• aberrate_junior_beatnik@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    ·
    11 months ago

    Yes, Trump and the GOP party leadership spent months plotting to overthrow a legitimate election, but when it came time to do so, one line in a speech sounded nice. Then the protest started getting violent and destructive. To be clear, they were doing this for him (in the sense that they wanted him to continue to be president). He could have shown up and told them to stop and they would have. But he didn’t. He made no meaningful attempt to stop it at all. He did, however, say something nice earlier in the day. That’s true.

    Yes, I said murdered when I should have said manslaughtered. Sorry. The protest was still violent. I’ve seen the footage; they managed to make me feel sorry for a cop.

    I did never make a claim as to the level of damage. I’ve never really thought about the dollar amount; it’s more about the fact that they broke in. If someone broke into my house, I wouldn’t be worried about the dollar amount of the damage. I’d be worried about what that means about their intent.

    You are being obtuse. None of the differences you’ve pointed out are salient. None of the similarities you have implied are. The post you replied to never said “Democrats would never…”, nor did I. And I disagree that Democrats actually did. The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th, except in facile similarities like the location of the events. I will say though, I agree that you aren’t enlightened or morally superior.

    • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      0
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      11 months ago

      The examples you gave are nothing like January 6th

      My point was mainly proving that the idea that “Democrats would never storm the capitol” was wrong. Yes, January 6th was perhaps still more violent than Democrats’ previous attempts to do so, but if it’s about the amount of violence each party is guilty of, all we have to do is look at riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death that happened a mere 6 months later in many cities across the US, and continued for a very long time. Those protests caused far more death, injury, and property damage than January 6th, and while you could claim that they weren’t political in nature, it is a fact that it was overwhelmingly Democrat politicians who supported them, and Democrat voters who attended them.

      I’m not really keen to get into an argument about which party is responsible for more violence, since counting up dead bodies seems rather sordid and probably won’t help much anyways to convince either of us to change our opinion on anything, so I propose we call this one a draw and simply say “both parties are perfectly willing to use violence in pursuit of their political goals and have clearly demonstrated this in the past”.

      • aberrate_junior_beatnik@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        11 months ago

        So, to recap:

        Someone pointed out that Republicans did January 6th, a violent attempt to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You then gave examples of Democrats supposedly doing the same thing. I pointed out that none of the examples you gave were anything like January 6th. You then gave reasons why January 6th wasn’t bad. I pointed out that none of those reasons changed the fact that it was a violent attempt by Republicans to seize control of the government by overturning the results of the election. You still have not provided an example of the Democrats doing the same thing.

        Now you say, well, people from both parties do violence sometimes, so let’s call it a draw. I appreciate the wisdom of making a strategic retreat, but no. You made bad arguments. Now you have to admit you are wrong one of two ways. You could just be explicit, come out and say it. More likely you’ll do it implicitly, by changing the subject or not responding at all.

        I’m not really keen to get into an argument about which party is responsible for more violence

        I get it. I don’t like getting into losing arguments either.

        • MacN'Cheezus@lemmy.today
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          0
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          11 months ago

          No, someone said “yeah I remember when those crazy Democrats got a bunch of their voters together to storm the Capitol” and then I gave 3 examples of when they DID, in fact, do that.

          Basically, the claim was that “Democrats would never…”, so that’s what I set out to disprove.

          • Did both Democrats and Republicans ever storm the Capitol? Yes they did
          • Did both Democrats and Republicans ever engage in violent protests that caused massive property damage and death? Yes they did

          All you’re doing now is moving goalposts in order to make those events appear more reasonable when it was your side doing them, so you can continue vilify the other side for doing the same thing. Which means you are excusing political violence while simultaneously opposing it.

          That’s not tenable position, you understand? It’s just wanting to have your cake and eat it, too.