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Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence

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14 minutes ago, Yes said:

As America prepares to certify our next President, a large band of hooligans have taken upon themselves to storm the Capitol.  This in the name of Freedom?  Are these hooligans striving to look for their Fuhrer?  As a footnote, something like this happened in fiction- in Atlas Shrugged.

Oh, horrid. Much worse than the riots (sorry - "peaceful protests") across the land for months in support of BLM and stoked by Antifa and quite acceptable to Dems!

Edited by whYNOT
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2 minutes ago, whYNOT said:

Oh, horrid. Much worse than the riots (sorry - "peaceful protests") across the land for months in support of BLM and stoked by Antifa!

Yes, I've already found via a single Google search an example of a Democrat politician making completely opposite statements in May about BLM, vs. today about these hillbillies. I'd bet you could find an example of the same from every single public figure.

Edited by JASKN
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1 minute ago, JASKN said:

Yes, I've already found via a single Google search an example of a Democrat politician making completely opposite statements in May about BLM, vs. today about these hillbillies. I'd bet you could find an example of the same from every single public figure.

Well I do know, and I've watched very little of CNN lately, of Kamala Harris interviewed pre-election, probably in October.

She said, quote: "These protests [sic] should continue during and even after the election."

I have mentioned that here.

It struck me as a little odd that the attorney-general of California -and- probable next president, should be advocating civic unrest (not to add the intimidation of voters). "Rule of law"?

But yes. I hope and trust that the Republican supporters don't stoop to violent actions. Generally they are more dignified than the Dems.

 

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I have a hunch that this will turn out to be a false-flag operation done by Antifa people, sort of like the attempted kidnapping of that governor a while back. The press went on and on about that, remember? Until when the perpetrators were discovered to be associated with Antifa, at which point the press suddenly fell silent...

This move was probably designed to intimidate Republicans out of objecting to the electoral votes of states where fraud turned the election. The Democrats are already giving the "shame on you Republicans" speeches, as if the invasion of the Capitol was caused by Republican objections. "See what kind of behavior your objections are encouraging?" they seem to be saying.

Trump never asked for anyone to do anything like this. There is nothing to protest yet -- the process hasn't even played out yet and, without interference, could conceivably have come out Trump's way. There is no reason for Trump to have interfered with it, or to have encouraged anyone else to -- and there is every reason for the Democrats to have done so.

And yet, we hear again that "Trump's rhetoric" is to blame. But Trump isn't the one who has been saying "Burn it all down"...

Funny how calling out fraud and trying to investigate it allegedly destroys democracy and undermines the system -- but committing the fraud in the first place is apparently OK. Obviously the honorable thing for the Republicans to do is to drop all their objections and allow the Democrats to get away with it (sarcasm).

Edited by necrovore
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1 hour ago, necrovore said:

I have a hunch that this will turn out to be a false-flag operation done by Antifa people

Arbitrary. You need some kind of evidence here. The best you have is that "one time, there was an attempted kidnapping, it turned out they were antifa type people". That's not evidence for your claim. What you said amounts to "it's possible!"  

Because of that, anything else you say is storytelling. I have some wild and fantastical ideas as well that would really expand on what we saw today. I'm not going to pretend they are anything other than flights of fancy. They aren't hunches, they are fantasies. 

You are definitely one of the more rational minded I've interacted with here, so I'm especially confused as to why you are trying to present an arbitrary theory as to why the events happened today. You are forcing facts into a theory, rather than creating a theory based on the facts and events. At least with your post about the election results, you cited evidence and facts. Here you cited a hunch...? What are you trying to accomplish? 

1 hour ago, necrovore said:

There is no reason for Trump to have interfered with it, or to have encouraged anyone else to -- and there is every reason for the Democrats to have done so.

Give the evidence, don't say "they had every reason" without giving one reason. Here's a reason they wouldn't: Biden won the election fairly (or at least as fairly as any other election the past 20 years), they didn't need to encourage or manipulate anything. Not enough people were going to call into question the electors.

Here is a reason that Trump would: he claims that he won the election in a landslide, and when the protest started in full force by breaking into the building, he didn't Tweet a single thing to condemn what happened. You know, condemned the way he has other things like antifa. He has never been shy before, he would not be shy now.

Here's an unambiguous statement that he could have given: the people who broke into the capitol are guilty of treason. 

