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John Byrne
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Grumpy Old Guy

Joined: 11 May 2005
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 7:30am | IP Logged | 1 post reply

Referring to the rioters as “cosplayers” actually points to a deeper thread in all this. Most of us have been to comic conventions where some of the people in costume “bury themselves” in the parts, and we’ve seen, too, fat, ineffectual losers who deck themselves out in paramilitary gear, festoon themselves with weapons and declare themselves empowered as members of “militia” groups.

Self deception runs thru these people at frighteningly pervasive levels. Powerless in their day to day lives, they seize on any opportunity to convince themselves they matter. Once they have convinced themselves they are in the right, it is difficult to turn them back to more reasonable thinking.

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Shawn Kane
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 7:52am | IP Logged | 2 post reply

That kind of  thinking no doubt directly affected the rioters who died from natural causes. People who were in terrible physical condition but allowed themselves to think that they were revolutionaries and the stress of the event killed them. 
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John Byrne
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 7:57am | IP Logged | 3 post reply

Exactly so, Shawn.
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Carlos Velasco
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 10:38am | IP Logged | 4 post reply

To mention some positives, Q followers instantly declared the incident "false flag". It looks like what happened wasn't their official plan and perhaps Trump & friends only wanted some "additional pressure" by not even protecting the building (or perhaps they thought their own boys could never do that).

In a worse case scenerio, the military will force a repetition of the elections. I don't see your country turning into a dictatorship except for the sadly unavoidable larfare (we also have that in Spain).

That also means there will not be a civil war. And if votes are counted properly in future elections, Democrats should win thanks to the demographic renewal.

Hopefully, the election results will be accepted after 10-20 years and this wil be reflected in history books, just like slavery was abolished and not everyone agreed.

What's worrying is how easy fascists all over the world manage to see themselves as rebels against some "communist empire", when they are actually supporting the "elites" much more than their enemies by electing presidents that reduce taxes for the rich, among other things. I wish at least they understood they are supporting the power and not the anti-system forces.

Supporting the police no matter what they do, suporting the army but not the health workers or other professions, supporting the millionairs and supporting the official religion organizations of each country is not exactly revolutionary. But I guess they would not feel as special if they realized about this.
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Tim O Neill
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 11:46am | IP Logged | 5 post reply


Shawn Kane: "I'm not saying that there aren't bad people in the country but
the extremists who flooded Washington D.C.* that day don't represent the
average person on the right just as the riots that happened around the George
Floyd murder don't represent the person on the left. Fox News, CNN, MSNBC,
will tell us otherwise but unless your neighbor is truly a bad person,
conversation and friendship is still something that can exist."

***

While I agree that opposing parties need to find common ground and reject
violence, your example points to one of the central problems in getting there.
Comparing the insurrection/protest to the civil rights demonstrations is a
disproportionate and false comparison in every way. Even without the
violence, the people who went to the the Trump rally and the Capitol were
there to protest counting legitimate votes of people of color. Even at its most
peaceful, it's still a chilling attempt to subvert the constitution and exclude the
votes of the people for their own political gain. The civil rights protests were
to oppose racism, and at its most peaceful (which they largely were), they
seek to get equal rights and strengthen our constitution and country.

As with so much of the conflict in the US, both are based in disenfranchising
people of color. And the violence from each is very different - the Trump
supporters sought to disrupt the election, hang Mike Pence, and zip tie the
hands Nancy Pelosi and AOC. The civil rights protests damaged property and
disrupted city streets. I'm sorry, but I don't think there are enough broken
Starbucks storefronts that equals a violent political insurrection.

Your choice of media points to the source of this great divide. While MSNBC is
partisan, it is expressing opinions. It baffles me that CNN has been perceived
as partisan, but they still report facts. Fox is trafficking in lies - a false
narrative that votes were stolen, Antifa dressed as Trump supporters, and the
violence was no big deal - just a bunch of tourists. That's not an opinion -
those are lies, and they need to be called out. Even "mainstream" Republicans
are following Tucker Carlson down the rabbit hole of lies. How do we come out
of this? What defines the "average" Republicans you refer to, and what do you
stand for?





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Shawn Kane
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 2:06pm | IP Logged | 6 post reply

Tim, 
If you're asking about my own personal philosophy, I believe that people have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of their own happiness. I don't believe that someone who I disagree with is my enemy. I don't believe in Democrat or Republican over American. I understand that my experiences are different from others especially those who live in different parts of the country. 

If you don't feel CNN is partisan, I'm not going to change your mind. If you feel they do straight news, that's fine. I disagree with that notion. As far as the "average" Republican goes, I don't know how to explain it beyond the ones I know get up and go about their business every day and have an opinion that may or may not be different from the "average" Democrat. 

