How long should the so-called oath keepers have to go to jail for? what about the BLM rioters?

[Dragonlady]

View attachment 732717

Pictured Above is Jessica Watkins who is a so-called insurrectionist. So she is going to take our country over? So that’s it, those are the big bad wolf? We’re supposed to be scared of them? Come on now looks more like she and her cohorts had some mental issues. Appears that some of these “insurrectionists” couldn’t handle a job at McDonald’s let alone take over a country.

This can’t be reality right folks. I would hope that we could all see that the idea that these few dozen people had any sort of an ability to overturn the election is fraudulent. Bc in order to overtake a country one needs tanks and jets, A military. The idea that these “oath keepers “were somehow capable of overthrowing the election is absurd. They are about as much of a threat as the angry old white man who is still racist against blacks…

She faces a 20 year maximum prison sentence that she’s already been convicted guilty of the crime she was charged with. As far as I know she illegally walked into the Capitol building on Jan . I don’t think she attacked anyone. As a Catholic the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Maybe she should get a few weeks in jail?

What about the BLM rioters burn down the Minnesota police station? That’s a government building it’s the same thing folks it is a official government building. And that was literally burn down. But guess what a January 6 the government building was not burned down. So what’s going on here this is clearly hypocrisy where are the trials for the BLM rioters?

The other end of it was considering some sort of a blanket immunity for BLM rioters and the January 6 rioters. Thinking of a way to bring the country together. Have Donald Trump and Joe Biden shake hands with each other. Seriously it’s about unity it’s about common sense the most violent offenders where the BLM rioters or January 6 rioters who are for example in fist fights with cops violently attacking people they should go to jail for more than a year but simply entering a government building illegally that does not warrant a 20 year prison sentence.

No members of BLM were arrested in connection with the riots. Those arrested were mostly right wing agitators and violent anarchists and looters.

U.S. assessment finds opportunists drive protest violence, not extremists

President Donald Trump has blamed leftwing extremist groups for instigating nights of looting and violence in cities across the United States, but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil.

www.reuters.com

A Trump security chief acknowledges role of white supremacist extremists in U.S. urban violence

President Donald Trump's acting homeland security chief on Wednesday acknowledged that white supremacist extremists played a role in this year's urban violence in the United States, a revision of the administration's public descriptions of the political motivations of violent...

www.reuters.com

When the right wing rallies

Reuters examined data from the U.S. Crisis Monitor on right-wing demonstrations throughout 2020 into the early months of 2021.

www.reuters.com

 

[Doug1943]

.

jbander is famous for hearing a question like that and going:

.

Yes, he seems rather emotional.

He thinks "the people who forced their way into the capital, which was totally illegal should to the man all been shot". Hmmm...

Now ... I wish these people, our misguided patriots, all the best. But .... imagine how that would affect the country, if, somehow, they had all been shot ... over a thousand dead bodies lying all over the place, groaning mortally wounded women, crawling through their own blood ... veterans who survived Iraq and Afghanistan, shot by Americans ...

Or, imagine if it was more sanitary ... all of them arrested, tried for " treason" [which they couldn't be, it would have to be some other charge], and executed. Over a thousand executions! Even better. (As Churchill said, grass grows quickly over a battlefield, never over the ground beneath a gallows.)

Whoa, whoa ... what a huge gift that would be to our side! I hate to be cynical about it, but ... it would be the greatest victory we could imagine. (NOTE: I am not 'for' this, in retrospect, or in any other way. Bless all of these patriots. But ... we can think about hypotheticals here.)

The war between us and the Left is a war for 'public opinion', for the broad middle who are not hard-core Left or Right. Everything we do, we must do with that in mind.

"The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church," applies to political movements as well.

It's useful to study the history of Ireland, and its struggle for independence from Britain. In a nutshell, when WWI began, many Irish Catholics were sympathetic to Britain, or at least not, while the war was on, sympathetic to the Irish revolutionaries. When they made an uprising in Easter 1916, these men were spit on as they were led by the British through the streets.

And then... the British executed their leaders. Big mistake! It turned Irish (Irish Catholic) opinion around 180 degrees. If only the revolutionaries had waited until Britain introduced conscription (the draft) in Ireland ... and had led a non-violent resistance to it.
[ Easter Rising - public reaction ]

So when someone on the Left wishes that our people had been turned into martyrs ... it just shows how deeply ignorant of history, or smart political tactics, they are.

We need not imitate them in this.

 

[Circe]

Well, there isn't much you can do to 'set them free'. At the very best, they might be pardoned two years from now (but I wouldn't count on that, even with a Republican President). [Although if Biden really knew how to play political judo, he would pardon them. It would split the patriot movement in half if he did that.]


But you can make their lives a bit more bearable right now, with a letter or two. This is something concrete we can do now. I know from personal experience how wonderful it is to get a letter from the outside, when you're locked up. It takes about 70 cents and fifteen minutes to write one of them a letter.

We all should be writing one a day ... their mailbags should be loaded down with mail, every day.

I can't agree, though of course you should do what you think best. You may well be right that it's cheering for the political prisoners, but it's a pseudo-solution, an easy do-nothing that doesn't fix the situation. Fixing the situation would be getting them OUT and putting people in government who don't do this kind of incarceration like the STASI!