 

 

Edited by Eiuol
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Eiuol,

It’s not arbitrary, even without the evidence provided by Tracy Beanz on Twitter.  Biden had everything to gain from this spectacle and false flagging is what leftists do. See also

https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/3920775/posts

Speaking of “arbitrary” see
Mouthpieces for Election Riggers
 

 

Edited by Dupin
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In response to Eiuol:

If something is possible, it isn't arbitrary. Of course it isn't proven, either, but -- it's possible.

If similar things have happened in the past, that is certainly evidence that they can happen again (although not proof that they have happened again.)

In order for something to be arbitrary it has to be completely disconnected from reality -- and as Peikoff pointed out, the true exponent of the arbitrary will try to keep it disconnected!

I don't advocate agnosticism about this (which is what an exponent of the arbitrary would do). My attitude here is "wait and see." The evidence will come out.

There's also evidence outside my post... Ayn Rand said something like, the evidence that capitalism lifts people out of poverty is clear and abundant... but she never wrote out all that evidence... and there are still people who will read where she wrote that, and say she's evading or hiding something, even though the evidence really is clear and abundant...

Also, the order in which I presented things in my post is not necessarily the same order in which the original thinking occurred. Sometimes I am considering a bunch of facts, and I see them fit together in a certain way, and my reaction is, "Aha! I have reached this conclusion! And the justification for it is this!" That may end up being how I write it, but the justification was actually there first.

Two reasons among many I consider this to be false-flag: first, I have trouble believing that an authentic Trump supporter would decide to do something so stupid. This is hurting Trump badly, and it could have been foreseen to do so. Second, if it were genuinely stupid, it would be unimportant and could be ignored (apart from arresting and prosecuting those responsible), but the media and the Left regard it as tremendously important, as if all Trump supporters would do such a thing, as if it is the most logical thing for a Trump supporter to do. Now, that is clearly not the case, but who would want it to be?

Zero Hedge is now reporting that the Republicans have apparently decided not to challenge the electoral votes of any more states.

"Never examine a folly -- ask only what it accomplishes."

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5 hours ago, Yes said:

Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence

to which 2046 replied:

49 minutes ago, 2046 said:

There are many schools of anarchism. Most of them are shamefully dumb as hell. However, none of them are devoted to keeping an incumbent president in power.

It's not a display of lawlessness, it's outright unlawful.

Draw a contrast in your own minds, "The Son's of Liberty" vs the Minions summoned by the "Tweets of Trump". Ominous parallels, indeed.

Several Democrat politicians want to hang the hat on Trump for inciting a riot. Back in 2016, the charge was the election had been "stolen" by the Russians for Trump. I'm not convinced that the "stolen election" is naught but another red-herring. From QuespirAcies to Rule By Secrecy to a conspiracy without a leader, such approaches frame individuals and groups as so powerful as to operate not only outside the law of identity but to operate under the radar of the law of causality as well.

We seem to be watching men struggling for possession of the law. One can only surmise the kind of club they deighn to fashion and how they might utilize it in return.

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1 minute ago, MisterSwig said:

This is what our representatives deserve.

Okay, Joker. If you mean also Republicans who wanted to "stop the steal" as well, sure, everyone got what they deserved in the end (I think all of Congress is pretty responsible for the overall distrust throughout America). But to correct anything in the future, this is bad. 

1 minute ago, necrovore said:

If something is possible, it isn't arbitrary. Of course it isn't proven, either, but -- it's possible.

"There are goblins on Mars that study Hegel's dialectics" is metaphysically possible, but without any kind of evidence to say that this claim is true, it is arbitrary. You need something in reality, something observable, not just possible stories you came up with.

5 minutes ago, necrovore said:

If similar things have happened in the past, that is certainly evidence that they can happen again

This is not a valid way of thinking. You need to make a connection with the past event in a causal way, not just merely correlations. I don't care what you provide, you just need to provide something

8 minutes ago, necrovore said:

and as Peikoff pointed out, the true exponent of the arbitrary will try to keep it disconnected!

Then hop to it, make the connections with reality that you can observe. 

13 minutes ago, necrovore said:

Ayn Rand said something like, the evidence that capitalism lifts people out of poverty is clear and abundant... but she never wrote out all that evidence...

Partial evidence is fine. If I doubted that she had evidence, I would say that her claim was arbitrary. If it was a conversation, I would do the same as with you: I would ask for some more evidence. And she would provide it. She would never mention the word hunch. Problem solved. All you have to do is the same thing, but give me some verifiable concrete evidence. Some observation to work with about this event. 

