Shameful Display of Anarchy and Violence

[Eiuol]

3 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

more emotional capital is being spent whining about how private concerns (like Facebook, Google and others that choose to erect artificial intellectual fences) conduct their affairs than discovering and touting business concerns that would satiate customers that pursue them with service fit rational beings.

Building off this idea, I propose that the ability for violent speech (threats, inciting violence, calls to violence, etc.) and even simply irrational speech (like misguided or conspiratorial thinking) to spread across platforms like Parler are due to design flaws. 

The anti-free-speech crowd would want us to believe it is some evil or malicious intent by the people who run the site. Although they are right to say that we should condemn irrational or violent speech on moral grounds, they are wrong to blame evil intent right away. Parler quite simply lack the means to moderate content in a way consistent with their mission about free speech. So they err on the side of minimal action.

The free-speech dogmatists (those who think that Twitter is morally monstrous for moderating any nonviolent speech) would want us AWS has some ulterior motive towards government censorship and radical leftist goals. While they are right to say that companies should probably be more exacting about their standards for freedom of speech and moderation, they are also wrong to blame evil intent. AWS just has no other technological solution to apply standards of moderation except broad sweeping strokes. They err on the side of too much action. 

What people should be clamoring for is for platforms to create new and more rational systems of moderation. We would want to ban violent speech, discourage irrational speech, and openly welcome disagreement. It's hard to accomplish all of these at once, and I don't think anyone has figured out how to do them all at once. 

Edited January 11, 2021 by Eiuol

[whYNOT]

On 1/10/2021 at 5:44 PM, Eiuol said:

There was a mob. They were pounding on the windows and trying to break the windows. They were yelling. Many of them saw the gun, and shouted that they saw it (good indication that the guard was ready to resist with force). On the video, we don't know if the guard shouted anything, and we don't know if anyone in the mob had a visible gun. It was also reported that she shouted "Go go!" before being lifted up over whatever barrier (which you can see happening in the video). Only then did she get shot.

Your characterization is misleading. You aren't wrong about what happened, but you make it sound like she was standing by the door on the sidelines, not pushing her way in. There were clear warnings from everyone, all around her, yet she still insisted on making her way in. That reveals intent on her part to be in that dangerous situation, even on the front lines. No, the intent doesn't on its own answer if deadly force against her was justified, but it does show how she wasn't a bystander observing the situation.

All these facts are sufficient to indicate a threat. She was not merely trespassing. If she was only trespassing, I would agree with you. Furthermore, this was a mob approaching, not only one individual, meaning that whatever threat the mob showed, she showed as well. If force would protect you from an approaching mob as well as the specific individual approaching you, force is appropriate (in proportion of course). 

There was a mob. There was too, a not-a-mob.

This unlikely bunch of "insurrectionists" behaving like sight-seeing tourists:

https://www.israelunwired.com/never-before-seen-footage-police-let-crowd-walk-into-the-capitol-building/

Edited January 11, 2021 by whYNOT

[Eiuol]

2 hours ago, whYNOT said:

There was a mob. There was too, a not-a-mob.

What's your point? We were talking about the woman shot who was part of the mob in the video (the people trying to break down the door violently), not the other people.

The people you're talking about here, I would say they were simply trespassing. Possibly arrested for treason given the context. I would still call them insurrectionists, since trespassing is a form of violence (but of course, a trial is necessary, because maybe they were honestly observers). 

Edited January 11, 2021 by Eiuol

[whYNOT]

35 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

What's your point? We were talking about the woman shot who was part of the mob in the video (the people trying to break down the door violently), not the other people.

The people you're talking about here, I would say they were simply trespassing. Possibly arrested for treason given the context. 

This was to show that not all the people were in a mob or behaved badly. I have no idea what you are talking about - "possibly arrested for treason". You didn't notice how these orderly people were let in by the guards? Where's the "simply trespassing"?

The woman victim was deliberately singled out and taken out, no police force is trained to do this until very present danger to life is detected.

