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U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

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Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#681

It's the practical erosion of Free Speech. Liberal (small "l" liberal) democracy and liberal science thrives on members: 1. Being willing to admit they may be wrong 2. Having access to a diverse information diet But the past two decades have shown erosion of not only legal Free Speech, but practical free speech: * Whereas previously they were just ignored (or even rebutted), today employees, students, and professors…

I cannot believe someone would look at the current situation and think to themselves "they decided to do this because they weren't allowed to offend people on college campuses." If anything the current situation is caused by a lack of moderation and instead giving absolutely everyone the same level of authority and deference online, regardless of whether they deserve it. Every bozo gets their own twitter and substack and people follow it if they want to, and it leads to delusional and violent people finding leaders to follow. 20 years ago these people would have had much less opportunity to speak and reach followers, not more, and things were better then.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#682
post #642

Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…

Absolutely, given how polarized things are, I have little trouble believing poll workers and others with the ability to put their thumbs on the scales would do just that.

You believe this because you have no idea how incredibly scrutinized the process is. There is a reason that there are Poll Watchers from both parties, including lawyers and independents to ensure that poll workers don't put their thumb on the scale.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#683

It is despicable how tepid the police response to armed rioters storming the Capitol has been compared to the response to BLM protests over the summer.

Do you have any evidence of armed rioters storming anything? The only video I have seen is people "armed" with flags, signs, banners, phones, and cameras. Has anyone been beaten to a pulp? Have buildings been looted, vandalized, or burned down yet? "BLM protests" gained a well deserved reputation before the police responses became aggressive. I don't recall the police doing much of anything until after they allowed "peaceful protesters" to storm and burn down the police precinct and the rioting/looting began.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#684
post #72

How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the population is in another reality? Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?

The internet allows for mass influence of the population by third party actors. This is largely China vs Russia. I have trouble not playing this out at scale and drawing the conclusion the internet inherently invalidates a lot of the assumptions democracy (as in the American Experiment™ version of it) requires to function. I hope I'm wrong and overly pessimistic.

You're forgetting the largest player, which dwarfs all the others 10 times over - the US itself. The US propaganda machine is so far ahead of Russia and China that even discussing Russian and Chinese influence over the Internet of all places is laughable.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#685

Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…

> Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? There are. One sent me to this [1] resource earlier. I do not endorse this source, and have not manually verified their claims myself. If anyone else would like to check the source, that would be good, I intend to manually check their claims myself later, but don't have time now. [1] https://hereistheevidence.com/ Edit: I would ask anyone checking th…

not a supporter, but i like that the author has taken the time to distinguish what they consider "verified" and the rest they consider "unverified". quite a few of the 80 "illegal votes" accusations here bear very big numbers - would be nice to crowdsource an effort to provide the other side to each of them.

unfortunately, like i suspect many here, i'm not particularly inclined to spend time going thru them, particular the ~30% of those that link to youtube and twitter accounts.

Brandolini's law, aka the bullshit asymmetry principle comes to mind - "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude larger than to produce it."

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#686
post #72

How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the population is in another reality? Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?

Your news is just flat out awful and has been for a long time. From OANN to Fox to MSNBC; it's all us-vs-them, fear the others, be afraid, be angry, and stay tuned in for more. Every time I visit your country I'm apalled and horrified by your news media. It's blatantly exploiting basic animal instinct and core emotions to hook viewers in order to sell ads. You are a product of your media. And then there's the network…

Those aren't the news channels. They're entertainment. The news is on PBS. The times and journal are good if you stay away from the clearly marked opinion section.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#687
post #528

I think, for the safety of all involved, it may be time to enact section 4 of the 25th Amendment. Amendment 25 - Section 4: Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the Pr…

Congratulations! You have just escalated the conflict!

I’m not so sure, as it would be the VP and members of the Cabinet (all Republicans) who would initiate this process. That kind of leadership in support of democracy could help de-escalate this.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#688

The riot is winding down. The Capitol Police cleared the building hours ago, and many of the crowd just hanging around have left. More cops from Virginia and DC have arrived, and are slowly pushing the remaining crowd back. Tomorrow, Congress will finish counting the electoral votes. I suspect that some, if not all, of the planned objections will not be made.

Congress is going to try and reconvene to finish counting the votes tonight.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#689
post #72

How did we arrive to this point where a huge chunk of the population is in one reality and another huge chunk of the population is in another reality? Segregation of information sources? Politicization of media outlets? Self-reinforcing social bubbles? A combination of all of them and more?

Search bubbles by Google and others probably don't help.

Re: U.S. Capitol Locked Down Amid Escalating Protests

#690

Are there people here on HN that believe the election was stolen? I haven't seen any evidence, most of the lawsuits haven't borne fruit either. However, I also recognize that there may be blindspots/biases. I'd really like to hear from anyone who believes this, to present a cogent argument. I promise not to attack. I want to hear the argument from the other side. I also beseech the rest of HN to please refrain from a…

I'm a trump supporter. I don't believe the election was stolen necessarily. However, there are major issues that have gone unresolved and unexamined by courts and cases dismissed without investigation.

For example, in PA, a judge ordered the election officials to allow republican watchers to view the counting, and struck down the distance requirements set by the governor due to COVID. However, election officials refused to do so, violating a court order. The GOP sued the officials, but the court dismissed it due to standing. They didn't even consider the complaint. Then a voter group tried to sue. They dismissed that for standing. Then trump sued, they dismissed that too. So if neither the political party, the voters, nor the candidate purportedly affected has standing to force the state to allow the vote to be examined and cannot bring a case against an official violating a court order -- then who exactly has that right? Can any election official simply do what they want?

Or in the TX v PA case, the Supreme Court really displayed major cowardice. They ought to have taken the case, examined the merits, and said yes or no. They dismissed it due to lack of standing. The case asked a very important question -- the Constitution says only the legislature sets the election rules, but in PA, the governor and SoS made up rules. Additionally, the PA supreme court simply extended a deadline set by the legislature. If indeed the legislature is the only one who can make electoin rules, then these moves are clearly illegal. The Court should have said if it's okay or not. They could have not granted the relief requested, which I do admit is a major ask. But they should have ruled on whether or not the PA Supreme Court or the governor's actions were legal.

To many republicans, it seems as if there were bad actors who got away with not following the law. It now seems that governors, courts, etc can simply set whatever election rules they want and get away with it. Even if it wouldn't have changed the outcome, I'd like to see a court penalize those officials in PA who disobeyed a court order, or explain in clear legal detail after hearing a case as to why those officials were right to do so.

I also want explanations into why the counting stopped. It is quite clear now that the supposed water leak in Atlanta was a simple toilet overflow that should not have caused anything to stop. Why did they do that, and why did they report it as a leak? Why did we see major drops for Biden with zero votes for Trump? Again, I am ready to concede that Biden won. In fact, I think it likely. However, it is crazy to me that so far not a single body has been willing to investigate these seeming discrepancies and instead told the groups interested in seeking resolution that they have no standing to question it.

Telling people that they do not deserve an answer is what leads to the behavior we're seeing now.

The courts made a huge mistake by simply dismissing on standing. Rumor has it that John Roberts didn't want to take the case due to fear of a mob... Well he got his mob, just not the one he expected.

Downvoters: please engage in good faith. Someone asked if there was anyone who believed the election was 'stolen'. I have given my good faith answer as to what I would have liked to have seen in order for me to fully trust our elections. You may disagree with me, but I'm simply giving my solicited opinion.

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