To me this is like the sad heaps of flowers-in-cellophane and toy stuffed animals after every school massacre. It's phony, it doesn't help anything at all, it's a false and pointless response to a continuing catastrophe. Stop that, people! No more throwing flowers in cellophane into great memorial trash heaps! It's a sort of virtue-signalling, I suppose, that does no more to stop the terrible things going on than the euphemism-drifts of the Left does to stop homelessness by trying to change the term to "unhoused."

 

[Delldude]

Stupid and a total lie, and who the hell cares

Yeah, bailed out an represented by Kamala and the Hollywood communist fund.
Many had charges reduced to disorderly conduct.

 

[Billo_Really]

View attachment 732717

Pictured Above is Jessica Watkins who is a so-called insurrectionist. So she is going to take our country over? So that’s it, those are the big bad wolf? We’re supposed to be scared of them? Come on now looks more like she and her cohorts had some mental issues. Appears that some of these “insurrectionists” couldn’t handle a job at McDonald’s let alone take over a country.

This can’t be reality right folks. I would hope that we could all see that the idea that these few dozen people had any sort of an ability to overturn the election is fraudulent. Bc in order to overtake a country one needs tanks and jets, A military. The idea that these “oath keepers “were somehow capable of overthrowing the election is absurd. They are about as much of a threat as the angry old white man who is still racist against blacks…

She faces a 20 year maximum prison sentence that she’s already been convicted guilty of the crime she was charged with. As far as I know she illegally walked into the Capitol building on Jan . I don’t think she attacked anyone. As a Catholic the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. Maybe she should get a few weeks in jail?

What about the BLM rioters burn down the Minnesota police station? That’s a government building it’s the same thing folks it is a official government building. And that was literally burn down. But guess what a January 6 the government building was not burned down. So what’s going on here this is clearly hypocrisy where are the trials for the BLM rioters?

The other end of it was considering some sort of a blanket immunity for BLM rioters and the January 6 rioters. Thinking of a way to bring the country together. Have Donald Trump and Joe Biden shake hands with each other. Seriously it’s about unity it’s about common sense the most violent offenders where the BLM rioters or January 6 rioters who are for example in fist fights with cops violently attacking people they should go to jail for more than a year but simply entering a government building illegally that does not warrant a 20 year prison sentence.

There was a lot more than a "few dozen" shitting on our Constitution.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Stupid and a total lie, and who the hell cares , one action never justifies another action . You are a sub human terrorist. , Pond scum to be exact.

Spokwn like a true brainwashed nazi

 

[Doug1943]

I can't agree, though of course you should do what you think best. You may well be right that it's cheering for the political prisoners, but it's a pseudo-solution, an easy do-nothing that doesn't fix the situation. Fixing the situation would be getting them OUT and putting people in government who don't do this kind of incarceration like the STASI!

To me this is like the sad heaps of flowers-in-cellophane and toy stuffed animals after every school massacre. It's phony, it doesn't help anything at all, it's a false and pointless response to a continuing catastrophe. Stop that, people! No more throwing flowers in cellophane into great memorial trash heaps! It's a sort of virtue-signalling, I suppose, that does no more to stop the terrible things going on than the euphemism-drifts of the Left does to stop homelessness by trying to change the term to "unhoused."

Well, okay. Two points for you to think about. (This is going to be a long post but my intuition tells me you will have no intellectual difficulty in reading it -- unlike some people here -- AND, more importantly, that you are an important person to convince.)

(1) We can send these people letters of encouragement, AND do whatever it is that will 'get them out', both at the same time. They are in no way counter-posed to each other.

(2) You say, we must 'fix the situation'. Well, yes. Let them all out, and we need not write any letters. I'm not sure what you think needs to be done to "fix the situation". I'm going to assume that you mean political action of some sort: writing letters to our representatives, organizing demonstrations, getting publicity putting their case into the media. (If I'm wrong, or have left something out, please correct/supplement me.)

Okay, let's assume we are going to undertake a 'Let them go' campaign ... something to give the impression (which will be, hopefully, a reflection of the reality) of an overwhelming desire by the patriot half of America that they be pardoned in two years by an incoming Republican President. A gamble, of course, since there may not be one, but the only hope there is of any mass pardon.

Now ... to get this campaign going, we are going to have to ACT POLITICALLY. We need to reach people on Social Media, organize house parties, circulate petitions, organize demonstrations.

You probably know that a lot of this is already happening. If you go on Twitter, for example, the new 'Spaces' thing, which is like Zoom without video, has a J6ers meeting every morning to discuss the latest news, talk about what to do etc.

And there are several other organizations now working to help the prisonsers. (See the 'Patriot Freedom Project', for one example. I think I'm forbidden to post the link, but you can Google them.)

And ... it's all one. Writing letters, raising money for prisoner families in hardship, circulating a petition, Tweeting your followers, having prayer sessions, etc ... AND ... there are people who will be drawn into this activity, starting with something direct and personal -- a prayer session, or writing a letter. Then they meet other activists, start coming to meetings (virtual or real), and move on to other activities from there.

