monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Black activists are coming out strongly against a growing narrative among conservatives that equates the deadly siege on the U.S. Capitol with last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests of racial injustice.

Republican lawmakers defending President Donald Trump made the comparison again Wednesday while building their case against impeachment and accused Democrats of being hypocrites with selective outrage. Their comments mark the latest effort by Trump and the GOP to misrepresent the Black Lives Matter movement as an extremist, violent faction tied to anarchists.

“You can moan and groan, but he was far more explicit about his calls for peace than some of the BLM and left-wing rioters were this summer when we saw violence sweep across this nation,” Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida said in defending Trump before the House voted 232-197 to impeach the president for inciting an insurrection.

But the two events were fundamentally different. One was an intentional, direct attack on a hallowed democratic institution, with the goal of overturning a fair and free election. The other was a coast-to-coast protest movement demanding an end to systemic racism that occasionally, but not frequently, turned violent.

“The GOP has become the party of false equivalences,” said James Jones, assistant professor of African American studies and sociology at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey.

Many BLM protesters were responding to the death of George Floyd, a handcuffed Black man who was seen on video gasping for breath as a Minneapolis police officer pressed his knee into Floyd’s neck. Police repelled the demonstrators using rubber bullets, tear gas and military assets like helicopters.

The mob at the Capitol was fueled by baseless conspiracies propagated by Trump that the election was stolen from him through massive fraud. The rioters acted on the president’s direct urging to “fight like hell.” They attacked police with pipes and chemicals and planted bombs. They were met largely with restraint by law enforcement.

The unrest that followed Floyd’s death included vandalism, arson and looting, but the vast majority of demonstrations were peaceful. Some of the worst violence was in Portland, where thousands of protesters turned out nightly for weeks. Some hurled fireworks, rocks, ball bearings and bottles at federal agents, and a member of a right-wing extremist group was gunned down by an antifa supporter.

But prominent BLM activists repeatedly distanced themselves from provocateurs and brawlers. Much of the violence came from provoked and unprovoked confrontations with police, during city-imposed curfews and after peaceful demonstrators had gone home. An analysis of more than 7,750 demonstrations in 2,400 locations across the country found that 93% happened with no violence, according to the US Crisis Monitor, a joint effort by Princeton University and the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

The mob at the Capitol smashed its way into the heart of the federal government, seeking to interrupt constitutionally mandated proceedings to affirm President-elect Joe Biden’s victory. Lawmakers fled into hiding, and five people were killed, including a Capitol police officer who was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher.

The “overwhelmingly nonviolent” demonstrations cannot be compared to the violence at the Capitol, “where white supremacists, mobilized by falsehoods peddled by President Trump and his GOP allies” laid siege to the Capitol “resulting in its desecration,” Jones said.

Trump has made no effort to apologize for remarks that egged on the insurrection. Instead he said Tuesday: “And if you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level, about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem — what they said.”

Freshman Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said Democrats should be removed for inciting violence by supporting the protests that followed Floyd’s death in May.

Trump “has held over 600 rallies in the last four years. None of them included assaulting police, destroying businesses or burning down cities,” Greene said.

In fact, occasional violence has happened at Trump rallies, and the president has all but invited crowds to attack critics and journalists. At several events, Trump supporters and protesters have come to blows, including as recently as November, when clashes between people protesting the election results and counter-demonstrators ended with at least one stabbing and 20 arrests.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Sara Jacobs of California said she was disgusted that Republican lawmakers used the comparison to avoid condemning a clear attempt “to stop the processes of democracy.”

“It’s telling that so many Republicans aren’t even attempting to defend the President — because his actions are indefensible,” she said in a statement to The Associated Press after voting to impeach Trump.

The president in a tweet called the Capitol rioters “great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” Over the summer, he called the Black Lives Matters protesters “thugs” and “terrorists.”

In 2020, law enforcement agencies made more than 14,000 protest-related arrests, often detaining people who engaged in civil disobedience, as well as acts of violence.

