@antigravman
1. They were armed enough to kill a couple people and had equipment for taking hostages.
2. The building in question was holding an event that was part of the process of a change in power they disapproved of.
3. They explicitly expressed the intent of killing one of the main people leading that event.

Yes, this was a coup attempt.
@sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo @SmilingTexan

@timorl @sillystring @freemo @SmilingTexan
>kill a couple people
Only person killed with a weapon inside the Capitol Building was one of the protesters.

>The building in question was holding an event that was part of the process of a change in power they disapproved of.
Still not a coup. Unless you think those people were going to somehow replace Congress. In that case you're legitimately crazy.

>They explicitly expressed the intent of killing one of the main people leading that event.
Who is "they"? Where is your source that this was an organized attempt to overthrow Congress and the US government?

@antigravman
So as long as someone is killed without the use of weapons it doesn't count?

I don't know what would have happened if they captured (and possibly killed) the people involved in the certification. I doubt they would have succeeded in keeping Trump in power, but it's not obvious. And a poorly planned coup is still a coup.

The protesters among whom the people who attempted the coup were. If they didn't attempt the coup later I would have assumed this was terrible political posturing (which should be condemned, but is within their rights), but since they attempted to execute the threat it's hard to dismiss it as such.

I can provide sources for any of the facts that I am stating, if you don't believe in some.
@sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo @SmilingTexan

@timorl @sillystring @freemo @SmilingTexan
>So as long as someone is killed without the use of weapons it doesn't count?
You said they were armed and killed people. They weren't and they didn't.
The FACT is the only person besides protesters who were "killed" was a police officer who while away from the Capitol was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher and died suddenly the following day due to a stroke caused by a blood clot.
>I don't know what would have happened if they captured (and possibly killed) the people involved in the certification.
You realize the cops were in and about with the protesters as they entered the Capitol right?
You realize the protesters left after they got bored right?
That's not what happens in a coup attempt.
> I doubt they would have succeeded in keeping Trump in power, but it's not obvious. And a poorly planned coup is still a coup.
You're fucking insane to think this was a coup. This is Q-anon level insane conspiracy shit.
50 unarmed people attempting a coup versus the Capitol Police, DC Police, and Secret Service. And to top it off, instead of a coup they were satisfied and left after party crashing in the Capitol?

Take your meds schizo.

@antigravman
I said armed enough to kill (my point was killing doesn't require weapons), and they killed a person. Although I wasn't aware they only injured him initially.

What do you think would have happened if they managed to get to the House chamber before it was evacuated? In particular what would they have used the
zip handcuffs for?

At the point where it was clear they wouldn't get to anyone important what were they supposed to do? The coup failed and it clearly was a terrible attempt, but still an attempt.

@sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo @SmilingTexan

@antigravman @sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo @SmilingTexan @timorl where do you get the number 50 from?

@2ck
One person in the thread requested being removed from the mentions, please try respecting that.

I'm also somewhat curious, although I don't think the specific number changes much in the interpretation of events.
@antigravman @freemo

@timorl

Trump madd a literal coup attempt now? Literally the moment there was a hint of violence out of anyone Trump was on TV telling people to respect the law and go home. That would be a pretty ineffective response on his part if his intention was a coup.

Plus when Trump was elected we were on our third day of violence from democracy 3 days after the count was in and that continued on and off for 4 years. The levels of violence personally witnessed in those 4 years in my town alone were orders of magnitude worse than anything I saw at the capitol.

None of that excuses what happened at the capitol mind you. But in terms of extremes it really doesnt come close to liberals, and in terms of what it means about Trump, well, as I said he was very quick to publicly tell them to stop an go home the moment there was a hint of violence out of them so not even sure how that is Trumps fault rather than the fault of a small minority of republicans.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

Just to recap here, we had 4 years of violence from democrats with such as examples as

1) They burned down multiple building
2) Burnt dozens of cars to the ground
3) Terrorized whole cities
4) in one case took over several city blocks against the residents wishes, put up barricades to keep US forces out, and setup a dictatorship that didnt end until people started dying...

This list could be much longer

Hard to compare a few nut jobs at the capital to that.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo
I didn't say Trump did that, although he seemed to encourage it. Mostly by repeatedly telling people who violently opposed his political enemies that he loves them, starting with the "I love Texas!" tweet and culminating in the call to go home which I think you are referring to, where he spent more time telling the insurrectionists that he loves them and reiterating that the election was illegitimate than actually telling them to stop. Unless you are referring to a different appearance?

I'm not sure about the quickness, my impression was that he made his address after it was clear the evacuation was successful, although I'm not quite sure about the timeline. Even if I'm right about the timeline I wouldn't read too much into that as I don't know how long it takes to prepare such an appearance.

There are also the issues with lackluster security and delays in deploying additional forces to control the situation. I hope an investigation will explain what happened there.

Even assuming Trump did not do this on purpose, being incompetent enough to cause a coup attempt by his supporters should be way more than enough to disqualify him from receiving any political support from reasonable people.