It's how many people get drawn into serious political activity. They start with something small, direct, personal, easy to do. They meet activists, who influence them Step by step. It's how you build a movement.

You and I and some of the other conservatives here are already politically sophisticated. We read books, maybe subscribe to a couple of high-level conservative political journals ... there are a couple of hundred thousand of us, judging from the combined circulation levels of a dozen conservative journals I know of. People like Tucker Carlson or similar types will get 2 or 3 million'followers' on Twitter -- yet another layer of people who are probably pretty confident and committed in their political beliefs.

But how many people are actually in a conservative/patriotic organization, one that has regular meetings, and can undertake campaigns? A tiny fraction of the numbers above.

And that's the main, huge, glaring deficiency of the patriotic movement in America today. We are not organized. There are more than 80 million of us, but 99.9% just sit at home. A few post things on line, which is good But we must be organized.

And the 'write a letter to an imprisoned patriot' is one way to get some of these people into motion.

Please consider what I've said above. We need cadre.

 

[Doug1943]

No members of BLM were arrested in connection with the riots. Those arrested were mostly right wing agitators and violent anarchists and looters.

U.S. assessment finds opportunists drive protest violence, not extremists

President Donald Trump has blamed leftwing extremist groups for instigating nights of looting and violence in cities across the United States, but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil.

www.reuters.com

A Trump security chief acknowledges role of white supremacist extremists in U.S. urban violence

President Donald Trump's acting homeland security chief on Wednesday acknowledged that white supremacist extremists played a role in this year's urban violence in the United States, a revision of the administration's public descriptions of the political motivations of violent...

www.reuters.com

When the right wing rallies

Reuters examined data from the U.S. Crisis Monitor on right-wing demonstrations throughout 2020 into the early months of 2021.

www.reuters.com

Whoa! A post that actually backs up its assertions with links! Wonderful.
Everyone should read those links closely. Watch out for slippery insinuations, that are trying to make you think something thru suggestive use of language.

Here's what is true, and actually sensible Leftists and Rightists ought to be able to agree on it:

(1) BLM is not an 'organization'. You don't sign up, start paying dues, get a membership card, and go to meetings. It's "the overall movement is a decentralized network of people and organizations with no formal hierarchy. The slogan "Black Lives Matter" itself remains untrademarked by any group.[9] Despite being characterized by some as a violent movement, the overwhelming majority of its public demonstrations have been peaceful."
[ Black Lives Matter - Wikipedia ]

(2) The same for AntiFa. However, unlike BLM, they're open about their committment to using violence against conservatives, and the police. If the ranks of this movement have an ideology, it's me-me-me 'anarchism'. (Which dishonors the really serious anarchists, like the Spanish ones who fought fiercely against Franco.) They laugh and cheer when they hear that someone on our side has been murdered by one of the people. They're quite open about their committment to use violence against, not only 'fascists' as we would describe them, but against conservatives. And they get a lot of tacit, and sometimes open, suppport from liberals.

There is no equivalent movement on the Right. (The militia movement, which can be an incubator for terrorists, hasn't taken part in 'rightwing riots'. They do sometimes turn up to defend businesses against leftwing riots.)

(3) There were some non-Leftists at some of those riots, commiting or instigating violence. (I'm not talking about lumpen Blacks who just come out to to enjoy defying the police and maybe get a flat-screen TV, but about people with political views.)

They weren't people any conservative would recognize as conservative though. They weren't even 'traditional' fascists.

They were 'Boogaloo Bois', a weird movement of young males who hate the police, some of whom initially sympathyzed with BLM. Some of these people have murdered policemen.

As the good liberal editors of Wiki put it:

The movement consists of pro-gun, anti-government groups. The specific ideology of each group varies and views on topics such as race differ widely. Some are white supremacist or neo-Nazi groups who believe that the impending unrest will be a race war. There are also groups that condemn racism and white supremacy, although attempts by some individual elements of the movement to support anti-racist groups and movements such as Black Lives Matter have been met with wariness and skepticism, and researchers and journalists are unsure if they are genuine or meant to obscure the movement's actual objectives.

[ Boogaloo movement - Wikipedia ]

DragonLady: you say "rightwing agitators" were among those arrested during the riots. Could you provide a link for that assertion? I coulddn't find any examples.

You may have been talking about terrorist/violent incidents during that year, and there you would be right. During that year, violent attacks from 'far-right' individuals [some of whom are probably mentally ill] and groups -- all of whom would be repudiated by my side -- well outnumbered similar incidents from the Left. A good study of this can be found here:
[ https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazon...ublication/201021_Jones_War_Comes_Home_v2.pdf ]

A snippet from it:

In the event of a Republican presidential victory, for
example, the primary threat may come from large-scale
demonstrations in cities, some of which become violent.
Anarchists, anti-fascists, and other far-left extremists have
utilized digital platforms and other publications to argue
that Donald Trump is a neo-fascist and that violence is
legitimate. As the Antifa-aligned journal It’s Going Down
argued, “Suddenly, anarchists and antifa, who have been
demonized and sidelined by the wider Left have been
hearing from liberals and Leftists, ‘you’ve been right all
along.’” A Baltimore-based Antifa activist explained the use
of violence as graduated and escalating: “You fight them with
fists so you don’t have to fight them with knives. You fight
them with knives so you don’t have to fight them with guns.
You fight them with guns so you don’t have to fight them
with tanks.” Anarchists, anti-fascists, and other far-left
individuals and networks have increasingly used firearms—in
addition to explosives and incendiary devices—in conducting
attacks. In this scenario, the primary targets could be
government, military, and police facilities and personnel."

