Disclaimer: this post is not in support of any given politician, party, or national movement!
On January 6th, 2021, American protesters supporting Donald Trump "stormed the US Capitol" by walking around and taking selfies. One guy was famously photographed carrying a podium. Such effrontery! I suspect, but cannot prove, this whole debacle was instigated by agents provocateur. There was no evidence of any practical plan of action. The people doing the "storming" were surprisingly mellow and non-destructive. Interruptions would not change the certification of election results.
And yet to the Democrats, who tended to support "mostly peaceful" protests against police brutality which resulted in significant arson, vandalism, and general destruction, this was an act of terrorism. To the Donald Trump faithful, this was instead a noble battle for liberty in the face of blatant electoral fraud and political malfeasance.
Image from Know Your Meme
News broke today, January 8th, 2023, of much more serious action in Brazil. I'm not there, and I don't speak Portuguese, so everything has been filtered through mainstream news media. According to CBS:
Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace in the capital on Sunday [...] Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, broke windows and invaded all three buildings, which are connected by the vast Three Powers Square in Brasilia.
[...]
The incidents recalled the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump. Political analysts have warned for months that a similar storming was a possibility in Brazil, given that Bolsonaro has sown doubt about the reliability of the nation's electronic voting system — without any evidence.
[...]
Bolsonaro supporters have been protesting Lula's electoral win since Oct. 30, blocking roads, setting vehicles on fires and gathering outside military buildings, seeking the armed forces to intervene.
Image from the article linked above, attributed to Eraldo Peres / AP
Based on such descriptions, it appears this protest actually has teeth. The Republicans who supported Trump were law-and-order types by and large. They tend to support police and the military, but I don't think they actually tried to get the military to overthrow the election, and their "invasion" had no prospect of gaining that result either.
If these reports from Rio de Janeiro are accurate, the Brazilians are actually demanding a military coup, actually trying to take over government buildings, and destroying things as they go.That's what storming the capitol actually implies, unlike that bunch of American doofuses on an unauthorized tour. I await any Democrat congresscritter apologizing for the mischaracterization of January 6th in light of January 8th. I won't hold my breath, though. And I acknowledge the possibility news from Brazil is equally overblown, too.
Meanwhile, anything which undermines public perceptions of political legitimacy have potential for progress. I know, I have a weakness for pompous alliteration. This kind of unrest is often called "anarchy," but has no relation whatsoever to the philosophy of state illegitimacy. These people want a government, just not the one that was "legitimately elected." Military juntas don't tend to result in more liberty. If matters are as dire as depicted, the people will suffer while the police state grows regardless of the outcome.
I was just glad this photo turned up.
It's the Q-Shaman in Brazilian colors!
Need more of them and we could have a NFT set.
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Would need some good predictive power from the AIs.
I'm picturing layers sorted randomly, including national flags or corpo logos, different skin shades, and a variety of headdresses from the classic buffalo horns to tinfoil hats to cowboy hats to bandanas. And definitely a random zombie or clown here and there.
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The absolute bellends who compare 1-6-21 to 9-11-01 are the same people who downplay the riots throughout 2020 as "fiery but mostly peaceful protests," constantly bray like jackasses about open borders while whinging about Kyle Rittenhouse "crossing state lines," though it is important to note that the usual suspects really don't want refugees from Cuba or Venezuela for... fairly obvious reasons. I've said it before and I'll say it again, do not look for consistency here. This isn't about principles (because some people simply have none), this is purely about political tribalism. When their side violates the NAP, it is good (for them). When anyone else's does, it is bad (for them). Perfect example:
By the looks of it, same shit different country 😂😂 life... The world is so unstable at the moment, such a drab.
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Politics fuels such instability by turning everything into an artificial zero-sum game and scratching the itch of tribalism with partisan lies.
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I personally have very little emotional investment in politics, mostly because it is a poopie pageant. I did and still do have opinions about the Trumpers storming the capitol, though, but I'm also aware that it was just a dumb mob mentality event. Living in Portland, I got lots of people from out of town asking me if I was ok during the riots. I never noticed a thing other than what got hyper-focus and repeat plays in the media. Mostly some windows were broken and graffiti happened, and a bunch of angry people antagonized angry authorities who wielded some nasty crowd-disabling weaponry. But the news made it sound like my city was burning down. It wasn't. In San Diego, rioters burnt down an ENTIRE BANK BUILDING. Like, to the ground. That did not make the news the way Portland did. Political media, in many ways but not all ways, comes across to me like entertainment. Ultimately what I always see is a bunch of seriously angry people. Doesn't matter the political affiliation. People are unhappy, and destruction is an outlet.
I do want to point out, though, that there was footage of someone trying to hold back the Whitehouse Party Crashers. I think he was barricading a door. The crowd was doing something that was making him yell out in pain. So there's that little bit that makes the mass hysteria a big deal.
That's just the sort of thing that makes me get a bit on the tinfoil hat bandwagon. That is just not what building security looks like. Not in the private sector, definitely not in the federal government.
LOL! Yeah I guess wtf why was there just one guy barricading the door to the Whitehouse?
Media is an asshole. This is why I almost never watch the news. Because obviously the last time I did, they pulled one over on me.