And protests, even violent to an extent, are part of a democracy. Trying to throw out the result of an election is not.
@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

So he loves the groups that vote for him that had some members being violent... sounds an awful lot like what biden did. dont recall Biden down talking antifa when they were being violent even once.

He also never told the insurgents that he loved them, though he did tell a crowd that was mostly peaceful with a few sporadic nutjobs that he loved them if thats what you mean.

Honestly I wouldnt have taken you for someone who would lay on the hyperbole so thick. Generally your not the one exaggerating and taking things out of context quite as much as you see to be.

And no if you thought he didnt speak up until after the evacuations then it is clear you never even watched the events life. It was fairly early on in the event. Shortly after the first unarmed protesters was murdered by police, probably in a bid to calm the violence that was only going to get worse from that incident.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo No, the Texas tweet was explicitly about a violent subgroup, they were the only ones in the video. And you cannot claim that he told the insurrectionists to go home and didn't tell them he loved them if both these things happened in the same address.

I am not using hyperbole right now, I'm choosing my words very carefully. This was a coup attempt, as pathetic as it was, by the group of nutjobs you mention. Trumps first reaction was to tell them he loves them, he is also a natural suspect per _cui bono_, but honestly I hope it's just his incompetence plus other characteristics that sparked this, not actual planning.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

> I am not using hyperbole right now, I'm choosing my words very carefully.

yes, you are, and there are examples literred all over this post and i dont even need to invoke the coup / insurrection remarks.

Take this:

> you cannot claim that he told the insurrectionists to go home and didn't tell them he loved them

We had a situation where a large group of people were non-violent and actively opposed to the violence (we even hear the reporters saying on the live video how peaceful most of them appear) and a small handful who were being destructive. Even then most of the violence from them only occured **after** an unarmed protesters was murdered by a cop at the early part of the protest. He clearly told the small percentage who were violent to stop, and refered to the larger group, most of which who were not violent (and happened to include them) that he loved them.

Moreover at the time that he said this those who were being violent were limited to having broken a window, and to have entered the capital buildings mostly non-violently and no indication anyone was armed.. It was however **after** a unarmed protestor was murdered by a cop. so yea doesnt line up in the slightest with the nonsense your peddling. Hyperbole the whole way.

Its a shame because if we were just talking about the violence and did so in a way that represented it accurately I would have agreed with you that it is uncalled for.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo
It definitely wasn't clear, even if this was his intention. Read the transcript of his speech if you want -- he doesn't differentiate the groups he is referring to at all. In a _very_ charitable reading he might be doing what you are saying, but he didn't condemn the people attempting the coup at all, just told them to go home.If he said what you are saying here (denouncing the insurrectioninsts) then it would be clear, buy he did not do that.

And you are trying very hard not to talk about the Texas tweet. It's very hard to create a charitable explanation of that one. And you cannot take the most charitable explanation of what Trump says all the time, when you already have ample proof that he doesn't really have a problem with political violence.

And this is not just about violence. The people who entered the capitol went there with the express purpose of stopping the election certification. This is what makes it a coup, in addition to the violence. And this is **way** scarier then even very violent protests or riots.
@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

I rewatched the video before I had commented. No he doesn't differentiate the groups, he doesn't need to. Heis clearly referring to the whole crowd, and as I said that includes a small minority of people who were misbehaving. He told the whole group not to be violent, (which at that point had been limited to a broken window)... he told the whole group he loved them.

There was no coup, he called out the violent people for being violent, end of story..

Which is still a **hell** of a lot mroe than biden did when the democrats spent a 4 years of being violent in repeated cycles.

As for texas, not much to comment on, while it was unacceptable, and I dont like how they acted or trumps response, it did not entail violence which is the topic we are discussing. But if you want to simply mention it as a black mark against trump, or 10 or so of his supporters, then yes I'd agree. There are in fact **many** black marks against trump, and I wouldnt argue otherwise. The point is they just dont come anywhere close to Biden's black marks.

Remember my claim is not that Trump is good or that he has handled anything well. Only that he isn't as bad as Biden. Both of them suck.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

Some random people on twitter had some chatter about stopping election certification. It was not organized however and not some group entering for that purpose. Just a bunch of random people who wound up twaddling in and one or two who actually had serious intent (and were stopped as they were unarmed anyway)

Not even remotely as scary as the laundry list of points you just completely ignored however such as :

1) They burned down multiple building
2) Burnt dozens of cars to the ground
3) Terrorized whole cities
4) in one case took over several city blocks

sorry but a few hundred people who walked into the capital and took selfies with a very small handful having delusions of grandeur for a few hours then its over doesnt come CLOSE to comparing to hundreds of people taking over dozens of city blocks, ending in murder, burning buildings to the ground, burning cars to the ground, terrorizing whole cities and doing it for 4 years on and off.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo
They went into the building in which the certification was happening while it was happening. They even managed to interrupt it. Even if only a couple people were planning it and the rest was useful idiots this is still a coup attempt by the ones who were planning it. And I'm willing to (methaphorically ofc) die on that hill because if one cannot call a coup attempt a coup attempt then it's very hard to defend liberal democracy.