You can see a half-dozen insurgents with some policemen on the same side of the door, some shouting and pushing, until two men begin attacking the window with clubs. The cops did nothing to restrain them, weirdly. She merely kicked the door. Then you see the gun aimed at her directly from the other side of the door and fired. The door had still not been breached.

Why is this so hard to understand? This was unjustifiable use of force.

 

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[Eiuol]

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

The woman victim was deliberately singled out and taken out, no police force is trained to do this until very present danger to life is detected.

Because she was literally the single one in front of a violent mob. She forced herself to the front. Remember, she was climbing the door, she didn't kick the door. Better to chop off the head of the beast so to speak. Of course she should be singled out.

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

I have no idea what you are talking about - "possibly arrested for treason".

Their intent was to cause a scene and disrupt legitimate government procedures. They were opposing the government itself, directly, and abetting enemies of our government would want to see our government damaged and harmed. They were claiming that the government is illegitimate. So you arrest them under reasonable suspicion to commit treason based on the evidence. As I said, it's not completely unreasonable that a few people were walking into observe, basically confused about what was happening with no bad intent, but then we would find them innocent 

it doesn't matter if some guards let them in. The guards that did so failed to do their job, whether it was on purpose or due to incompetence. Being nice doesn't make it any less treasonous. 

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

The cops did nothing to restrain them, weirdly.

Taking out a gun actually is a pretty major attempt, especially when everyone sees it, announces it, and that the guard himself probably said It too. What else would you expect them to do, wait for her to come over with 5 other people and end up dying like the other guard mentioned in the news? You would have to say something like "he didn't know if she was climbing over to shake his hand for doing a good job". No, he did the best restraint he could: pointing a gun and doing absolutely nothing but pointing it, letting people realize that he was saying "get the fuck back". 

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

The door had still not been breached.

"4 people were trying to break down your door, how dare you shoot the person climbing through the unlocked window! The door wasn't breached yet. You singled the climber out. I can't believe you would do such a thing, murder someone in cold blood like that."

Edited January 12, 2021 by Eiuol

[DonAthos]

@whYNOT, et al.

An armed mob forced their way past guards to disrupt our democratic process and as part of an overall effort to overturn the results of our Presidential election. Into the Capitol. Where Congress was present and at work. Members of Congress were rushed to safety -- and we don't know what the outcome might have been otherwise -- but five people died overall, including this woman, who was helping to initiate the violence, and including another police officer, who was tasked with stopping it and got his head caved in with a fire extinguisher as a result.

This was an assault on our government ("insurrection" is not wrong) and you would put the blame on the people who defended themselves and our institutions? Anyone who storms the Capitol, past armed guards and in defiance of orders to desist, should well understand that they are risking their lives and their freedom. Of course. Some people on the scene described it as a "revolution" (as Rush Limbaugh compared it to, as well); well, revolution is a bloody business. And I know that many or most of them are idiots, but their idiocy does not excuse them from the consequences of their idiotic, treasonous actions. These rioters were chanting, among other things, that they wanted to lynch the Vice President. They are not victims.

The woman who died had tweeted, the day before the riot, "Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!" She was a QAnon-conspiracist nutball participating in a violent attempt to disrupt democracy. She attempted to pass through a shattered window towards an area where members of the government were being sheltered, and where a gun was drawn and trained.  She sacrificed herself in the name of stupidity and at the behest of lies, and if she didn't "deserve" what she got, she nonetheless chose it for herself over the course of years and thousands of bad decisions, and some spectacularly bad ones at the very end.

[whYNOT]

Are we watching the same clip? Where does Eiuol see "a person climbing through the unlocked window"?

A small and unarmed woman, at that.

How was she posing a threat? If she had of got through, she still wasn't a threat. (Unless he knows, with Second Sight that she had a suicide vest on). So if one person gets through, would easily have been subdued by a professional. Or does everyone imagine the entire mob, one by one, climbing through after her?

But you guys cavalierly believe that the front person, whomever it may be, must be gunned down as an example to others.

This is the cynical sort of policing during extensive mob demonstrations that even Apartheid police were hesitant to implement: "pour decourager les autres". I was at some of those. And there was often a reluctance to use firearms against strikers, etc. carrying clubs. When batons or dogs or tear gas would nearly always suffice.