I can understand if you don't want to explain all this in the first post you made. But now I am asking. 

17 minutes ago, necrovore said:

I have trouble believing that an authentic Trump supporter would decide to do something so stupid

This is completely subjective. This is not evidence. I don't have trouble believing this, so it proves nothing. 

21 minutes ago, necrovore said:

if it were genuinely stupid, it would be unimportant and could be ignored

This is not evidence either. Even if something is stupid, it is nothing to do with if it's important. Give me something somebody said or did in this case. 

 

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42 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

If something is possible, it isn't arbitrary. Of course it isn't proven, either, but -- it's possible.

[Note: quote is necro, not Eiuol]

 

This is a Human version of possibility. A proposition is possible if its assertion is not logically contradictory. This sort of argument is also taken to explain why propositions about facts cannot be necessary truths. They are contingent since the contrary of any matter of fact is always logically conceivable and therefore always possible.

This is not Peikoff's view of the arbitrary, nor the view of the Aristotelian metaphysical and epistemological tradition, wherein something's mere logical conceivability does not confer possibility. 

Moreover, "X happened in the past, therefore X is the case now" is not only not evidence, it's a logical fallacy of appeal to tradition.

Edited by 2046
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Also there's an argument to the effect that, well look, the representatives in Congress deserve this. While, strictly speaking, this is correct, it doesn't follow merely from that fact that this is the right thing to do. Every member of Congress deserves to be huddled in their home in fear, as they would have the rest of us do the past few months. But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 

Consider someone performing some courageous act to impress an onlooker. Such an action isn't merely "doing the right thing for the wrong reason," it's literally not doing the right thing. This is an aspect of all agent-centered virtue ethics. The agent has to be in a certain state while performing the action. They cannot be counted as virtuous someone who does something by accident, in the same way consulting tea leaves and guessing the correct thing doesn't make some belief knowledge. See Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics II.4 for details.

So it's possible to believe that the "demand side" if you will, the "getting what you deserve" might be good in some small way. I mean it certainly is funny to see the viking at Pelosi's desk. However, the "supply side" if you will, is people yearning for a dictatorship and indulging in epistemic vice. The "demand side" wasn't even substantial enough to change anything about lockdowns other than, people now screaming about "sedition" and "insurrection." Expect more bipartisan surveillance, policing, internet censorship.

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You can figure out who killed her from:

CBSnews.com:
“A woman was shot by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer after breaching the Capitol and attempting to enter the House chamber, according to acting Metropolitan Police Chief Robert Contee. She was transported to a local hospital where she was later pronounced dead, Contee said. The shooting is being investigated by MPD's internal affairs unit, which is responsible for investigating all officer-involved deaths in Washington, D.C., even those involving other agencies.”

Woman, unarmed, trespassing.  A trigger-happy plainclothes policeman?

 

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8 hours ago, 2046 said:

This is a Human version of possibility. A proposition is possible if its assertion is not logically contradictory. This sort of argument is also taken to explain why propositions about facts cannot be necessary truths. They are contingent since the contrary of any matter of fact is always logically conceivable and therefore always possible.

This is not Peikoff's view of the arbitrary, nor the view of the Aristotelian metaphysical and epistemological tradition, wherein something's mere logical conceivability does not confer possibility. 

Moreover, "X happened in the past, therefore X is the case now" is not only not evidence, it's a logical fallacy of appeal to tradition.

When I wrote, "If something is possible, it isn't arbitrary. Of course it isn't proven, either, but -- it's possible," I was not attempting to define any of those terms. I go with Peikoff's definitions. Given his definitions, what I said is correct.

I provided my hunch, and I provided some evidence (in the original post) that is in favor of it. So I think "possible" is warranted. Dupin has provided even more evidence, which I didn't have, and as a result I'm even more sure of it than before, although I still cannot regard it as "proved."

I didn't claim my hunch was a certainty, so I didn't say "X happened in the past, therefore X is the case now." What I said was, "X happened in the past, and some of the elements that were present when X occurred are present now, therefore, it could be happening again now," which does not appear fallacious to me at all.

Events are still in progress, and evidence is still coming in, but the way the media are treating this event are making me believe it's far too convenient for the Democrats, and therefore is even more likely to be a false-flag operation. So now I'm moving from "possible" to "probable."