The saddest thing about this is that I think there was a moment of clarity while all this was happening. The reasonable Republicans seemed to be completely appaled by the attempt, the far-but-not-complately-gone were insisting it was actually antifa in an attempt to distance themselves. And then, somehow, it disappeared. Eh, irrelevant...

What can I say about the list other than it's mostly irrelevant from a coup perspective? There was violence, but my problems with violence are much smaller when it's not attempting to overthrow an election.

Well, there are maybe two things if you are interested (but with the caveat that I believe all this is mostly unrelated to the discussion). One, I don't remember Biden ever endorsing political violence, like the Texas tweet did. He did pay some lip-service to the political goals of the BLM movement and even included extremely watered down versions of their demands in his programme, but no endorsements of violence. Maybe I'm wrong on that though.

Two attributing CHAZ (or whatever that entity was called) to Democrats has to be a joke. This was clearly an anarchist project, albeit executed with similar finesse as the coup attempt (I think, I only followed it tangentially). Any kind of anarchist would only vote for Biden because they believed Trump to be a literal facist, and many wouldn't even despite that. Even Sanders, who afaik is the leftmost part of the Democratic party, would at best be seen by them as a barely acceptable compromise.

Also, 4 years? Do I remember incorrectly that the mass protests only started after the midterms? Because I seem to remember that the boogeyman for the midterms was a migrant caravan, antifa as the boogeyman came later, right?
@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

> Even if only a couple people were planning it and the rest was useful idiots this is still a coup attempt by the ones who were planning it.

Great so 5 people attempted a coup they never had a chance of accomplishing, unarmed, by simply trying to walk t the chamber, meanwhile everyone else was there to take selfies.. ok ill give you that, its a coup in the most absurd sense of the word. Still doesnt even come close to the levels of violence the liberals caused over 4 years.

> What can I say about the list other than it’s mostly irrelevant from a coup perspective?

While a coup was one point in the discussion I remind you that **no** the discussion is not about a coup, your initial interjection was as follows:

> Wait, you still believe Trump>Biden?

The discussion is why Trump is better than biden. Using a weak coup attempt by a very small number of people who tried to walk unarmed into a chamber and one got shot dead for their effort with no violent action or means, while a talking point in that discussion, is not the scope of the discussion.

> the far-but-not-complately-gone were insisting it was actually antifa in an attempt to distance themselves

While that was a shame it was no different than what the left had done repeatedly every time the violence from them was discussed. We had people burning down buildings all over the country and countless democrats kept making conspiracy theory nonsense posts about people mysteriously putting piles of bricks around town in some weird attempt to incite the violence. Its a failing of both sides to make outrageous conspiracy theory explanations to their own violence.

> One, I don’t remember Biden ever endorsing political violence, like the Texas tweet did.

What violence in texas? They misbehaved granted, the people who rode the bus out of town were in the wrong.. but violence implies someone physically hurt another person.. who did that in texas? Are you talking about something else.

Trump supported a non-violent stunt, and he was wrong for supporting it. Not sure where you factor in violence in that though.

> Also, 4 years? Do I remember incorrectly that the mass protests only started after the midterms?

You are incorrect, the first violence from the left started the very day Trump won the election with patches of violence lasting for over 3 days on the first go around.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2016/11/11/anti-trump-protesters-pepper-sprayed-demonstrations-erupt-across-us/93633154/

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo
It was clearly either more than 5 people or claiming all the useful idiots were just taking selfies is wrong. Have you watched the video I linked earlier? The other video where people chase the policeman through the corridors? In either there are clearly more than 5 people and none of them are taking selfies...

My point is this is a coup attempt by his supporters after he consistently did things that made the center and left call him facist for exactly the reason that they expected these actions would lead to a coup attempt. The Texas thing, "stand back and stand by", "good people on both sides" referring to neo-nazis and all that jazz, that was dismissed as alarmist bullshit. _Maybe_ he did not do this on purpose, I even assign significant probability to that being the case, but we all warned you this would happen. And it's so terryfing seeing that not only doing things that can be expected to lead to coups is now normalized (thankfully mostly in the US, but this stuff spreads), but even **coups themselves**, however pathetic their execution. And doing things that have lead to a coup really, _really_ should be past the point when you put someone at the end of a list of people who should be leading a country.

So forcing a car off a road is not violence? It's a safe thing you do only symbolically?

Yeah, I remember the multi-day protests after he won an election, because people were worried this would end badly, ha... Then not that much until Floyd's death, which was just in May last year (so even my initial upper bound of midterms was way off). That's a bit less than a year of total mass protests, even if you counted the whole rest of 2020 as being filled with protests. Was the 4 years hyperbole?