Holy hell, you ain't kidding. Only one of two things explains how the Capitol Police were deployed: incredible hubris or outright collusion. Pretty sure the answer is 'yes'.
Watching that go down, all I could think was 'they'd have shot us for that in June.'
They burned down the courthouse in Nashville. The news coverage of the protests was so fucking absurd. I'd see coverage of things I was at and it would be so skewed and cherry picked as to bear almost no resemblance to what'd went down. To cap it off there was a night in late September when hundreds of cops surrounded about 150 of us in a Unitarian church and we had something of an armed standoff -- we wouldn't let them in and they were arresting anyone who set foot outside the church-- that went on for hours. Nary a peep out of the news on that.
Jeeeeeeeezussss. You probably didn't give them enough to work with to turn it into a profitable media story. Glad you made it out alive.
This just happened because of 2 years without carnival due to the covid lockdowns. Wait until carnival season this year in february and everything will calm down here south of the equator.
I had the same reaction to this that I did 1/6/2021. Once the laughter died down I was finally able to get out 'fucking idiots'. Not sure why you're writing an apologia for the Jan 6th nitwits though. Unauthorized tour my ass, there was more brawling with police in a few hours that day than in the whole summer of 'riots' here in Louisville.
So what exactly are you saying makes the goings on in Brazil 'have teeth' in comparison to Jan 6th? Near as I can tell the guns stayed home about as well there as in DC and the calls for a coup sound eerily similar to the cries of 'invoke the Insurrection Act' that were going around in the run up to Jan 6th.
Are you familiar with Hanlon's razor? "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Ignorance may be more apt than stupidity but do you really need agent provocateurs in the age of QAnon? In my experience the lack of a plan or organization is a help rather than a hindrance to things getting out of hand.
Don't get me wrong, I'm no more impressed with the Democrats clutching of pearls than you, but the fact that they're milking it for all it's worth doesn't negate the fact that a bunch of cult of personality types tried to keep their guy in power by force, albeit in a spectacularly idiotic and doomed to fail fashion.
Did you see Bolsonaro is in Florida? There's something to be made of the fact that both of them have fled to Florida but I haven't quite pinned down what yet.
I suspect Q-anon was some kind of FBI honeypot. I'm not ruling out a 4chan troll op though. And it would be fair to point out the FBI has a long history of infiltrating and instigating. "FBI foils FBI terror plot" has been a joke going back at least to the Obama administration, if not Shrub. How many FBI scores against terrorists stem from agents finding the dumbest kid in the mosque and feeding him propaganda? The whole MI governor kidnapping thing was spurred by feds.
I second that: Q-Anon was almost certainly a government psyop. "Trust the plan" was suspicious enough all by itself.
Yeah, but which government?
Lol, our views are reversed on that, I'm not ruling out an FBI honeypot but if I had to put money on it I'd wager on it being a 4chan op for the lulz. My brothers and I did that kind of thing for fun when we were teenagers and although I haven't frequented 4chan in a long time it still seems a lot more their MO than the FBI's. I'm quite familiar with the FBI's history, that's part of the reason I don't really think they're behind it. As you pointed out, FBI plots tend to be rather directed with an eye towards a press conference and a conviction, while QAnon is much more vague, nebulous, undirected. Honestly, if there's any sort of government entity behind it I suspect it's the FSB, it resembles old KGB 'active measures' a lot more than anything the FBI has done.
While we're on the topic of shady police antics, are you familiar with the Stasi's zersetzung?
Hanlon's Razor is the respite of the malevolent. Rather the reverse is the default, as condemning the merely stupid to the penalties justly assigned the guilty resolves the hazards and harms they effect just as well, and not doing so faces the prospect of educating the stupid so they no longer commit the harms, which flies in the face of the fact of stupidity.
'Respite of the malevolent' eh? That's cute. So showing some modicum of understanding is bad but 'punish everyone' is good? In that case I'll consider it an honor to be called malevolent by the likes of that sort of good.
Can you think of a single offense that's ever been penalized out of existence?
Punish everyone is not anything I said. Neither did I call you malevolent. I am quite confident that all the crimes that would have been committed by those executed for the crimes they already had committed were penalized out of existence, and the innumerable innocents that would have suffered were saved by the ropes around the criminals' necks.
But that has nothing to do with Hanlon's Razor. My point was to consider evil deeds done malevolently, to prosecute evil doers as evil doers, and if during the prosecution it is proven the criminal was non compus mentus, then they can be properly availed the guardianship they need, and that would have prevented their stupidity from harming innocent(s).
All that said, I firmly believe it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be deprived of his liberty. A just nation has just courts that will not convict the innocent, unlike the USA which the best DNA research shows to wrongly convict ~25% of those convicted. Imprisoning the innocent will never prevent a crime, but is a crime itself.
Be well.
Politicians only make calls and the only loss is people who keep fighting and dying. And FIRs are also registered against people and no one says anything to the big politics. This is what is happening in countries all over the world.
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I call BS.
This is not to be missed. Long, but watch it all. A stunning analysis of the January 6th insurrection: An In-Depth Look at How a Mob Stormed the Capitol