Would you guys have applied the same standard to a BLM/Antifa rioter breaking down a store window with the proprietor inside? I.e. He should be shot down in anticipation of his actions? I trust you do not apply double standards.

Also there is a lot of mystical determinism in these arguments: X is there, does that, therefore their intention is Y, therefore must be eliminated.

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[whYNOT]

5 hours ago, DonAthos said:

@whYNOT, et al.

An armed mob forced their way past guards to disrupt our democratic process and as part of an overall effort to overturn the results of our Presidential election. Into the Capitol. Where Congress was present and at work. Members of Congress were rushed to safety -- and we don't know what the outcome might have been otherwise -- but five people died overall, including this woman, who was helping to initiate the violence, and including another police officer, who was tasked with stopping it and got his head caved in with a fire extinguisher as a result.

This was an assault on our government ("insurrection" is not wrong) and you would put the blame on the people who defended themselves and our institutions? Anyone who storms the Capitol, past armed guards and in defiance of orders to desist, should well understand that they are risking their lives and their freedom. Of course. Some people on the scene described it as a "revolution" (as Rush Limbaugh compared it to, as well); well, revolution is a bloody business. And I know that many or most of them are idiots, but their idiocy does not excuse them from the consequences of their idiotic, treasonous actions. These rioters were chanting, among other things, that they wanted to lynch the Vice President. They are not victims.

 

 

That's all or nothing, Don Athos. Presumptions about each individual mind in a crowd/mob/rabble and his motives and intents. You have seen this, too:

There were those filmed that day who were desperately trying to stem the others, and stopping them breaking windows. (Some calling out warnings: "Antifa!"- but I won't go into that).

A blanket "insurrection" - def; "uprising" - by the whole mob of whatever, some thousand, outside the Capitol is an impossibility. Further - only a few hundred at most entered the Capitol (a few peacefully, I showed). Does that number constitute "an uprising"? An organized "assault on [your] government"? Nonsense.

For most, a symbolic act (while not denying the vile minority looking to commit violence).

There is the simplest logical fallacy in operation here.

All S is P. 

If one can't discern that *not all S is P*: not all BLM supporters are rioters, not all white cops are systemic racists, not every Trump supporter was out to commit violence, not all that Trump has done is wrong and evil... etc.

... we will get the epistemology (/ethics/politics) that we deserve. One that is hurting yours and other societies. As Objectivists, THIS fallacy is what we should be overturning, not rationalising and taking preconcieved positions and making emotional pre-judgements - which everyone else is doing in lockstep with what they are fed by media propaganda.  

There was something Giuliani said that caught my attention. "Those at the scene who were violent, were not Trump supporters" (or close to that). "But - the ones who tried to stop them were" (and he was he said proud of them). If one accepts the premise that the majority of Republican Conservatives who support Trump have an intrinsic belief in a God-given Constitution and Rule of Law and the American Way - by definition, he's right.

Start at the premise, Trump = Hitler, and anything goes.

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[whYNOT]

5 hours ago, DonAthos said:

@whYNOT, et al.

 

The woman who died had tweeted, the day before the riot, "Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!" She was a QAnon-conspiracist nutball participating in a violent attempt to disrupt democracy. She attempted to pass through a shattered window towards an area where members of the government were being sheltered, and where a gun was drawn and trained.  She sacrificed herself in the name of stupidity and at the behest of lies, and if she didn't "deserve" what she got, she nonetheless chose it for herself over the course of years and thousands of bad decisions, and some spectacularly bad ones at the very end.

And this information you knew, when? After the fact, right? Did the armed policeman know that at the moment he decided to pull the trigger? And even then, he had other choices.

"Sacrificed" by her stupidity, should have meant a term in prison. NOT, her life. This is a false causality, presupposing that evil in one's mind must end in evil in one's acts.  

[whYNOT]

One more thing.