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

Then you werent watching the live feed. the reporters themselves on the live feed, up until the first unarmed protesters was murdered, said "They appear peaceful".. pretty much literally all except for about 5 were and the ones that were not had not assaulted or injured any individuals but had broken windows and were trying to get into the chamber. but yes they were very few indeed.

Now **after** the unarmed protester was murdered by the cop more than 5 people began to act violently for sure. But that was a response from the crowd, and thankfully still somewhat isolated at that point.

> Have you watched the video I linked earlier? The other video where people chase the policeman through the corridors?

Yes I saw the video long before you linked it. It had a police officer running from an unarmed group of people who were chasing him as he repeatedly stopped, tried to beat them with their baton, and then ran again.

As a general rule when you try to beat a unarmed crowd that out numbers you with a stick you will likely get chased. Now while no one in that video at any point assaulted the police officer that we could see one might expect the outcome of that could have potentially been a few punches in good measure for the beating the officer was giving them. However we do not see that actually happen in the video so hard to say if that was the outcome.

> So forcing a car off a road is not violence? It’s a safe thing you do only symbolically?

The car wasnt forced off the road. In the scene you describe the car tried to force the trump supporter off the road by trying to dangerously force merge in between the truck and the bus ahead when there was not enough space between them. The truck then **responded** to this by veering to the left. while the Truck driver was acting inappropriately in engaging in surrounding the bus in the first place that does not justify the other driver trying to drive **him** off the road and potentially kill him. The truck drivers response is likely the only thing that saved his life by veering to the left to ensure he had the momentum.

> but we all warned you this would happen

Sorry but when your burning down buildings, installing dictatorships (literally) across multiple city blocks, burning down cars, and beating people bloody in the streets cries of "oh he might maybe incite some fascism" is going to fall on deaf ears... and a unarmed "coup attempt" by all of 5 people, one of whom get shot dead is hardly a counter argument that you were right.

> Yeah, I remember the multi-day protests after he won an election, because people were worried this would end badly,

A bunch of violence because people were worried it would end bady, 4 years of building fires and violence all because you were worried it would end badly, and it ended with half a dozen nut jobs trying to walk into the chamber unarmed , which was responded to by killing one of them. good thing you did all that violence to warn us of that oh so horrible threat... maybe next time do it without burning down buildings and you **might** come out smelling like roses, but not this time.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo
So an angry mob walking towards people they just chanted about killing should have been... what? They acted relatively calmly as long as they didn't meet opposition, getting inside the building required violence (as in the video I posted earlier, which is different from the policeman chasing video) and later they did not have anything to be violent against, as long as they were able to walk freely. Then that woman was crawling through a barricaded door, with a mob behind her, after chanting for death of the people behind the door. I find it very hard to call shooting her "murder", under the circumstances, and I'm not sure what you expect should have happened there? Should they just have let the mob in and hoped they were actually unarmed and not angry enough to hurt someone? After the aforementionedd mob chanted for death? I mean obviously the security of the building should have been better in the first place, especially after all the publicly posted threats and plans about "storming the capitol", and I hope an investigation helps explain why it wasn't, but at the point where there were few policemen against an angry uncontrolled mob what do you think should have hppened?

As for the policeman my understanding was that he was trying to lead them away from the people being evacuated. And this seems like a prudent course of action, given the circumstances.

You are right about the Texas situation, I only watched the video with the cars surrounded and heard the claims about someone being forced off the road. So this means Trump "just" supported creating a dangerous situation on the road involving his political opponents in this case. That is still a massive problem.

Yeah, good idea, dismiss the argumets because some people vaguely related to them were violent. When Trump won the Republican primary people were worried that him building a cult of personality, promoting fringe political conspiracy theories and ignoring the standard decorum of liberal democracy would lead to anti-democratic changes. This was dismissed as alarmist. When he later kept saying things that seemed to affirm far-right groups people were worried this would lead to emboldening these groups to more decisive action. This was dismissed as alarmist. When he stated that he would accept the resuts of an election if he won, people were worried this meant he wouldn't accept the results if he didn't. This was dismissed as alarmist. When he (predictably) didn't accept the results after losing people were worried this would result in attempts to overthrow the results by force. This was dismissed as alarmist. Now such an attempt happened, and _being worried_ about it is being dismissed as alarmist. "Oh it was just a small coup attempt, nothing to worry about, our democracy is absolutely fine." What is next? "Oh, maybe he took power by force, but it's just one term, after four years he will surely give it up."? I don't think this will happen immediately, especially since he seems to be finally out of power enough, that his more powerful allies are no longer spporting everything he does, but after he wins in 4 years (and he has a significant chance of doing that) I expect things will get worse. And so far my expectations in these regards have been consistently fullfilled.

So was it 4 years of violence about Trump or 3 days of violence about Trump and half a year of violence about police violence? Because as far as I can tell it was the latter. And even if all the people warning about the dangers of Trump's style o politics were partaking in that violence, it wouldn't be enough to dismiss their arguments once they proved correct.

