You must be joking, BLM and antifa were burning and looting for months last year, throughout the US, this is just San Francisco as an example:
"Manheimer said about 200 businesses were looted or vandalized and 137 arson fires were set during a period in which “numerous” shootings also occurred throughout the city. One killing was related to the incidents of looting, and two federal security guards were shot outside the Ronald V. Dellums Federal Building. One of the guards, David Patrick Underwood, was killed."
About 200 businesses were looted or vandalized, 137 arson fires were started, and...
www.sfchronicle.com
This seems like a false equivalence?
And you do know a fair amount of these illegal activities were done by far right groups trying to discredit the peaceful BLM protesters? Others were done by career criminals who simply took advantage of the situation. Little or none of it was done by the same BLM protesters who were out earlier in the day. Law enforcement continually noted in all cases a different set of faces came in when things went downhill. Also, 200 businesses looted in San Francisco is hardly a big deal when you have over 35,000 businesses in the city. It's barely over half a percent. The looting and rioting was hardly the end of society that Trump kept saying it was, but never fail to milk anything if it helps you.
Besides that, you're equating what was property damage, regardless of who did it, with attempted sedition and domestic terrorism, which is what happened on the 6th. Sure, I absolutely want looters and vandals punished, whatever their political stripe. However, let's not lose sight of the fact that what happened on the 6th was a direct threat to our democracy. The other things weren't. They were lawless acts, nothing more.
Second, you do know BLM at least had a legitimate gripe, namely the fact black and brown people are treated like criminals by police even when they aren't? If a group of black and brown people did the same things these mostly white people did on the 6th, we probably would have had a massacre on the scale of Tiananmen Square by the police. What was the gripe of the people storming the Capitol? Their guy lost? So what? Every election has a winner and loser. When you lose, you accept it, move on, and try to do better next time. Listening to some of these people, their level of entitlement was off the charts. "Oh, the Democrats are socialists, we can't let them win at any cost." So the people who might support Democratic policies don't get their vote counted? Why even bother having elections if this is how you think? In the end this is probably more about a bunch of people with above average income and assets worried they might have to pay more in taxes. Meanwhile, the working class folks who joined them would ironically do better under the Democrats. Remember it was like pulling teeth to get Mitch McConnell to even agree to another $600 payment.
Third, I'm in utter disbelief given what has happened since election day that anyone is even trying to downplay this as anything less than the domestic terrorism it was. This wasn't riots or looting. It was an attempted, admittedly very poorly planned, coup d'etat. President Trump and his enablers have been building toward an attempted coup from even before the election. This was all planned out. Tell your supporters to vote in person knowing the other side will mostly vote by mail because of fears of covid. Pass laws which keep the swing states from counting mail-in ballots until after the election, knowing that this will put your side way ahead until those ballots start getting counted. Then claim the election was stolen from you when your lead dwindles, even evaporates, over the next few days. After that do all the crap that was done after election day, including offering up as your only "proof" of election fraud the fact lots of people think the election was stolen. Of course they do, because that was the BS this President pushed on them all year. Circular reasoning at its finest. Finally, have a farting Rudy Giuliani as your lawyer. This is a man I once respected for helping to clean up crime in the city, and lead it after 9/11. But like everything else Trump touches, he turned to shit.
Consider that Pence, a man who has been loyal to Trump to a fault, was thrown under the bus by him yesterday. That's Trump. You're only of use to him until you aren't, then he discards you like a piece of trash. This is the kind of person you want to support? We NYers knew what he was. I'm amazed the rest of the country fell for it.
Be happy he didn't win, unless of course you would have liked living in a country like Nazi Germany. 2020 would have been the last free elections the US would ever have had if Trump had won. Hopefully Trump will be spending the rest of his life looking out of a jail cell, along with his three oldest children. Also, all the members of Congress who voted in favor of upholding the objections to AZ and PA need to be removed, and barred from ever running for any elected office again. So do all of Trump's other enablers. History will be the final judge, but I bet he goes down as the worst President ever.
www.bbc.com
amp.theguardian.com
www.juancole.com
www.politico.com
www.theonion.com
nyc.streetsblog.org
www.businessinsider.com
www.independent.co.uk
www.latimes.com
edition.cnn.com
www.nzherald.co.nz
www.abc.net.au