"A private individual may do anything except that which is legally *forbidden*; a government official may do nothing except that which is legally *permitted*." The Nature of Government

The critical distinction is what places tight restraints on the public official's actions. Extraordinary restraints well over that which the private person enjoys as his right. IOW, I conclude their freedoms of action in their own capacity are UN-equal.

An idiot citizen might do something stupid in front of a cop, a common recurrence. Tempting fate, so to speak. But he/she does not 'deserve' the maximum punishment meted out. Or else there'd be someone shot dead every minute by police.

One can sympathize with a policeman who has to make that final split-second judgment call - is what I observe a threat to others' (or my own) life? What do I choose as proportionate retaliatory force? And if wrong, or even when right, I suffer the consequences. But that's the nature of the profession he chose and why he is thoroughly trained. 

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[dream_weaver]

Riots break out over the country, zones were even created in some parts to accommodate rioters while apologists tried to veil it as free-speech and dismiss the looting as not directly injurious to the life of the looted. A riot breaks out in Washington DC and it is escalated to an insurrection.

Edited January 12, 2021 by dream_weaver

[tadmjones]

21 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Riots break out over the country, zones were even created in some parts to accommodate rioters while apologists tried to veil it as free-speech and dismiss the looting as not directly injurious to the life of the looted. A riot breaks out in Washington DC and it is escalated to an insurrection.

And you damn well better describe the DC situation that way , in public, if you need things like banking services. And unfortunately that is barely hyperbolic.

[Easy Truth]

35 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

Riots break out over the country, zones were even created in some parts to accommodate rioters while apologists tried to veil it as free-speech and dismiss the looting as not directly injurious to the life of the looted. A riot breaks out in Washington DC and it is escalated to an insurrection.

A riot that destroy private property is wrong.

A riot that moves toward people working in a building is initiation of force.

A riot that can get people killed is a high risk.

Even if this is not called an insurrection, it was wrong, it should NOT happen.

Since it happened in the building holding the seat of government, with people saying they want to hang the vice president, it escalates into an insurrection. It's not as far fetched as you may think.

[Eiuol]

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Would you guys have applied the same standard to a BLM/Antifa rioter breaking down a store window with the proprietor inside? I.e. He should be shot down in anticipation of his actions?

Yes. I would have applied the same standard. If there was a mob, and someone was trying to climb through a shattered window, shooting them would be justified. 

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

How was she posing a threat?

She was a member of an insurrection. She was leading the charge of her area. Force is justified, whatever force is necessary to repel the charge. 

4 hours ago, whYNOT said:

And there was often a reluctance to use firearms against strikers, etc. carrying clubs.

Exactly one bullet hit exactly one insurrectionist. No one else was shot. The guard expressed spectacular self-control and focus. Compare that to situations where exactly one person without anyone else around is shot by cops 10+ times. 

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

Further - only a few hundred at most entered the Capitol (a few peacefully, I showed). Does that number constitute "an uprising"? An organized "assault on [your] government"? Nonsense.

Yes it does. Insurrections don't need to be organized to be insurrections. It was an attempt to assault the government by declaring it illegitimate. (I don't think anyone here is saying that the people outside were necessarily insurrectionists). This discussion is about the people inside. I even said myself repeatedly, all the people *inside* should  be arrested for reasonable suspicion of treason (and subsequently go to trial to prove it). 

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

If one can't discern that *not all S is P*: not all BLM supporters are rioters, not all white cops are systemic racists, not every Trump supporter was out to commit violence, not all that Trump has done is wrong and evil... etc.

How did you get from thinking the claim was "all Trump supporters were out to commit violence" from "the mob inside was out to commit violence"? That means if you are inside but not part of the mob, you are not necessarily out to commit violence (I already gave an example of who such a person could be). 

3 hours ago, whYNOT said:

There was something Giuliani said that caught my attention.

Not "let's have trial by combat"? 

45 minutes ago, dream_weaver said:

A riot breaks out in Washington DC and it is escalated to an insurrection.

You mean at the Capitol. Yup, if a riot breaks out there over the legitimacy of the government, that qualifies as an insurrection. 

