Congress was doing what they were supposed to do according to (3U.S.C. §15)
And I submit that up until the capital was breached, so were many thousands of Americans. Marching in the streets of Washington D.C. These are people whose concerns had been dismissed by all of the appropriate legal means.
These people were there to support their President (not a crime). They were there to visibly show Congress that they were not faceless nobodies (not a crime). They were people with lives, children, homes, and reasonable concerns about the election (not a crime).
It’s easy for leaders to dismiss nameless, faceless masses. It’s a bit tougher when those people are right there demanding answers.
People died. Some reports say 4 some say 5. I saw a report from the Capital Police that said CNN was incorrectly reporting one of their officers died. That Capital Police report no doubt ended up page 20 of leading newspapers. It probably never made it to CNNs news desk.
That people died is tragic. That should never have happened.
The Capital has been occupied by protestors several times over the past century, and bombed at least twice. Almost always for the same reason, citizens seeking redress of their grievances, but being ignored by the politicians.
The faux “shock and outrage” on the part of Congress and the news media over the Capital having been occupied is disgusting and disingenuous. Especially since some of the fossils currently in Congress were alive, and If my math is correct were serving in the building at the time of the previous incidents.
There’s a brief Washington Post Article here describing the history of attacks on the Capital. I’ve seen a report that a group of African Americans occupied the Capital and were armed when they did it. There was an interesting picture, but no corroborating link to the the source article.
The building has been damaged far worse in previous incidents, than it was this time.
What I find really disturbing is the spin. There are videos of Protestors attempting to dissuade others from breaking windows. There are multiple eyewitnesses corroborating the videos.
So rather than a few perpetrators being called to account, all the people supporting President Trump and indeed Trump himself are labeled terrorists?
This offends my sense of fairness. How have we gotten to a place where one kind of protest degenerating into violence is labeled “Mostly Peaceful” but another kind of protest is instantly labeled “Terrorist“?
But it goes on. People randomly identified in the crowd outside the Capital are losing their jobs. For what? Exercising their first amendment rights? Then it goes further, the conservative voice in America is being silenced with ever more draconian methods.
In some cases these folks are citizen journalists who make part or all of their living by attending these events and reporting what they actually saw. These entrepreneurs post their video and first hand accounts on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, Snapchat, and the like.
Suddenly they’re banned on these platforms because they were at the protest, were identified in the crowd, and chose to report what they saw.
There’s no accusation of wrongdoing, no arrest, no trial, nothing…
Just Censorship. More voices silenced by what amounts to the mob.
We’ve seen this phenomenon with increasing frequency over the past few years, in online communities. Twitter “Shadowbans” and Facebook “suspensions”.
These bans happen when someone gets upset or offended by something someone posts. The offended party effectively runs to mommy (The Service) they cry and whine and get all their online friends to join in the whining and mommy summerly silences some poor person for a period of time.
It’s the online equivalent of the “timeout”. The problem is, very often the comment that caused the offense was taken out of context or misinterpreted in the first place. It doesn’t matter though because the damage is done, and the mob has been rewarded with a “Kill” so they’re self-righteous indignation continues on and on.
Where does this stop?
Reported by the gatewaypundit.com today
Mozilla, developer of the Firefox internet browser, has argued that more must be done to keep Donald Trump and other “bad actors” out of cyberspace, prompting many to vow to never use the group’s services again.
In a blog post titled ‘We need more than de-platforming’, the open-source software community said that Twitter’s decision to permanently ban Trump from its platform didn’t go far enough in weeding out “hate” on the internet. While blaming Trump for the “siege and take-over” of the US Capitol on January 6, the non-profit tech group argued that “white supremacy is about more than any one personality.”
“We need solutions that don’t start after untold damage has been done. Changing these dangerous dynamics requires more than just the temporary silencing or permanent removal of bad actors from social media platforms,” Mozilla wrote.
Apparently, it doesn’t. Because for these people there is no such thing as enough. There can never be any end to their grievances. For if there were an end, these people would have to face the fact that they are in fact far worse than what they were fighting.
I don’t need protection from hateful words or ideas, I’m quite capable of ignoring or avoiding these things all by myself. I’m beginning to think that I need protection from those who would force their “protections” on me, unbidden.
Apologies if I’ve been a little rambling. Chalk it up to “Dogieous Interruptus” A young dog in the house means there are no boundaries!
It was one of those little things, a thought not quite remembered. But it was somehow important, something that could potentially help me, if I could only remember it.
The rules are changing, it’s beyond our control. The only option is to survive… or not. Either way it doesn’t mean anything, except to us as individuals.