TerribleIdeas™
Master of Cunt-Puppets
I have a question for those who said "violence is not the answer" regarding this incident on the Capitol. When does violence become the answer? I am old enough to remember being taught how the United States came to be and it wasn't just some guys in colonial clothes wrote their names on a piece of paper and a new nation was born. I am old enough to remember being taught the eventual abolition of slavery in the US included an incident at Harper's Ferry. While MLK is recognized for his peaceful demonstrations during the Civil Rights Movement, it seems prominent black voices have shifted towards Malcolm X's "by any means necessary" approach in recent years. We all saw how businesses submitted to the mob last year where some wrote they supported BLM to avoid destruction.
I get taking the high ground and being a nation of laws. But it appears to me that civility has been thrown out the window for about a decade and tensions in this country are reaching a boiling point.
When the elite political class has the power to crush you, using violence becomes a massive risk, and between the escalating lockdown punishments and the mobilization of 25k National Guard for the Inauguration, the political class are showing that they have that power, and will use it. 25,000 National Guard forced to sleep in hallways (despite the supposed fear of COVID we're all supposed to have) is such an excessively overreaction to a bunch of boomer retards that mostly behaved like lost tourists, barring Ashli Babbit, whoever shit on the desk and floors, and anyone that was stealing shit. Those people are all various amounts of stupid, but barring Babbitt, there's nothing that justifies that much security.
Unless people are willing to go on a massive general strike, they're kind of fucked; the gov't forcing everyone back to work, or mobilizing military engineers to cover legitimately essential infrastructure and energy services is pretty much the worst optics possible at the moment, but the gov't being able to invoke the Insurrection Act, or otherwise claim to be addressing some kind of secessionist threat of violence is something they can spin as "muh huwite spremacist dumbestic terrorism!", and rationalize through the media. The latter gives the gov't the veneer of justified force and the ability to restrict civil rights in the same way that 9/11 gave it the ability to justify the abrogation of the 1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th, 14th (and probably other amendments) through the Patriot Act.
Edit, since @DeadFish covered it more thoroughly than I did - any attempt at behaviour that is already criminalized, or that can be construed as justifiably criminalized, will be used as an excuse to clamp down on everyone, everywhere, all the time, which really only leaves lawful civil disobedience. I think "moving off grid" and "prepping because collapsitarian" are part of that category, personally.
Ayn Rand covered this, funny enough -
“There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Conspiracy theory: Wouldn't it be interesting if Biden were still attacked despite the massive protection and somehow rendered unfit for duty, forcing Kamala had to immediately invoke the 25th Amendment, then declaring martial law, etc. as her first acts as "PotUS"?