blah blah. ANTIFA is who stormed the capital (nevermind that that makes zero sense), blah blah blah. I can't stand to talk to these people for too long anymore. Just like talking to COVID deniers (very large overlap in the actual group of people too).

Reminds me of arguments I've had with some Trump supporters defending their die hard support of him on the grounds that he claims to be pro-life. But when confronted with questions on his pitiful response (if you can even call it that) to COVID causing plenty of deaths, the defense I've heard several times is "well, abortion is legal, so why are these people more important?"

Is human life important, or is it not? The idea that saving lives here doesn't matter because abortion isn't outlawed is hypocritical and undermines the entire argument.

Like bambams pointed out - this argument doesn't even make any sense if you know what antifa actually is. But the people making these "reports" just use them as a boogeyman, so while it's probably completely false, the claims don't surprise me.

Help the police? NiteHackr pull your head out of your crevice and watch the video footage of the riots at the Capitol. They beat an officer unconscious and then kept beating him until he died. Another officer committed suicide. Antifa stands for, read along, Anti-FAscism. Trump is a fascist. They would celebrate Joe Biden's victory, not lead a raid on the capitol.

Matt Gaetz spread this very lie on the senate floor himself. It's absolute BS.

25th amendment or impeach him

STOP LISTENING TO LIES

Find some non-conservative media for once. You know the whole world is appalled at what happened on Jan. 6th in the Capitol. There was a noose and gallows setup, there were confederate and Trump flags. If you support these people, and you want to say you support America, well that's just a contradiction in terms.

No, I think this would be an obvious tactic for Antifa, for the same reasons that people claim Antifa were behind it. It makes Trump supporters look bad, it's an excuse for more Big Tech censorship, more Far-Left violence^[1], attempting another impeachment, etc. But so far I only see evidence for maybe a couple of Far-Left extremists being at the scene, nothing more. What happened is a win for them anyway.

To see what is going on with Antifa, follow Andy Ngô.

Antifa has a history that goes back to nazi Germany, etc. But today's Antifa in the US is just a violent extremist organization that enjoys a lot of media protection. They are already committing violence, check the footnote. Political violence is what they do, they are basically terrorists.

Jesus Christ. Give your head a shake.

What for..?

By the way, the origins of Antifa are interesting, what they are doing today makes a lot of sense if you know that they were basically against everything that is not communism, they were like the brownshirts of the German communist party: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifaschistische_Aktion

(Hope Wikipedia isn't lying about this, but I don't expect so.)

Does Antifa people like what happend at the Capitol? Probably, as it would seem to serve their cause. Are they behind it? Doesn't look like it.

You appear to be misinterpreting the facts.

They are not directly related. All Wikipedia says is that the modern day American antifa movement draws aesthetics (appearances) and some tactics from the historical organization. And even that analysis seemingly was just published in a socialist magazine that you probably wouldn't trust so it probably doesn't carry much weight.

Antifa (the left) was there and in some cases inside the building. And quite possibly reveling in the self destruction of the Republican party, and maybe even sarcastically cheering them on. But they weren't pretending to be Trump supporters. So far everybody arrested in Trump garb has been... Wait for it... Die hard Trump supporters.

Oh wait. No they are actually antifa members playing a four year long con that they planned on ending up as a riot on the Capitol. Yeah the leaders of the proud boys, gun right clubs, etc are just pretending to like Trump. They are really antifa in disguise for four years. Give me a break.

Right, I don't see anyone saying otherwise either

https://www.tampabay.com/news/florida-politics/2021/01/07/how-matt-gaetz-spread-a-falsehood-about-antifa-infiltrating-the-mob-that-attacked-congress/

Congressman Matt Gaetz:

The overwhelming narrative of Trump supporters is that all the violence came from Antifa and the Trump people were there just singing Kumbaya. People like Gaetz start with "sources say ... some people were Antifa..." knowing that the mob will take it the distance to mean "it is fact that all violence was Antifa."

And then when each instance is proven false, they shrug their shoulders and respond "I've heard people say it..." as if that's all the evidence that is needed. And ultimately if just a single Antifa person is found in a ten block radius of the Capitol Building, then that cancels out the proven arrests and evil intentions of long term Trump backers. I mean, who doesn't drive around a truck full of pipe bombs, guns, restraints, nooses, etc, as a matter of daily business?

I'll bet that most people who voted for Trump don't actually any believe any of that, just like most people who voted for Biden aren't dirty commies...

There's a difference between Trump Supporter and Republican voter. You can be one without the other.

What the exact percentage is of people who would believe this garbage, I don't know. But I wouldn't underestimate it. The OANN types are broadcasting crazy lies very loudly which gets the conspiracy types excited. Less crazy versions of those stories trickle up to the Fox News types where it becomes mainstream. 90% of the Republican leadership endorses it with silence. I think that ends up being a large number of voters who believe some version of it.

Now once the leadership actively goes against the lies, sure, I think the majority of Republican voters will no longer believe them. But the majority of Trump supporters will remain in his club until the end of their days. I have no idea what percentage that is, but I hope it's <10% of the party and fear that it's 50%.

I guess time will tell...

I wonder how many people believed conspiracy theories about Russians, the "fake news" narrative, "mostly peaceful protests", Biden not being involved in corruption, etc. Or Trump saying lots of bad stuff he didn't actually say. Seeing it happen to "the other side" makes it obvious to you. And you think those people believing that the election was stolen are dumb, I suppose. Now you know how "your team" can look from the other side, it's not that different. I love being a centrist, by the way

Has everybody seen Schwarzenegger's powerful response:

I don't think most people even understood what that was about. I sure don't. Russian agents spread misinformation; probably true. Trump has business ties with Russia and somebody somewhere has dirt on Trump, probably true. But beyond that, I never got the infatuation with the whole thing.