Edited January 12, 2021 by Eiuol

[MisterSwig]

6 hours ago, DonAthos said:

She sacrificed herself in the name of stupidity and at the behest of lies, and if she didn't "deserve" what she got, she nonetheless chose it for herself over the course of years and thousands of bad decisions, and some spectacularly bad ones at the very end.

I think you go too far here. Babbitt was a casualty in a violent political battle. That doesn't mean she made "thousands of bad decisions" and "sacrificed herself in the name of stupidity." That's your biased spin on the life and death of a military veteran, wife and business owner whom you probably know very little about.

[Easy Truth]

6 minutes ago, MisterSwig said:

I think you go too far here. Babbitt was a casualty in a violent political battle.

A violent battle, but a fake political battle over fake claims. Dying in the name of pretending that Trump had a landslide. One does not have to know her to know that it was an incredible waste i.e. sacrifice.

[whYNOT]

50 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

 

She was a member of an insurrection. She was leading the charge of her area. Force is justified, whatever force is necessary to repel the charge. 

Exactly one bullet hit exactly one insurrectionist. No one else was shot. The guard expressed spectacular self-control and focus. Compare that to situations where exactly one person without anyone else around is shot by cops 10+ times. 

 

Ah, please. Now he deserves compliments for only killing one person and with one bullet?

Whatever the larger circumstances going on around and inside the Capitol, all he could observe was a handful of people on the other side of a door who did NOT even breech the door.

Could he have fired a warning shot? Of course. That would be "self-control" one may admire.

But he nominated himself judge, jury and executioner.

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[whYNOT]

1 hour ago, Eiuol said:

Yes. I would have applied the same standard. If there was a mob, and someone was trying to climb through a shattered window, shooting them would be justified. 

 

"Yes ... shooting them would be justified". Since you are using the passive tense, let us be clear.

Would *the police* shooting them, be justified?

Bearing in mind, that this is what happened, and must have happened, many hundreds of times. All the stores attacked and with windows broken, sometimes fires set, obviously must have sometimes/often had occupants who ~might~ be in danger.

Therefore, you would justify hundreds of rioters getting shot for breaking shop windows?

A war zone.

Do you have an idea of the outrage and consequences, then?

 

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[whYNOT]

59 minutes ago, Eiuol said:

You mean at the Capitol. Yup, if a riot breaks out there over the legitimacy of the government, that qualifies as an insurrection. 

Because you are being consistent, you would agree that every occasion that riots broke out (in and around official buildings) against the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, or Kavanaugh nomination, or ...etc. - those too qualified as insurrection.

You would, right?

Edited January 12, 2021 by whYNOT

[Doug Morris]

1 hour ago, tadmjones said:

And you damn well better describe the DC situation that way , in public, if you need things like banking services. And unfortunately that is barely hyperbolic.

Can you explain your reasoning here more fully?

[Eiuol]

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Whatever the larger circumstances going on around and inside the Capitol, all he could observe was a handful of people on the other side of a door who did NOT even breech the door.

I'm not sure you realize that she wasn't simply on the other side of the door. She was climbing over a shattered window with the help of 2 other people instead of waiting for the door to be breached. As far as I know, they stopped trying to breach the door after she was shot. 

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Therefore, you would justify hundreds of rioters getting shot for breaking shop windows?

Yes. (And yes, I think Kevin Rittenhouse did nothing wrong.) At least, if they were trying to break into the shop, rather than say, throwing a rock into a window then running away.

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Could he have fired a warning shot? Of course. That would be "self-control" one may admire.

A warning shot is supposed to show that you have a gun. Everyone was warned that he had a gun. I only brought up the one bullet thing because you said in the context of anti-apartheid violence, dogs or teargas would have sufficed. I'm saying that the guard used the retaliatory force that would suffice (as in anything less would not be good enough) without using more. Proportional violence. I praise him for a job well done.

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

A war zone.

Do you have an idea of the outrage and consequences, then?

Huge outrage. Yes, a war zone. That's why riots are so bad.