So: Let's clear BLM of leading or instigating riots. Nor did any conservative group or movement.

AntiFa is another matter: they're quite open about the necessity of violence against, not just fascists as a reasonable person would define them, but against ordinary conservatives and Trump supporters. We have no equivalent to AntiFa on our side.

Many people on the Left are not concerned about, even endorse, violence against people on the Right. For instance, conservative speakers are routinely shouted down, sometimes even physically attacked, on American college campuses. (I've raised this issue many times on this board, asking various Leftists if they defend it. Almost every single one has dodged the issue, or even approved of this violence.) I don't know of any contemporary equivalent where conservatives do the same to the Left.

 

[SavannahMann]

Go ahead pardon them all when you get your fantasy in the White House. But. When the Democrats say you are soft on crime, don’t start crying.

 

[g5000]

Nobody from the violent burning antifa and black riots (plural, lots of riots) goes to jail.

Horseshit. Stop pulling lies out of your ass.


2020 Rioter Sentenced to Federal Prison on Charges of Destruction of Government Property and Illegal Firearm Possession

www.justice.gov

Man sentenced to 4 years in prison for role in 2020 Portland riot​

PORTLAND, OR (KPTV) – Multnomah County District Attorney Mike Schmidt said a man who had been convicted for his role in a Portland riot has been sentenced to four years

www.kptv.com

Man who tried to torch N.J. police car during George Floyd protests gets prison time​

​

Illinois man sentenced to nearly nine years for arson during Minneapolis riots​

He drove over 400 miles to Minnesota from his home in Illinois.



www.startribune.com

Man who live streamed Charleston riot, subsequent arrest sentenced​

A Lowcountry man who streamed a riot in Charleston and captured video of his arrest has been sentenced to two years in federal prison.

www.live5news.com

Utah man sentenced to prison for his role in 2020 downtown Salt Lake City riot​

(KUTV) – A judge has ordered that a Utah man will serve time in federal prison for his role in a protest turned riot in downtown Salt Lake City in May 2020. Jackson Patton, 28, was sentenced to 24 months in prison and 36 months of supervised release for a charge of civil disorder, according to...

Man sentenced to 4 years for Minneapolis police station fire​

The man must also pay $12 million in restitution for his role in lighting the Third Precinct headquarters on fire during unrest after George Floyd's death

www.police1.com

Brooklyn Park man is latest to be sentenced for riots​

A federal judge on Friday sentenced a 20-year-old Brooklyn Park man to more than two years in federal prison for setting fire to a health food store during the riots that followed the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin.

www.mprnews.org


Man who set fire to Raleigh stores on night of George Floyd protests sentenced to prison

How the Federal Justice System Sentenced Two Black Lives Matter Protesters​

​

 

[g5000]

Yeah, bailed out an represented by Kamala and the Hollywood communist fund.
Many had charges reduced to disorderly conduct.

See post 390.

 

[j-mac]

Go ahead pardon them all when you get your fantasy in the White House. But. When the Democrats say you are soft on crime, don’t start crying.

They’re going to say crap like that anyway, the problem for dems is that the country is starting to shake their collective head at dems alternate reality.

 

[Doug1943]

They’re going to say crap like that anyway, the problem for dems is that the country is starting to shake their collective head at dems alternate reality.

God, let's hope it's true.
But we must not be passive. We've got to seek out non-conservatives, sensible Democrats, middle of the roaders ... get them involved in defending children from the groomers, in stopping the hollowing out of the army, in returning the universities to sanity. We've got to be active, to exploit the contradictions in the enemy camp.

 

[Delldude]

See post 390.

Nine people out of how many arrested?

Feds quietly dismiss dozens of Portland protest cases

KGW found 31 of 90 protest cases have been dismissed by the U.S. Department of Justice, despite warnings there would be “consequences for acts of violence."

www.kgw.com

91% of Portland protest arrests not being prosecuted

Protesters are 'emboldened,' coalition leader says, despite tough talk from Portland officials including Mayor Ted Wheeler.

www.portlandtribune.com

Most charges against George Floyd protesters dropped, analysis shows

Some prosecutors and law enforcement observers say departments carried out mass arrests as crowd control tactic

www.theguardian.com

Charges against hundreds of NYC rioters, looters have been dropped

Sources in the DA’s offices insisted that in many cases, the evidence was not strong enough for proof beyond a reasonable doubt.

nypost.com

 

[jbander]

Yeah, bailed out an represented by Kamala and the Hollywood communist fund.
Many had charges reduced to disorderly conduct.

