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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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%.

Has everybody seen Schwarzenegger's powerful response:

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.

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.

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.

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.