1 hour ago, whYNOT said:

Because you are being consistent, you would agree that every occasion that riots broke out (in and around official buildings) against the legitimacy of the Trump presidency, or Kavanaugh nomination, or ...etc. - those too qualified as insurrection.

If it were violent, and involved breaking into a building, probably. 

[tadmjones]

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

And you damn well better describe the DC situation that way , in public, if you need things like banking services. And unfortunately that is barely hyperbolic.

2 hours ago, Doug Morris said:

Can you explain your reasoning here more fully?

If you disagree with any 'Trump is a nazi' narrative bigly enough in public, woke corporations will deplatform you and deny you their services.

Edited January 12, 2021 by tadmjones

[Easy Truth]

3 minutes ago, tadmjones said:

If you disagree with any 'Trump is a nazi' narrative bigly enough in public, woke corporations will deplatform you and deny you their services.

It's a free country. They should be allowed to deplatform you even if they didn't like your hairdo. It's not like the government did it. "No shoes no shirt no service" should be illegal now?

[necrovore]

Actually, the whole problem with not having a separation of state and economics is that you can't be sure a company is really a private company. You can't tell whether some aspect of the company's behavior is controlled by private interests alone or whether the government is quietly using a carrot and/or stick to obtain behavior it wouldn't otherwise be able to get. Further, the fact that it is hard to determine or prove whether the government is doing anything, is part of the point.

Fascism isn't about ownership, anyway, it's about control. So just because a company is privately owned doesn't mean much in a Fascist system. In pure Fascism you might be able to have your name on a piece of property, but the government will control every aspect of what can be done with that property. Having your name on it only means that it's your fault if something goes wrong. The question is, who is really controlling it?

Of course in a mixed economy you can have a mixture of people controlling something. You have a situation where a brilliant future billionaire can make deals with the government, and in that way the government allows his business to grow very big, and allows him to grow very rich, and he doesn't have to worry too much about competition or anything like that, he always gets the best deals from other regulated businesses such as banks, and so forth. But in return for this the government gets partial control, and the ability to exercise it behind the scenes, and on a scale as large as the business becomes.

People in the government don't appear to be very rich, but if you were to count the value of what they control instead of just what property has their actual names on it, some of them would be far "richer" than any billionaire. This would not be the case if the government were limited to its proper role.

So I don't think it's valid to say, "oh, well, all the heating oil companies joined together and boycotted these people and they all froze to death in the cold and died, but there's nothing we can say or do about it because they were all private companies and private companies are free to do business or not according to their own choice. And, hey, being boycotted isn't necessarily even a punishment, anyway. Maybe the dead victims liked being boycotted...."

In a free society, the whole idea of people freezing to death because of being boycotted by the heating oil companies would be absurd. Even if the boycott took place, and even if all the heating oil companies joined in, the people would have too many alternatives, such as firewood or electric heat or what-not. Further, if they didn't have alternatives, the heating oil companies would probably realize this and would have a hard time condemning these people to death. If that were really a risk, I think one of the heating oil companies would break the boycott -- or maybe other private citizens would buy heating oil and sneak it over to the boycotted people to help them. Finally, if the heating oil companies did realize that they were condemning people to death, and decided to do so anyway -- why wouldn't that be murder? (Just like, if you're flying in an airplane with someone, and you decide you don't like their company anymore, even if it's your plane, you can't just make them get out...)

A Fascist system can make sure the victims don't have any alternatives (and can set up such a situation far in advance). The Fascists, after all, are the types to exercise state power through entities that can claim, "Hey, we are private entities, we have rights!"

That's one more way that the government can act by right while requiring everybody else to act by permission.

The solution is not to pass a law to force the hands of these companies, but to pass a law to require that the government withdraw its hands.

Edited January 12, 2021 by necrovore

[tadmjones]

39 minutes ago, Easy Truth said:

It's a free country. They should be allowed to deplatform you even if they didn't like your hairdo. It's not like the government did it. "No shoes no shirt no service" should be illegal now?

I didn't make any comment about government intervention, I simply stated that if you disagree loudly enough with whatever woke narrative is the narrative du jour you will be treated publicly as a pariah.