Happy Holidays, everyone. Hope everyone had a good time out there. Let’s hop back on social media and see what’s going on in the world, and OH MY GOD WHAT THE HELL IS HAPPENING.
Is 1776 commencing again? Are they shooting a Michael Bay movie? What’s going on here?
Is this an Assassin’s Creed re-enactment? Are you guys doing parkour? There’s stairs over there to the right. Why don’t you just take those instead. There are easier ways to get up there. You guys are going to get hurt doing that. Stop it.
Did they release a new Fallout game? Those ps5 graphics are looking pretty damn good. The fur on that Davy Crockett hats almost looks lifelike. Which side quest is this?
What are you doing sir? Where did you get that? That doesn’t belong to you. Put that back this instance. Stop playing around, man. You’re gonna get in big trouble.
So it seems a bunch of people who were convinced we’re dealing with a stolen election decided to storm the Capitol building to “save Democracy” because they’ve seen Braveheart™ one too many times. Noble intentions perhaps, but misguided and a bit on the problematic side.
To start with, the election wasn’t stolen. More people simply showed up to vote for the not-Trump guy. There was an increased eligible voter turnout of 7-10% in 2020 as compared to 2016. Here’s that pew poll showing that 56% of Biden voters were holding their noses and voting for the progressive with the pro-segregation past simply because they hated Trump that much:
A lot of people disliked the guy. The election was extremely close, but acting like it was a no-contest blow-out, and that it’s infeasible he could have possibly lost is ridiculous. Just because he claims he lost, doesn’t mean an entire election was illegitimate.
Given how Trump has acted the last month, the fears of the people voting against him weren’t entirely unfounded. He really hasn’t handled the entire affair very gracefully, which shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. His refusal to accept defeat no doubt had an effect on what transpired in Washington yesterday. He eventually got blocked on twitter and facebook after a day-long tirade of screaming “rigged election”:
Now there are all sorts of conspiracy theories all over social media about the event. A lot of the left is convinced that the police were in on this, and “let it happen”, while a lot of the right is convinced that these people were actually Antifa in MAGA disguises. Not only that, but a lot of the right is also now agreeing with the left that the police let Trump supporters in, seemingly because it changes the narrative against the Trump folks. Being inside the Capitol building can’t be a crime if they were just let in. It’s all so very ridiculous, but so par for the course at this point.
If anything, it seems the government buildings were a little too underprotected, given that a major event was happening in D.C. at the time, which isn’t a great look for government competency.
Evidently Trump had a “Save America Rally” at the Ellipse park just south of the White House. After that, a bunch of the crowd traveled the roughly mile and a half over to the Capitol Building to do whatever it was they were attempting to accomplish.
To be fair, I’m sure nobody was expecting anyone to storm the Capitol since it literally hasn’t happened in over two hundred years:
Nobody had ever flown planes into the Twin Towers until that happened as well, so there really isn’t a good excuse for the unpreparedness. You can guarantee they’re gonna be spending more tax dollars on defense now, so that $750 billion is about to go up. Maybe the White House will get some new automated turrets installed. Finally, something that benefits the people.
I’ve been seeing this kind of cognitive bias hot take a lot as well:
The old “if x group did this it would be different” narrative that people absolutely love falling back on, regardless of how detached from reality it actually is.
First off, the FBI is already aggressively pursuing anybody involved, which should be an easy task, given how many people were filming the whole ordeal.
DC Metro Police are on the hunt as well, and also offering $1,000 rewards for info about those involved with breaching the Capitol building.
There were also probably more Starbucks™ establishments destroyed during the 2020 rioting than any other type of building, making that tweet above a bit ironic. I don’t recall anyone particularly caring too much about the coffee establishments, let alone the police, who probably had better things to do that that time. Or maybe they didn’t. Who knows.
Oh yeah. There’s also this:
In another instance of irony, an executive order that increased penalties for the destruction of government property, and was aimed at people destroying statues during the riots last year, is gonna end up burning anyone who destroyed anything in the Capitol building.
Sec. 2. Policy. (a) It is the policy of the United States to prosecute to the fullest extent permitted under Federal law, and as appropriate, any person or any entity that destroys, damages, vandalizes, or desecrates a monument, memorial, or statue within the United States or otherwise vandalizes government property. The desire of the Congress to protect Federal property is clearly reflected in section 1361 of title 18, United States Code, which authorizes a penalty of up to 10 years’ imprisonment for the willful injury of Federal property.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/executive-order-protecting-american-monuments-memorials-statues-combating-recent-criminal-violence/
These people are gonna be in bigger trouble than if they had destroyed a Starbucks™, something people literally did and received misdemeanors and probation for.
The silver lining in all this, is that it will no doubt lead to a bunch of draconian Government overreach. We’re now going to have the NSA scrubbing through grandma’s facebook account and putting a gun to Apple’s head to let them see all the personal pictures on your phone. It’s for the governments your safety though, so don’t worry about it. So, thanks for that folks. Good work.