Trump is a danger to democracy. He caused a coup to happen, whether intentionally or not. This should be more than enough to confirm that statement, whether you know enough history to predict in advance that would have been the result of his actions or not.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl @freemo

I am watching this conversation of yours and it was fun (until one disengaged).

From my perspective, you focused on petty details which might or might not matter, that will be decided by the relevant courts. There are, however, a few elements in this story, which were left open.

First of all a disclaimer. I am not well versed in US law (and I do not care that much in the end), but in the countries I know something about, the stuff below would be a relevant legal consideration.

1.Punching a bloke in a pub is one thing. Punching a bloke in a pub while he wears a police uniform is an entirely different matter. You are attacking an institution of a state. The same way, breaking into a private property and even burning it down is a one type of criminal offence. Doing the same to a state's parliament building is an attack on its institution and that by proxy is an attacking on the state itself. Especially if this is one of the constitutional pillars of the state, like in this case. Legal subtleties of how this was exactly in this case will be analyses at courts, I am sure. It will be fun to see. And the conversation will not be about "a handful of selfies" in some random building.

2. attack on a state can easily be classified as terrorism or even as treason (because there is no legal term like `coup`). A citizen owes allegiance to the country and the state (it seems this is the case in the US on state as well as on the federal level). An attempt to change either by means which are _out_ of the lawful paths defined within the legal system of the country (e.g., elections, decision of parliament, government executive decision, etc.) is therefore quite a problem. Now, I looked up the legal definition of treason in the US and it just might be that these acts finally won't be classified as such, but it's absolutely not that clear cut at this point.

What I trying to say is that there is a spectrum of "badness" between "regular" criminal offence (like burning down a private property in a random city) and a crime like "treason". The acts of some of these people will be in the end probably classified closer to the "treason" point than to the regular crime point on the spectrum (which might be the case of for the mentioned BLM riots).

If the prosecution will find good evidence of intent (likely, cf all the social media chatter before the act), proper planning (we do not know yet), organisation (likely as according to news reports several organised groups were recruited and present) and evidence of readiness to use violence and possibly arms (we don't know yet), this can end up very entertaining. And the fact that they did such a clumsy and poor job, does not change the nature of the attempted act.

I am curiously waiting and watching from a side. :popcorn:

@2ck @antigravman

@FailForward

What is or is not illegal isnt really the issue be debated here. Pretty sure both me and tim would agree that from a legal standpoint the group acted illegally.. Terrorism is so loosely defined I would also agree that from a legal standpoint they very well could probably make a terrorism charge stick, but then again people have been charged with terrorism for some pretty absurd reasons, so that isnt much of a measuring stick IMO.

You are using the law as if it is a defacto measure of good and bad. I reject that as an accurate measure of morality. The only place law has any relevance is if we are discussing what the consequences for these people are likely to be, but that is wholly seperate from if these people are good people are not. Or how bad their actions are.

It also depends on if a police officer can or will even find many of them and simply how much is invested in doing so, which ultimately biases any results.

In my eyes burning a building down with people in it, as the liberals did in my city during their riots is clearly and substantially far more immoral than breaking the window of a capitol building, walking inside, and taking a selfie. Yet the people who through the molotov cocktail into the buildings, despite some even being caught on tap, are likely not be persecuted because no time or money was spent on doing so. Yet those who broke the windows of the capitol building will, in all liklihood, have every resource of the FBI thrust upon them, likely being arrested and tried. Yet to me it is quite clear they are not even approaching the level of immorality as burning a building with people in it...

@timorl @2ck @antigravman

@freemo Thanks for your response. We do not disagree in principle. Just a few remarks:

> You are using the law as if it is a defacto measure of good and bad. I reject that as an accurate measure of morality.

[Morality](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality) is a very loose concept in that it is very subjective and local to subculture you adhere to. Since these acts do not touch most of the stuff "universally considered bad", we do not deal here with [universal moral principles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_universalism), but strictly with [normative ones](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality#Descriptive_and_normative). And that societies encode as their law.

So while each of us might call those people "good" or "bad", that does not matter. The society, through a contract between its members (which we conveniently call constitutions) decided that those acts are bad. That's it. It sounds like a technicality from an individual perspective, from the perspective of the society which defends its survival, it's a major issue.

> In my eyes burning a building down with people in it, as the liberals did in my city during their riots is clearly and substantially far more immoral than breaking the window of a capitol building, walking inside, and taking a selfie.

And you have all right to think that. Yet, what matters in this case is what the society as a whole "thinks".

On the other hand, the healthy dose of subjective (even if inconsequential) judgment makes for a far more entertaining conversation than a litigation.

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward

You entire response is pretty much an exercise in **Hume's razor** / **Hume's guillotine** and I reject it on those terms alone.

You are arguing that what **ought** to be doesnt matter and all that matters is what **is**, which is contrary to the very premise of the discussion, which is a discussion about what me and tim feel **ought** to be the interpretation. Not to mention even a bit Nihilistic as it can be applied to any discussion where one argues an improvement of society by proposing a particularly moral outlook which is not currently the predominating one, creating perpetual stagnation as a principle.