In particular, the way the media are lying about Trump "inciting violence" when he did nothing of the kind. Anyone want to show me the parts of Trump's speeches where he invited people to commit acts of violence? I didn't hear any, and the media doesn't show excerpts from Trump's speeches which incite violence, either. The media must be using the "woke" conflation of speech with violence, where if someone says something offensive, that can be treated as if it were "violence" or as "inciting violence." Because apart from something like that, there's no incitement to violence. Is it really "incitement of violence" to observe that more people voted in a county than were registered to vote in that county?

What about Trump's tweets, which he was banned from Twitter for? He said, "I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember, WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!" He also posted a video saying that while he "felt" the "pain" of people, that they should still leave the Capitol. (I think he was struggling with the idea that his own supporters would do such a thing and he was stumbling through trying to think about what to tell them.)

So what is the motivation of the rioters here? The media says that the rioters are motivated by Trump's "rhetoric," but when I look at Trump's actual rhetoric, I can see that that is a lie. I do not see any motivation for rioting from Trump's side, particularly while the votes are still being counted, and were being challenged -- I can't think even of a demented line of "reasoning" that would lead from one to the other -- there is no evidence that would lead to it. But I do see very clear motivation from the Left. Their fingerprints are all over this.

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15 hours ago, necrovore said:

Trump never asked for anyone to do anything like this.


Apparently you didn't watch his incendiary speech to the protesters yesterday morning.  So I strongly disagree with your statement, which has absolutely no basis of fact.

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5 hours ago, necrovore said:

Dupin has provided even more evidence, which I didn't have, and as a result I'm even more sure of it than before

The link in question provided some evidence that a few people wanted to blend into the crowd. That isn't evidence that the whole thing was a false flag operation, nor does it add even a small amount of support for the idea that the entire thing was a false flag operation. Take it for exactly what it is, don't read into it.

For the rest of this I would say that your claim doesn't look arbitrary anymore, but I will still emphasize that I think the reasons are very bad and the evidence is very poor. Going in order from your link

Moving the barricades suggest numerous possibilities, so many that we can't conclude anything. One could be that those cops agreed with the objective of the protesters so they wanted to help them directly. Or they were threatened (those cops aren't allowed to have guns). Maybe they wanted to instigate a situation. Maybe they acted independently. You really can't conclude anything other than the barricades were not moved by the protesters. 

The video of the cop. I don't know how someone interpreted that as him "leading the protesters" rather than avoiding the protesters. Trying to slow them down, while at the same time trying not to get trampled. I couldn't hear where anyone said "they're here", but it makes sense in the context. Who is "they"? Maybe someone the photographers saw earlier and wanted to point that out. 

The video of the guy saying that antifi was bussed in, what indication do we have that they were antifa? The vehicles are unmarked. They could have been buses from the rally that just happened, where it would make sense to bus people in to attend the rally. Or the buses were rented before hand to help transfer protesters in support of Trump. The guy is speculating who he thinks they are, without giving any reason to think so.

The BLM protester and the guy with the communist symbol tattoo. This might be the closest thing to some evidence, albeit very weak and only the tiniest amount of evidence that this was a false flag operation. I would respond in the same way as I did to Dupin's link. It's one thing to claim that some of the protesters were antifa, but it's another thing to suggest that it was a false flag operation. I suspect you will say that independently all these things don't say that it is a false flag operation, but that putting them together does suggest it.

But what is a good explanation and fits the evidence exactly is that most of it is exactly what it seems, and some people were pretending to blend in. Both can be true at the same time.

 

Edited by Eiuol
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12 hours ago, 2046 said:

But part of a virtuous action is that it is done in the right way, at the right time, for the right reason. 

Let me know when you have the "right way" at the "right time" for the "right reason." Until then your fluffy idealism is boring and unhelpful to the people on the ground desperately trying to preserve whatever remains of the American spirit against the tide of socialists and socialist sympathizers.

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14 hours ago, 2046 said:

This is not Peikoff's view of the arbitrary, nor the view of the Aristotelian metaphysical and epistemological tradition, wherein something's mere logical conceivability does not confer possibility. 

Would you say it is proper to say that the Humean view can be labeled metaphysically possible? I'm trying to think of the best term to use. I know you were responding to Necro, but I was getting at the idea that although the scenario doesn't contradict the rules of how reality operates, there is no evidence to say that this happened. Or stated another way, how would you characterize something like "you drank coffee this morning"? I have no evidence that this occurred, but it is a reasonable guess because so many people do.

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