Stupid and a total lie

 

[SavannahMann]

They’re going to say crap like that anyway, the problem for dems is that the country is starting to shake their collective head at dems alternate reality.

Yeah. That’s why the Republicans control the Senate. Or something.

Kansas put Abortion on the ballot and Republicans lost handily.

But hey, they’ve woken up since then right?

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150628013/roe-v-wade-50-years-dobbs-ipsos-poll-abortion-legal-public-opinion-supreme-court

3 in 5 agree with Democrats on that issue don’t they?

I read news from the right and left. News from the right is almost always more hype than substance. How many times have we heard someone has evidence, or proof of some grand conspiracy? Only the evidence never seems to be produced.

But even if you believe them, without the evidence, it doesn’t make the side look good. Look at Jan 6. The people convicted were just duped, tricked by the far more intelligent and crafty ANTIFA, or BLM, or whichever three letter agency is the villain today. These folks, good and smart enough to support the RW, we’re duped into doing something that anyone with a sixth grade education knew was wrong.

That would mean that the supporters of your side are barely above the level of Trainable Retarded.

Harry Truman was told to give them hell Harry. He smiled and told the crowd he just told the Truth and they thought it was hell.

Now we see the people on the Right, the ones recognizing the alternate truth in the right, supposedly, are avoiding truth. When the pundits they have been quoting are exposed as saying they know the grand CT is a lie. Denials. When the lawyer says she knew it was a lie. Outrage.

Apparently Harry is alive and well again isn’t he?

 

[j-mac]

Yeah. That’s why the Republicans control the Senate. Or something.

Kansas put Abortion on the ballot and Republicans lost handily.

But hey, they’ve woken up since then right?

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150628013/roe-v-wade-50-years-dobbs-ipsos-poll-abortion-legal-public-opinion-supreme-court

3 in 5 agree with Democrats on that issue don’t they?

I read news from the right and left. News from the right is almost always more hype than substance. How many times have we heard someone has evidence, or proof of some grand conspiracy? Only the evidence never seems to be produced.

But even if you believe them, without the evidence, it doesn’t make the side look good. Look at Jan 6. The people convicted were just duped, tricked by the far more intelligent and crafty ANTIFA, or BLM, or whichever three letter agency is the villain today. These folks, good and smart enough to support the RW, we’re duped into doing something that anyone with a sixth grade education knew was wrong.

That would mean that the supporters of your side are barely above the level of Trainable Retarded.

Harry Truman was told to give them hell Harry. He smiled and told the crowd he just told the Truth and they thought it was hell.

Now we see the people on the Right, the ones recognizing the alternate truth in the right, supposedly, are avoiding truth. When the pundits they have been quoting are exposed as saying they know the grand CT is a lie. Denials. When the lawyer says she knew it was a lie. Outrage.

Apparently Harry is alive and well again isn’t he?

Wow, that’s a lot of projection right there…

 

[Doug1943]

Yeah. That’s why the Republicans control the Senate. Or something.

Kansas put Abortion on the ballot and Republicans lost handily.

But hey, they’ve woken up since then right?

https://www.npr.org/2023/01/22/1150628013/roe-v-wade-50-years-dobbs-ipsos-poll-abortion-legal-public-opinion-supreme-court

3 in 5 agree with Democrats on that issue don’t they?

I read news from the right and left. News from the right is almost always more hype than substance. How many times have we heard someone has evidence, or proof of some grand conspiracy? Only the evidence never seems to be produced.

But even if you believe them, without the evidence, it doesn’t make the side look good. Look at Jan 6. The people convicted were just duped, tricked by the far more intelligent and crafty ANTIFA, or BLM, or whichever three letter agency is the villain today. These folks, good and smart enough to support the RW, we’re duped into doing something that anyone with a sixth grade education knew was wrong.

That would mean that the supporters of your side are barely above the level of Trainable Retarded.

Harry Truman was told to give them hell Harry. He smiled and told the crowd he just told the Truth and they thought it was hell.

Now we see the people on the Right, the ones recognizing the alternate truth in the right, supposedly, are avoiding truth. When the pundits they have been quoting are exposed as saying they know the grand CT is a lie. Denials. When the lawyer says she knew it was a lie. Outrage.

Apparently Harry is alive and well again isn’t he?

What you say here has some substantial amount of truth in it. It makes people on my side uncomfortable, but that's all the more reason to read it and think about it.

Your point about 6 January is exactly right. "We did something stupid, but, we didn't do it voluntarily! Some mean people told us to do it!" Oi, vey ... well, okay. Got to say something.

But ... what you are describing is the behavior of ordinary people, unfortunately. Those who didn't go to college, who don't read a lot, but who know something is wrong with their country. Here's a thoughful analysis of this situation from a conservative:
[Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV]

When Bush (with the support of Hillary, etc.) sent their children to Iraq and Afghanistan, they waved the flag and chanted USA! USA!

When the Republicans convinced the Democrats to support 'Free Trade', and the refrigerator assembly plants in Indiana went off to Mexico and China ... and they lost their jobs ... and their sons started coming home in body bags, year after year after year ... they became dis-satisfied with the Republicans ... some of them even voted for Obama (who, unlike Hillary, had opposed the Iraq adventure), enough so that he won ... but really had no place to turn to. They intuitively knew something was wrong. But had no focus for their discontent.