> Morality is a very loose concept in that it is very subjective and local to subculture you adhere to.

While the consensus on morality does differ greatly by person and location, and culture, that does not necessarily mean it is subjective, and I would argue it is not.

A great many people believe all sorts of things that is dictated by the culture they are in, for example some people believe the earth is just a few thousand years old, some even believe it is flat. The opinions you get on these ideas are highly dependent on the person you ask and the culture you are in. None of that, however, implies that the "the earth is round" is not an objective truth. Objective facts do not require consensus to be objective.

With that said when people do agree on an objective fact, some saying the earth is round, the others saying it is flat, then what you have is peoples opinions as to which of these two facts are true.

Morality is no different, I would argue there is an objective, factual, sense of what is or is not moral, it just so happens peoples opinions about what that fact happens to be differs, and there is no consensus as to which of the many proposed objective moralities is the truth, and factual one.

In my opinion of the fact, however, it is quite easily objectively defined, good and bad is measures by the overall quantity of happiness an action elicits as a result of that action over time.

> Since these acts do not touch most of the stuff “universally considered bad”, we do not deal here with universal moral principles, but strictly with normative ones.

that seems like an unjustified leap to me. Because an act does not touch on something considered bad, universal or otherwise that does not mean we have to go an extra step to somehow figure out some reasoning why its really bad afterall. That's just confirmation bias eagerly trying to find a reason to call it bad "well if this doesn't determine its bad, lets try another technique that will determine it is bad"

In fact I'd argue much the opposite, if our usual sense of morality, on analysis of a situation, shows us there is nothing about it that would typically be considered bad, then we can stop there and conclude that is in fact, **not** bad.

> So while each of us might call those people “good” or “bad”, that does not matter.

Of course it matters, particularly in this context. The point of the discussion is to decide if we feel Biden has an effect which is more "bad" or Trump. Answering that question requires us to debate if we feel they are good or bad. Falling back to laws does **not** answer that question for us.

That would be like saying "Slavery was good because people disagree whether slavery is bad or not (re: nazis) and therefore we must fall back to laws. The law said slavery was legal, ergo slavery was good"... the logic is flawed the moment this argument invoked law as an arbiter of good and bad.

> The society, through a contract between its members (which we conveniently call constitutions) decided that those acts are bad.

No we didn't, we agreed those acts should be punished, we agreed those acts should result in consequences like being put in jail. At no point did anyone assert that anyone was "bad" or "good", the law only dictates the consequences, nothing more.

> And you have all right to think that. Yet, what matters in this case is what the society as a whole “thinks”.

"Matters" here is an awfully loaded term, and again not true. Even if we can determine that a majority happen to agree, thats rather irrelevant as we are arguing what **ought** to be, not what **is**. Again if we were discussing if slavery was right it would be silly for anyone to argue it was morally justified because the majority believed it to be so.

@timorl @2ck

@freemo Clearly I am bound to lose this 😀 . Still... We might learn something.

> While the consensus on morality does differ greatly by person and location, and culture, that does not necessarily mean it is subjective, and I would argue it is not.

And I partly agree. I also believe there is a handful of principles humans deem universally moral/proper. But I argue that the act of entering a parliament at doing whatever inside is not one which can be judged using those universal moral principles.

Putting that aside, the question whether there is such a thing as universal moral principles is not a thing humanity as a whole did satisfactorily solve, at least as far as I know.

> A great many people believe all sorts of things that is dictated by the culture they are in, for example some people believe the earth is just a few thousand years old, some even believe it is flat.

Morality is about deciding whether some human act, thought, or principle is deemed good (proper) or bad (improper). And a pure observation of humankind tells us that we quite differ in these judgements. Whether Earth is flat or not is not a question of "good" or "bad" (proper vs. improper) behaviour but of what we can satisfactorily prove to be the case or not in physical reality.

> Morality is no different, I would argue there is an objective, factual, sense of what is or is not moral, it just so happens peoples opinions about what that fact happens to be differs, and there is no consensus as to which of the many proposed objective moralities is the truth, and factual one.

Maybe I am missing something, but you are saying that 1) judgement whether something is "proper"/"improper" behaviour is actually objectively decidable; and at the same time 2) except for a relatively narrow set of quite extreme behaviours (murder and such), humans (at least so far) did not find a way how to agree on how to objectively decide it. Well, this would work in a limited religious context, but with me, that's not what you have.

> Of course it matters, particularly in this context. The point of the discussion is to decide if we feel Biden has an effect which is more “bad” or Trump.

Technically, Biden had very little "effect" on history so far (if we omit his previous political acts) as his window of opportunity to have any effect started just a few hours ago. We'll see.

> That would be like saying “Slavery was good because people disagree whether slavery is bad or not (re: nazis) and therefore we must fall back to laws. The law said slavery was legal, ergo slavery was good”… the logic is flawed the moment this argument invoked law as an arbiter of good and bad.

