And people who work at the capitol might not want to relive trauma that they just experienced.
This is a much more direct and real threat than Bin Laden ever really represented. He managed to have his people pull off one large scale attack on US soil. White supremacists and far right militias are all right here right now, having been studiously ignored for decades in favor of a focus on the less immediate threat of Jihadi groups with a focus on anyone who is brown or had a muslimy sounding name. They have people in places of actual power, including in Congress.
There is over reaction and there is taking sensible precautions to legitimate threats. I’m not a big fan of dropping all defenses just to prove “they can’t scare us”… because that’s how you get deaths.
It’s time we take these organizations seriously as a threat to people.
They never had legitimacy, because when the constitution was written, we did not have a standing army. We not only have a standing army, we have numerous law enforcement bodies, too. They have always been anti-government groups who want an opening to over throw the post Civil Rights… well, really the post-Civil War American government.
I meant legitimacy in a semantic sense, but I agree that the clear intent of its use in the Constitution was as an “able-bodied” muster in lieu of a standing Army. IMO, everyone owning weapons of slaughter should have to be registered, receive training and be considered inactive National Guard for their state. It requires a profoundly disingenuous reading of the Second Amendment to deny this was the intent. It’s the first three words!
You bet - Trump Hotel was raising rates to milk their “passionate” supporters ie dumb ninjas. Not likely a false alarm when trump telegraphs his chance to profit from it.
Apparently congressman Al Green agrees with you. His statement today:
“I love my country and believe that freedom is not free. Others have made great sacrifices for the freedoms I enjoy. I refuse to surrender our nation’s Capitol to those who would abridge my freedom. Hence, as a matter of personal principle, I will be in the Capitol complex today.”
I don’t want to seem condescending and if I do, apologies ahead of time. You do, though, realize the only reason they would want to capture the Capital is the further their political aims… right? I don’t think they intend to set up a colony there and raise sheep, or something.
And since they can’t hold it, I would assume the message is “Do what we want or we’ll be back.” Right?
Not offended. Yes, but there is something distinctly different in this case. And maybe we should be careful not to apply one term to everyone involved. But in this case, people were attempting to overthrow a government by personally grabbing the reigns of power (even if temporarily). We already have words to describe those people. Insurrectionists, traitors, etc. There was no “or we will be back” part. They wanted Biden’s election overturned right then and there, not some later date.
My problem with the word terrorist isn’t that it doesn’t cover what these folks did. It’s that “terrorist” is too weak a word that doesn’t fully encompass the directness and criminality of what they did. Sort of like calling a murder an assault. It is, but misses the bigger picture.
“Huh. No.” (Said every racial minority or otherwise non-white-hetero person, ever to live in the US. Or even several white-hetero people who sympathized and demonstrated for the rights of those “others.”)
What do you think it means when they talk about “preserving the American way?” What do you think Angeli meant when he said:
“Thank you for allowing the United States of America to be reborn … Thank you for allowing us to get rid of the communists, the globalists and the traitors within our government.”
Are you denying they were looking for Pelosi and Pence and others, or are you saying that after they killed them, they’d be alright with the the next crop of " communists, globalists and traitors"? Do you think future Democrats wouldn’t have felt threatened, and that they’d assume it was a one-off mass murder?
If you can’t see how the intent was to promote a political agenda through threat of terror, when they were actually screaming it at the time… I dunno how to help you.
You may not believe it, but y’allquaeda does have a political goal - they aim to install a white Christian totalitarian theocracy, with all the implied loss of rights that would entail for everyone not white, not male and/ or not Christian.