They stopped trusting the "experts", and mass media that, for decades, had been seen as objective. Silly them. Why when we were told that "overwhelming evidence", backed by all scientists, proved that the Corona virus came from a bat, not a Chinese bio-warfare lab ... these silly people didn't believe it. What rubes!

So they were not represented, really, by either Republicans or Democrats. They had no one who could articulate their concerns.

Until Mr Trump appeared. (How I wish History had given us another Lincoln, or Churchill, or FDR, or JFK ... or even a Nixon, or a Reagan. But I think she's tired of us being so nice to us.)

They're a big market. So a whole swarm of conscience-less grifters jumped in, and set up websites appealing to their worst prejudices, peddling no-brain-needed sensationalist crap.
(There is a demographic on your side which is similar: the people who support Al Sharpton.)

Note also: America, and especially America over the last few decades, is unique among advanced countries.

In most countries, and historically, the bottom half of society supports the Left, and the top half, the Right. (Unless the country is blessed with that wondeful diversity, in which case the fracture lines tend to be tribal.) And educational attainment tended to be concentrated in the top half. We have inverted that (which maybe justifies the 'Red' and 'Blue' signals of political affilation, which so puzzles foreigners.)

That's where we're at. It's unfortunate. And one of the unfortunate things about it, is that it makes thoughtful people on the Left just dismiss anything we on the Right might have to say, without examing it. We're all a bunch of yahoo's, so why bother?

I could also go into your side's failings, your deference to the worst of the Left ... your side's destruction of the universities .. but that's for another thread.

I said this situation is unique to our times, but ... maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's always been that way. I'll match your Truman quote with one from Adlai Stevenson, a few years after Mr Truman.

After a typically brilliant campaign speech by him, a woman came up to him and gushed, "Oh, Mr Stevenson .. that was wonderful! I'm sure every thinking American will vote for you!" And Stevenson replied, "Yes ma'am .... but I need a majority!"

 

[Circe]

Well, okay. Two points for you to think about. (This is going to be a long post but my intuition tells me you will have no intellectual difficulty in reading it -- unlike some people here -- AND, more importantly, that you are an important person to convince.)

(1) We can send these people letters of encouragement, AND do whatever it is that will 'get them out', both at the same time. They are in no way counter-posed to each other.

(2) You say, we must 'fix the situation'. Well, yes. Let them all out, and we need not write any letters. I'm not sure what you think needs to be done to "fix the situation". I'm going to assume that you mean political action of some sort: writing letters to our representatives, organizing demonstrations, getting publicity putting their case into the media. (If I'm wrong, or have left something out, please correct/supplement me.)

Okay, let's assume we are going to undertake a 'Let them go' campaign ... something to give the impression (which will be, hopefully, a reflection of the reality) of an overwhelming desire by the patriot half of America that they be pardoned in two years by an incoming Republican President. A gamble, of course, since there may not be one, but the only hope there is of any mass pardon.

Now ... to get this campaign going, we are going to have to ACT POLITICALLY. We need to reach people on Social Media, organize house parties, circulate petitions, organize demonstrations.

You probably know that a lot of this is already happening. If you go on Twitter, for example, the new 'Spaces' thing, which is like Zoom without video, has a J6ers meeting every morning to discuss the latest news, talk about what to do etc.

And there are several other organizations now working to help the prisonsers. (See the 'Patriot Freedom Project', for one example. I think I'm forbidden to post the link, but you can Google them.)

And ... it's all one. Writing letters, raising money for prisoner families in hardship, circulating a petition, Tweeting your followers, having prayer sessions, etc ... AND ... there are people who will be drawn into this activity, starting with something direct and personal -- a prayer session, or writing a letter. Then they meet other activists, start coming to meetings (virtual or real), and move on to other activities from there.

It's how many people get drawn into serious political activity. They start with something small, direct, personal, easy to do. They meet activists, who influence them Step by step. It's how you build a movement.

You and I and some of the other conservatives here are already politically sophisticated. We read books, maybe subscribe to a couple of high-level conservative political journals ... there are a couple of hundred thousand of us, judging from the combined circulation levels of a dozen conservative journals I know of. People like Tucker Carlson or similar types will get 2 or 3 million'followers' on Twitter -- yet another layer of people who are probably pretty confident and committed in their political beliefs.

But how many people are actually in a conservative/patriotic organization, one that has regular meetings, and can undertake campaigns? A tiny fraction of the numbers above.

And that's the main, huge, glaring deficiency of the patriotic movement in America today. We are not organized. There are more than 80 million of us, but 99.9% just sit at home. A few post things on line, which is good But we must be organized.

And the 'write a letter to an imprisoned patriot' is one way to get some of these people into motion.

Please consider what I've said above. We need cadre.

You are right: we are not organized. Not like the Democrats, whose gross abuses are winning everywhere, as far as I can see. We do need "cadre" and at this point, I don't see that happening. Good post, very interesting.

 

[SavannahMann]

What you say here has some substantial amount of truth in it. It makes people on my side uncomfortable, but that's all the more reason to read it and think about it.