You seem to be forgetting that a societal consensus of what is proper and what is not changes. I'd probably have a good time watching you explaining how slavery is a bad thing to a Roman senator some 2000 years ago, or to a Greek before that. And reversely, most people living in Europe for the last 2000 years would be appalled by how families are formed and dissolved today and what moral principles we apply to e.g., divorce. What is deemed proper today, might be deemed improper 100 years from now. There is an element of universality to these things (protection of life, etc.), but most of it is a social agreement existing in a given time and space.

> No we didn’t, we agreed those acts should be punished, we agreed those acts should result in consequences like being put in jail. At no point did anyone assert that anyone was “bad” or “good”, the law only dictates the consequences, nothing more.

From my pov, exactly because we cannot decide what is good or bad explicitly. But we can agree that certain behaviours are deemed improper and thus punishable at a given (our) society and history point (now).

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward

> Clearly I am bound to lose this . Still… We might learn something.

I suspect this is a joke, or at least in jest (a half joke). But just to be clear I never consider these sorts of discussions about winning, even if I might feel my stance is unlikely to change without some strong arguments, it is still about exploring my view and yours and seeing what each of us can take away from that, if anything.

> I also believe there is a handful of principles humans deem universally moral/proper

I think this wording is problematic, and at a minimum it doesn't really represent what I was trying to say with my last rebuttal. There is almost nothing, no opinions on anything (and that includes opinions of facts) that are universal when it comes to humans. We cant even agree the earth is round in today's day and age with all the evidence we have. Sure we like to think all the humans agree o it and that flat earthers are some extreme minority. But the truth is people with very different opinions from each other tend to drive each other away, or just cause people to suppress those views. They are far more common than you think. I am shocked how often I come across them or the people ive seen on my timeline for years who turn out to be one but just never said so (due to the ridicule they get)

If we cant even agree on the earth being round there is very little, I'd go so far as to say nothing at all, that is universal about human opinions.

In fact it is quite possible that whatever the true objective morality is, it may very well not be particularly popular at all, let alone universal. But it doesnt make it any less true.

> Putting that aside, the question whether there is such a thing as universal moral principles is not a thing humanity as a whole did satisfactorily solve

I solved it :) The only thing I havent been able to do is to convince you and everyone else of that. Of course I half joke, it is certainly true that should there be a objective moral truth it is clear that we have not reached a majority consensus on what that is, so on this we agree.

> Morality is about deciding whether some human act, thought, or principle is deemed good (proper) or bad (improper). And a pure observation of humankind tells us that we quite differ in these judgements.

Again I agree on this point (though I would not use proper and improper to mean the same as good and bad, but thats not core to your point).

> Whether Earth is flat or not is not a question of “good” or “bad” (proper vs. improper) behaviour but of what we can satisfactorily prove to be the case or not in physical reality.

This example was not given to be an example of morality, it was given to show that even when we have more than enough evidence to accurately determine objective truth, you will still find humans are in disagreement about it in large numbers.

As for the earth being round being provable (falsifiable being the technical term), I think we both agree that it is. But by the same token go back just a few hundred years and it was no longer provable with the technology of the time. Yes you hear of early scholars measuring its circumference, and the techniques they provided to do that certainly was evidence in favor of the earth being round. But to understand the time period there were also other experiments that even today seem perfectly reasonable that suggested the earth was flat. It wasnt until our scientific understanding advanced far enough to understand why those experiments were incorrect that we could truely prove the earth was round. so while even though, at the time, it was not able to be proven it was none the less falsifiable, objective, and provable at a later date. More importantly though the scholars at the time with limited evidence were able to argue to that the earth was round, use evidence to do so, and while they couldnt prove it or be in the majority they were right and their perspective.

The point here is that the fact that no one could agree that the world was round, lack of universality, didnt make a lick of difference on either 1) the importance of aruring for the truth even when they were a minority voice or 2) the actual fact that they were right.

> Maybe I am missing something, but you are saying that 1) judgement whether something is “proper”/”improper” behaviour is actually objectively decidable; and at the same time

proper and improper was your wording, wording I rejected early on and already provided an objective definition of good and bad.. good and bad is quantified by the overall happiness over time that an action creates in the world. In other words, if you literally scanned everyone's brain and looked at how happy everyone feels, and average that out over time then you are measuring the amount of good in the world, and since it is measurable and tangible it is an objective measurement.

> 2) except for a relatively narrow set of quite extreme behaviours (murder and such), humans (at least so far) did not find a way how to agree on how to objectively decide it.

this point would seem apparent and obvious. People obviously disagree on what is good and bad, just as people disagree on other objective truths like if the earth is round.. but people disagreeing really has no bearing on the purpose of this discussion (exploring what **ought** to be, not what is).

> Technically, Biden had very little “effect” on history so far (if we omit his previous political acts) as his window of opportunity to have any effect started just a few hours ago. We’ll see.