Trump's call where he was trading US tax dollars for foreign interference was an impeachable offense though. Other politicians like my old governor of Illinois got slammed harder for less. But I think the Democrats constant whining about Russia caused people to ignore the actual impeachable offenses.

As with "mostly peaceful Trump protesters," there's not much meaning behind it. A dinner that is mostly not poisonous is still deadly. Most people who support the BLM movement and attend rallies are not violent, just as most people who support Trump and attend rallies are not violent.

But the key is that just because most aren't violent doesn't mean that those who are violent aren't "true" followers. Certain ideas central to BLM (getting rid of the police in some way, shape, or form) lead to violence. Just as certain ideas central to Trump's agenda naturally lead to violence.

Russians referring to the 2016 interference (which is confirmed to have happened, but is unclear what impact they had) or something else?

We also have good reason to believe that Trump and the powers that be would have interfered in the investigation were he to be involved with the Russians. The extent to which he can I have no idea, but given what he has been able to do over the past 4 years it doesn't look like the American system is very well patched.

I'd be more interested in seeing if the investigation is started anew with Biden in control. Ultimately though I believe that there are people pulling the strings of the white house, and if Trump did conspire with Putin to get elected in 2016 I think it serves the American government better to bury it than to expose it so we may never know the whole truth.

I generally assume that to be the case with politics anyway. We're the audience watching the magic show from the seats and we only see what they intend for us to see, whether it's real or not. Only the backstage crew really knows what's going on.

I also think that no human system will ever work properly without oversight, and that guarantees that our governments will continue to fail to represent us. Until the system cannot be abused it wlll only be abused because the people most likely to win power are the ones most likely to abuse it.

That's largely because we pick our leadership like the winner of a reality TV show. Nobody knows or cares who they are or what they've done until now. We just wait for them to advertise their fiction to figure out which group we're going to associate with based on some bullshit talking points on the news instead of making their life and career speak for itself.

And we'll be sure to tune out for the next 4 years so that we can choose the next leader just as carelessly.

I was thinking today that it would make a good reality show if the president had to poll the TV audience to determine what to wear, what to eat, who to bomb, etc.

You mean, like, a pure democracy?

Append:

At that point why not automate the president?

Append:

Maybe they did automate the president, over the past 4 years, and it went really horribly. However, they planned for this scenario by staging the president as some elderly nobody loser failed billionaire that everybody rightfully hates so that in the likely event that something goes wrong it can be successfully passed off as the meth fuelled ravings of a lunatic instead of as a robot.

Looks like president 2.0 is much more polished. I expect this model to do a better job.

Now corporations are rethinking their political donations. Multiple companies have stopped donating to Republicans, some are asking for the donations back, and at least one company will not be donating to any Congressperson until the next term takes place. I wonder what effect it will have.

I'm guessing it affects the companies more than the politicians.

The real question is how much of the Republican party Trump takes with him. Red counties will get more trumpian over the next few years because of this. But if they lose the moderates, that's going to hurt them in the suburbs.

I assume Trump is going to go crazy after the 20th once he finds a platform (TV or internet). And he'll continue to drum up his support. I just wonder if he'll do it as a Republican. I'm sure they (my fictitious Trump party) could win 100 seats in Congress at the expense of the Republicans, but in the general presidential election they'd be screwed.

I can't go too deep into the politics or psychological reasons for what happened, but it was really upsetting. That's all I have to say about that.

As for Trump, it does seem like the steam is finally starting to run out, and the looming penalties/punishments for being a complete **** for the last few years may be starting to kick in; I'm open to being wrong about that, but from where I'm sitting the last few years of his tweets and public performances have been shameful. It's like watching celebrity love island, or kardashians, or my life as a freak or whatever. The worst extremeties of the modern west, the spoiled millenial overture played out like a child with an annoying flute to millions of bewildered normals, all under the guise of one of the most powerful men on the planet.

I for one welcome Biden, and movies like "the Burbs". Time to go back to a less spoiled social-media driven dregs of society plastic fake orange shit-show of an existence.

Hey my password still works. Never in 1 million years when I signed up here did I expect us to be having these kinds of debates on these forums.

My take :: TLDR :: The ppl who stormed the capitol were traitors under a flag of an insurrectionist and the real patriots are the ones sleeping there now defending the place from violent overthrow.

If you still support the right wing politics, thats fine and your prerogative. But if you support the man/men responsible for this or the people who violently tried to keep him in power, you might need mental help.

edit: also glad to see some old faces online here. hope everyone is doing well during the past year.

Good news. If this impeachment passes, Mr. Trump will be banned from government. Yes, he can start his own party and install a puppet government, but as I said before, this will split the Republican Party. Plus the legal and financial troubles he faces will keep him busy. And Mike Farrell, welcome back. Allegro became a political discourse site years ago. Matt simply adds threads regarding other topics to confuse nonmembers to our true purpose.

It's a bit of a lose-lose scenario now of his own doing. If there is no more violence over the next month, then people could say his people listen to him... just like when he incited them to attack the Capitol. If there is violence, then people can say "look at that out of control monster he created."

He deserves to be impeached and we deserve to know who stands with him. But the punishment is almost irrelevant. If he isn't able to run for president, then somebody just like him will. Somebody a little less dumb and a little more dangerous.