Your point about 6 January is exactly right. "We did something stupid, but, we didn't do it voluntarily! Some mean people told us to do it!" Oi, vey ... well, okay. Got to say something.

But ... what you are describing is the behavior of ordinary people, unfortunately. Those who didn't go to college, who don't read a lot, but who know something is wrong with their country. Here's a thoughful analysis of this situation from a conservative:
[Liberals Read, Conservatives Watch TV]

When Bush (with the support of Hillary, etc.) sent their children to Iraq and Afghanistan, they waved the flag and chanted USA! USA!

When the Republicans convinced the Democrats to support 'Free Trade', and the refrigerator assembly plants in Indiana went off to Mexico and China ... and they lost their jobs ... and their sons started coming home in body bags, year after year after year ... they became dis-satisfied with the Republicans ... some of them even voted for Obama (who, unlike Hillary, had opposed the Iraq adventure), enough so that he won ... but really had no place to turn to. They intuitively knew something was wrong. But had no focus for their discontent.

They stopped trusting the "experts", and mass media that, for decades, had been seen as objective. Silly them. Why when we were told that "overwhelming evidence", backed by all scientists, proved that the Corona virus came from a bat, not a Chinese bio-warfare lab ... these silly people didn't believe it. What rubes!

So they were not represented, really, by either Republicans or Democrats. They had no one who could articulate their concerns.

Until Mr Trump appeared. (How I wish History had given us another Lincoln, or Churchill, or FDR, or JFK ... or even a Nixon, or a Reagan. But I think she's tired of us being so nice to us.)

They're a big market. So a whole swarm of conscience-less grifters jumped in, and set up websites appealing to their worst prejudices, peddling no-brain-needed sensationalist crap.
(There is a demographic on your side which is similar: the people who support Al Sharpton.)

Note also: America, and especially America over the last few decades, is unique among advanced countries.

In most countries, and historically, the bottom half of society supports the Left, and the top half, the Right. (Unless the country is blessed with that wondeful diversity, in which case the fracture lines tend to be tribal.) And educational attainment tended to be concentrated in the top half. We have inverted that (which maybe justifies the 'Red' and 'Blue' signals of political affilation, which so puzzles foreigners.)

That's where we're at. It's unfortunate. And one of the unfortunate things about it, is that it makes thoughtful people on the Left just dismiss anything we on the Right might have to say, without examing it. We're all a bunch of yahoo's, so why bother?

I could also go into your side's failings, your deference to the worst of the Left ... your side's destruction of the universities .. but that's for another thread.

I said this situation is unique to our times, but ... maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's always been that way. I'll match your Truman quote with one from Adlai Stevenson, a few years after Mr Truman.

After a typically brilliant campaign speech by him, a woman came up to him and gushed, "Oh, Mr Stevenson .. that was wonderful! I'm sure every thinking American will vote for you!" And Stevenson replied, "Yes ma'am .... but I need a majority!"

A well reasoned and eloquent response. I’m not used to that these days. I was pleased to read it.

I may surprise you, but I honestly think the biggest problem facing this nation is not the Right, nor the Left, but is the internet. Let me explain, and I beg your indulgence here.

The Internet is wonderful. It allows you to find information you never would have access to otherwise. I look at pictures from NASA that I wouldn’t see without working for them, or attending a University where Astrophysics or Astronomy is taught. I am exposed to authors and writers who are true Gems. I found one of the best books I’ve ever read thanks to the Internet, the Martian. I can use it to view Art, rare wildlife, incredible vistas in locations that I’ll never be able to visit. I can research questions, and find people with like interests.

That last part is the worst of the internet. When I was a boy, people who had radical beliefs, or insane conspiracy theories, were limited to CT newsletters. The subscribers were few, and essentially harmless. The radical Left and Right were limited in who they could express their ideals to, because most people were just not aware of them.

Times changed. Today, you can get all your news from the Radical Right, or Left sources. People are radicalized by their news sources. They believe the insane, even without proof. Because they want it to be true.

I’m going to take a favorite of the Left and Right as an example. I’m going to say the buzzword that will set off everyone. Benghazi.

The Right was outraged that an Ambassador had been killed at a Consulate. The Left was pounding the table and screaming that the Right was capitalizing on the death of a Public Servant. And the Truth, didn’t have anything to do with either.

Benghazi was used by the CIA to funnel weapons to Syrian Rebels.

It's Time To Discuss The Secret CIA Operation At The Heart Of The US Mission In Benghazi

www.businessinsider.com

That’s why the Contractors were there, to guard and help transport the weapons from the collection point to the next step in the chain that got the weapons to Syria. And if you wonder, this is a big reason why I didn’t vote for Hillary in 2016, her bungling of both Libya and Syria.

As an aside, I have said for years that Hillary is just that hair short of being clever enough to actually pull off her plots successfully.

So the Ambassador was there to check on that program. A program the Ambassador should have been hands off of. Why else would an Ambassador go to a Consulate. The Ambassador is there to represent the country to the Host Nation. The Country of Libya political leadership is in Tripoli, not Benghazi.