Trump has portrayed people arrested in the protests as dangerous, left-wing radicals. A review by The Associated Press found many were young suburban adults with no previous run-ins with the law or ties to antifa. Short for “anti-fascists,” antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left-leaning militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

An investigation into the response of the Capitol police is underway. One officer was seen taking a selfie with a insurrectionist, and several rioters were escorted from the premises without being handcuffed.

Equating the pro-Trump rioters to the Black Lives Matter movement could lead to even heavier law enforcement surveillance and actions against BLM, said Scott Roberts of Color of Change, the nation’s largest digital racial justice advocacy group.

“There is a real danger of this false equivocation leading to ramifications, whether intended or unintended,” he said.

Gamers and Breakers

Steve Taylor, Jan 10

I just finished reading Timothy Snyder’s (no relation to me that I know of) article in the New York Times, The American Abyss is a story of the Gamers and The Breakers. The Gamers and Breakers is the best way I have seen it written down. He talks about these factions in the Republican party. The Gamers want to game the system to their advantage, like voter suppression and gerrymandering. The Breakers, just want to break up the system and create a new one they can run, aka Fascism.

The Breakers started with Newt Gingrich and the Tea Party but the Democrats and the Gamers were too strong back then and not enough of the Republicans wanted to totally upset the system and so it festered over the many years with help from Facebook and Fox news and a dire economic situation. Then came trump and he was a perfect (but stupid) candidate to be a breaker. Large swaths of America want to break the system and they loved Trump’s message as an outsider that wanted to “drain the swamp”. They don’t see that the government represents their needs anymore (a fallacy they can’t comprehend, because what is the end state of breaking the system? Anarchy?) Thankfully Trump was too stupid and narcissistic to pull it off. His little revolution had zero chance of succeeding. When I watched the protests on live TV, I thought this is all they have? Doesn’t anyone remember how large the pink hat and BLM protests were? Imagine if 2 million people invaded DC. That would be a revolution. If you want to see what a real threat looks like from the Breaker side of things, Josh Hawley scares the crap out of me. Someone needs to put him in a box.

I said this shortly after the riot, the Gamers and the Democrats like the system they have created and there are enough of them squash the Breakers for the next 12–20 years. McConnell and Pelosi and Schumer and Biden will squash the Breakers like a bug. Do you remember what happened after 9/11? This is what is going to happen to the leaders of the Breakers.

Then there are the corporate interests. Money, money, $$$$. It runs the world. Do you think they want to see the pig trough of money (aka The United States) get broken up? The Breakers are in the minority. The represent far less money than the other side. You are already starting to see the wheels turning with Parler getting squashed by Google, Apple and Amazon. Look for more of that to come.

Fox news could be next if they aren’t careful. OANN and Newmax could be de-platformed soon.

Just like the Gamers, the corporations like the way the system is and will not want it broken up.

Then one big thing he doesn’t mention. DEMOGRAPHICS. The white share of the population in the USA is shrinking rapidly. The Nation is Diversifying Faster than Expected. Jesusland used to contain Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Virginia and Georgia. Things are not going the Breaker’s way and this is why they are trying have a death grip on power and they feel there is no way out, except violence at this point. Minority rule is never a good thing, but this is what the Breakers want. Unfortunately for them, it’s a losing position.

I think the United States narrowly averted a huge crisis. Trump was forging a path to autocratic rule and quite possibly keeping himself in power until he died. The Breakers and Gamers were happy to play along with this ploy, but two things happened. The Democrats won the Senate back and January 6th happened. If both of those hadn’t happened, my feeling is the Trump would’ve succeeded. Now with Democrats in power, it’s time to break up the right wing Breaker apparatus and keep stability in the United States. But will they have the will do it? Getting taken hostage in the Capital building should be the impetus for them…

Trying to look on the bright side...

Quote:

The Democrats are planning to introduce new regulations on tech companies in the coming months, so you got your wish. No need to wait for conservatives to assume control.

I can never figure out why 'liberals' are so in love with 'Control'.

You've never seen control as when you have a total Fascist Conservative Autocratic Trump control. We were probably 2 years away if theRump had of won the Presidency again! A person would not have been able to even taken a **** without permission and paying a tax.