And please don't think that for a second that I condone what happened on January 6, 2021. I was disgusted that day but I also believe that a Starbucks or Target being burnt down which leaves employees without a job to be pretty disgusting too. 

I try not to get involved in too many political conversations in this group because I believe having an actual face-to-face conversation is best when discussing politics. When I do comment, my reasons are just to have a conversation so that many on here don't think that everyone who's not a Democrat or on the Left is some kind of crazed loon. Don't know if I'm successful with it, but I do my best.


Edited by Shawn Kane on 08 January 2022 at 2:07pm
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 4:08pm | IP Logged | 7 post reply

 Joe Zhang wrote:
It depends on whose point of view. If it were your business, or your place of employment being looted and burned, while your mayor was bending over backwards to appease rioters, perhaps that kind of government isn't worth protecting.

That's a complete non-sequitur.  The seditionists in DC were not Portland property owners protesting the policies of their mayor.  The two things are unrelated. 

Anyway, the simple point here is that attempting to overturn the results of a free and fair election by attacking the seat of government and threatening Congress with violence is a FAR more serious threat to our democracy than random rioting and property damage.  That's not to say that rioting and property damage are not serious crimes that should be condemned.  But the two things are hardly equivalent. 
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David Miller
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 4:22pm | IP Logged | 8 post reply

 Tim O'Neill wrote:
the rabbit hole of lies

1) It didn't happen
2) Maybe it happened but it was definitely other people
3) Maybe it happened but it was definitely justified
4) It's old news.
5) It definitely happened and it was awesome
6) It was awesome and we need to bring it back but worse

Edited by David Miller on 08 January 2022 at 4:37pm
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David Miller
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 4:36pm | IP Logged | 9 post reply

 Shawn Kane wrote:
If you don't feel CNN is partisan, I'm not going to change your mind. If you feel they do straight news, that's fine. I disagree with that notion. As far as the "average" Republican goes, I don't know how to explain it beyond the ones I know get up and go about their business every day and have an opinion that may or may not be different from the "average" Democrat.

As a loony leftist, I find CNN infuriatingly conservative and corporatist, and therefore useless. To the extent CNN is partisan, it's the partisanship of a circa-1980's centrist Democrat, while Fox's partisanship coordinates directly with the party and particularly its formerly fringe elements.

It's not really two sides of the same coin when CNN fires Chris Cuomo for coordinating with his loathsome brother while Fox has persistently overlooked Shawn Hannity's repeated pattern of being secretly materially involved in stories he opines about.

I know a lot of "average" Republicans--literal party members--who are about as moderate as they need to be in the Pacific Northwest. They profess to not have voted for Trump, and I respect them enough to suspect they voted for Trump and are smart enough to lie in order to avoid serial arguments with the shrill liberals who surround them.

Their economic and social views are very aligned with their timid tech thousandaire Democrat neighbors, yet despite the reservations they profess about Trump, mostly about his tone and style, they're committed to the Republican Party's success and the success of candidates who embrace Trumpism, which right now is the same thing.

I know a lot of abnormal Republicans too, literal insurrections who rioted at the Capitol, whose idea of political discourse is to taunt me about diabetes. I'm not convinced they actually vote.
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Jason Czeskleba
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 6:01pm | IP Logged | 10 post reply

 Shawn Kane wrote:
And please don't think that for a second that I condone what happened on January 6, 2021. I was disgusted that day but I also believe that a Starbucks or Target being burnt down which leaves employees without a job to be pretty disgusting too.

What puzzles me is the frequent suggestion that the two are equivalent.  Yes, rioting and deliberate property damage is repugnant, regardless of the cause.  But in terms of being a threat to our country and very way of life, they are FAR less serious than the seditious acts perpetrated on January 6th.  The seditionists of January 6 were not just rioting and destroying property.  They were using violence in an attempt to subvert the processes of government and overturn a free and fair election.  It puzzles me that so many want to minimize this and suggest it was just rioting on the same level as what went on in the wake of George Floyd's death.
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Shawn Kane
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 6:09pm | IP Logged | 11 post reply

Understood. But I wasn't making a "Yeah but..." argument. I recognize there is a difference. 
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Rebecca Jansen
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Posted: 08 January 2022 at 7:20pm | IP Logged | 12 post reply

It's in the primaries where a motivated fanatical minority is flexing it's muscles upon 'conservatives', deciding who they will have to vote for, but few of those people at war and perpetually outraged are appropriate to that term conservative in hardly any way. I can at least understand the outrage of a minority living entire lives with unequal treatment from authorities... the angry sulky types allied with a self-obsessed con artist business genius I have no idea what they think is in it for them, other than simply bullying and sheer power tripping.

Edited by Rebecca Jansen on 08 January 2022 at 7:21pm
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