Yes, the Obama administration lied, but they did it to cover up the CIA operations in Libya and the Middle East. Operations that later were exposed anyway. Including the fact that the Jordanian CIA was diverting weapons to the Jihadists. Selling the weapons we had bought and paid them to deliver to the Syrian Rebels.

Timber Sycamore - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

But thankfully the Republicans played into the plot of Obama and the left. Trent Gowdy couldn’t have done a better job of distracting people from the truth if he had been on script.

Now, to be fair, Administrations have lied about covert actions since the first Spy was ever used. Woodrow Wilson passed the Espionage Act to cover up the fact that he had the State Department deliver the message telling the German Ambassador to plot against America with the Mexicans.

Covert actions have been lied about since time began. I’m not angry that Obama lied. I’m not angry that they thought this was a clever plan. I’m disgusted by it, because it was obviously a stupid plan. Syria was not going to fall. Russia would back them to the hilt, and it was all about a Naval Base.

Russia can’t get their Navy through the Bosporus Straight which is owned by a NATO Ally, sort of ally, Turkey. So the ships they have in the Mediterranean all come from the Northern Fleet. They have to sail all the way around Europe to get there. In the Med, the Russians have one Naval Base. One. We have half a dozen or more. So any threat to that one Naval Base, the Russians would pull out all the stops to defend it. Hell we would too. If someone threatened our base in Rota Spain, we would uncork the dogs of war.

The Rebels would never be able to defeat Russia. Nor Russian backed Syrian Government forces. It was just stupid.

The Right fixated on the obvious. The death of the Contractors and the death of the Ambassador. None of them ever asked the obvious question. What the hell were the CIA contractors doing there in the first place? Why was the Ambassador at a Consulate. Consulates is where you go get import or export documents. Perhaps a travel visa could be applied for, but that would be issued by the Embassy. Consulates are satellite offices. Where minor functionaries do the minor work of the Embassy. If the Ambassador wanted to talk to someone, they would come see him, he wouldn’t go to them.

This allowed the Left to pound the table and call the Right Unpatriotic.

Both sides were dumb. And it showed me that both sides were going to run to stupid the first chance they got. The CT nonsense started. Obama and Hillary wanted the Ambassador dead because he knew something he shouldn’t know. They were paralyzed by indecision and refused to send the Marines in to protect the Consulate.

The Marines have plans in place, that is true. but it is to defend the Embassy, not the Consulate. The plan for the Consulates is to abandon them and escape. Nothing secret is supposed to be there. It is more aligned with commercial interests.

But Hillary being clever, but just a hair short of clever enough thought the Consulate could support and assist the CIA effort to get weapons from Libya to Syria.

By the time the truth started to come out, everyone was already set in their ideals. The Right still pounds the table and screams that Obama let the Ambassador Die. They even ordered the Contractors not to go. Well yes. The Contractors were supposed to guard and protect the weapons at the collection point and through to the next step in the chain to get them to Syria. If the Contractors went to the Consulate, who would be guarding the weapons we didn’t want falling into anyone else’s hands?

It would be like asking the Marines guarding Nuclear Weapons to respond to an attack on the base commanders house. You guard the weapons, first and foremost. Lock them down, and don’t let the attackers, whatever their motivations, get more firepower than they already have.

Yes, the death of the Ambassador was tragic. But it was just one card on the table, and even today, is the distraction that most people focus on.

I could go on, and on, and on. Pizza places used to sexually abuse children. An armed idiot charged in determined to rescue those abused children. Leftist idiots like George Lakoff deciding the Oil Spill in the Gulf needs to be called the Gulf Death Gusher because he imagines he has decoded RW Speech.

Morons whose ideas are reinforced by radical websites which promote only CT nonsense. For the Love of God the Flat Earth Society has reformed.

And Politicians are busy trying to stay ahead of the flock of insane Lemmings who are running this way and that. Reinforcing the insanity for political power. The nuttier that the idiot from New York gets demanding Socialist insanity, the more the RW screams that she’s crazy and we have to stop all Democrats from ever having power because of her. The dumber the comments from Boebert or my own embarrassment MTG in Georgia, the more the Republicans look stupid.

We can’t compromise, because of the worst of the internet. Compromise for centuries is how we have managed to do business in this nation. But now, compromise is a dirty word.

Let’s say you are buying a house. The seller is offering it for a million dollars. You offer eight hundred grand. You negotiate for a couple weeks and settle on nine million with shared fees. That is a compromise. Neither side is happy. The Seller wanted to get asking price, but can live with the deal. You aren’t happy, you are spending another hundred grand, but you can live with the deal. That’s the mechanism which makes everything work.

Finding a deal both sides can live with. Now, compromise is viewed as a total surrender and must never be undertaken. Honestly, If I was President, I’d just veto the first budget bill that arrived, and go home to sit out the rest of the administration. Congress could never work out a deal where they had a 2/3 majority to override the veto. If they did, then the art of the Compromise would be back.

Because of the radicalization of idealism, there is no way we can reach a compromise, and without a compromise we can’t govern effectively. We can only blame and point fingers and come up with increasingly insane theories to justify our situation.