Originally Posted by
JohnCommode
Apparently, many on the right fail to see the difference between protests and riots that have occurred many times during my lifetime and an attack on the dignity of the United States government. This has made us look like some Latin American banana republic with a feeble democracy.
Without researching this, the only thing vaguely comparable that I can think of was the shootings by Puerto Rican terrorists in the House back in the 1950's. The trashing of Washington by the British during the War of 1812 was a different kind of indignity as was the attack on the Pentagon on 9/11.
The problem is that we shouldn't attempting to find differences to where one can be excused and one is considered unacceptable.
Yes, by definition they're different. One was a very short-lived invasion of the Capitol which killed zero innocent people (all four deaths were the criminal rioters) and saw relatively few major injuries. It was over within hours. However, as you said, it was an attack on one of the two most sacred buildings in the federal government, made the US look like a banana Republic, and established a really bad precedent that violently invading the federal government is an option when you don't like the results of an election. Unquestionably, this is awful and nobody should make excuses for it.
The other was a long-running group of violent riots around the country, committed for left-wing, ideological reasons. It was highly destructive, killed many people, injured tons of people, destroyed countless innocent small businesses, shut down large cities, destroyed government and police buildings, and had violent territorial takeovers of portions of cities. Additionally, long-revered statues of important historical American figures were destroyed. Many city leaders told the cops to stand down and let all of this occur, and let innocent people's rights be violated. Even worse, this all occurred during a pandemic, with many cities having demonstrations of 60,000+ people shoulder-to-shoulder and shouting. And even worse than that, the media and left-wing politicians either praised it or sat quiet. Talking heads on CNN and elsewhere spouted nonsense which supported it, such as Chris Cuomo asking, "Who said protest has to be nonviolent?"
Both are terrible, and to be honest, the BLM/Antifa riots were far worse overall, because they lasted so much longer, killed and hurt more people, destroyed lots of cities (and small businesses), spread COVID, and were supported by many mainstream figures in American culture.
The bottom line is that you are a complete hypocrite douche if you make excuses for the summer/fall riots and scream that the Capitol riots were horrible and awful.
I have been saying the entire time that all violent protest is horrible, and it needs a swift and aggressive response, regardless of ideology. I see very few on the left saying that, but rather excuse making such as, "B-b-b-b-b-but it's not the same!"
Why not condemn all of it?
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