Same can be said of Trump, if we omit his previous political acts to date Trump has had very little effect on humanity in the past day as well.. not sure why that is relevant, obviously we can and **should** consider both their past political pasts and I see no reason to limit the scope to the last 24 hours as both have had significant time to exercise political power in their respective histories.

> You seem to be forgetting that a societal consensus of what is proper and what is not changes.

I am not forgetting it, I never said or invoked anything about what is proper, you did, and as far as the definitions I already laid out when I first used the terminology of good and bad then what is proper has no relevance or relation to anything I said, as that is not what I said those words meant.

> I’d probably have a good time watching you explaining how slavery is a bad thing to a Roman senator some 2000 years ago, or to a Greek before that.

I would likely have a tremendously difficult time explaining it to them, and in fact most people would likely disagree with me. Though how many people agree with me has absolutely no bearing on the fact that I would, all the same, be correct. Just as someone arguing the earth was round to a roman senator, even if they wouldnt agree, would be all the same correct.

> What is deemed proper today, might be deemed improper 100 years from now.

Of course, but what is "proper" has no relevance to what is "good" or "moral" so that is a moot point.

> There is an element of universality to these things (protection of life, etc.), but most of it is a social agreement existing in a given time and space.

If by universiality you mean "lots of people agree" then no, not really. There are tons of people who do not feel protection of all life is a is a good thing... If by universiality you mean what is objectively good regardless of how many people recognize it or not, then I'd say yes, all things that are good or bad are objectively so (see my earlier objective measure of it).

> From my pov, exactly because we cannot decide what is good or bad explicitly.

We can, I already did decide, and I gave an objective measure for it. If you or anyone else chooses not to agree with me, that's fine, from my perspective that just means you are unable to recognize a clear and obvious (to me) objective truth about morality.. but from my POV the objective more truth is all the same there regardless of you or anyone else not being able to agree on it.

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward
(Removing Dr. F to respect his wishes, I think you should too, he clearly stated he was tired of the conversation.)

I think we actually both focused on the important question whether this was a coup, which I think you quite well explained why it would be bad. But the original question was whether Trump is enough of a danger to democracy to never be worthy of support above any other politican that is not such a danger. And to argue that you _also_ have to argue that his actions lead to the coup -- I believe the fact that people predicted in advance (always quite a feat) that these actions were likely to lead to a coup is a very good argument for the latter statement.

And if it wasn't a coup attempt (or however you want to call it, but attempt to change power undemocratically), then the whole point would be moot. So focusing on that question in the discussion is reasonable.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl @FailForward @2ck Remove me as well. It's clear we're never going to agree and it's pointless trying to debate with those who use propagandized talking points and ignore reason.

@timorl @freemo @2ck @antigravman

So we had this conversation couple of days back, and we now slowly see details coming out. Interesting...

One thing which popped out was this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/live/2021/feb/11/donald-trump-impeachment-senate-trial-live-news-updates?page=with:block-60258d1c8f08b555964bbee9#block-60258d1c8f08b555964bbee9

Originally I made that speculation about possibility of treason not knowing yet details. Now it seems, the allegation in relation this group called "Oath Keepers" and possibly other similar semi-orgs might actually be somewhat relevant.

Will be interesting to see how it plays out...

@FailForward
The violent militia that didn't use any weapons or attempt the coup?
Anyone who honestly believes there was an attempted coup is too far gone in the head to deserve a conversation.
"Violent insurrection". Anyone who calls it that is a moron and their opinion instantly invalidated. The only people who died due to violence were protesters, yet the protesters are being demonized.

@timorl @sillystring @freemo @SmilingTexan
Here's your "coup attempt"
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/1350994934158024709/pu/vid/426x234/lSJAHaO7h_Br723T.mp4

@antigravman

Did you want to post this video? https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/video-shows-police-officer-dragged-down-steps-of-us-capitol-beaten-by-rioters/vi-BB1cFhcH

The one you posted is after it was already clear they failed.

@sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo @SmilingTexan

@timorl @antigravman @sillystring@infosec.exchange @freemo - Did I really need to be tagged in this thread? My survey was just a simple question about who was planning on watching the inauguration.

I probably won't watch, and wanted to see if anyone else planned to. It's not out of respect/dis-respect to anyone, I simply don't typically watch because I'm usually at work (and will be this time as well) and don't really like all the pomp that goes along with it. I will probably catch the highlights (who can avoid them?), but that's about it.

FYI, as for Trump the Business man - he has made a lot of money, you don't do that if you're really bad at business. So, he must've done *something* right. ;-)

@SmilingTexan Terribly sorry for polluting your feed, I responded to a response to you and did not edit the automatically filled mentions.

I won't be watching, I'm definitely not interested in such celebrations. Although if something happens again I'll probably see some clips...

@timorl

@sillystring @freemo
>Video
Looks like a "mostly peaceful protest to me".
>Failed coup
If you think that was a coup attempt you're so far gone in the political propaganda that further discussion is meaningless.
Say hello to the Q anon folks in the crazy house when you're admitted for TDS.