@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 @2ck

> So an angry mob walking towards people they just chanted about killing should have been… what?

Now you are just making stuff up. At **no** point did the entire group start chanting to kill anyone.. jesus christ man at least stick to actual facts.

> getting inside the building required violence (as in the video I posted earlier, which is different from the policeman chasing video)

I saw a bunch of people pushing forward to get into the building, some people (includding the protestors) did get pinned while the crowd pushed through (as often tends to happen). But where do you see in the **initial** efforts to get into the building anyone in that crowd actually physically punching or hurting anyone. The closest I saw to anything that came close to that was an explicitly non-violent (though inappropriate) use of some pepper spray, which mind you was already being used against them along with being beaten by sticks.

In fact in the **full** video of them pushing into the building you already see the **first** violence is **not** from the protestors at all but from the cops. You can clearly see in the full length video that **before** any pepper spray was used (the only near-violent act) the policy were reaching over the barricade and beating the crowd repeatedly and as hard as they could with their baton. Not **that** is actual physical violence, much more so than **responding** to that with pepper spray. Beyond that the only "violence" your talking about is the people pushing through when trying to be blocked.

> 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”,

An unarmed woman who gave no indication of being armed breaking a window getting shot to death is murder, period... Unless someone has a weapon, especially when they have not thrown a single punch, shooting them dead is murder, there is no exception to this, period.

> 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?

So what should happen when there is a small number of police up against an unarmed group of people trying to walk into a building they dont have a legal right to walk into. That should be simple, call the military, which literally is minutes away and could have been there in no time flat, and stand back and do nothing until they got violent or a weapon was seen. Since they acted illegally but non-violently the police had no right or cause to act violently in return and did not have the physical man power to non-violently handle the situation.

> 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.

Yes it is a problem that Trump supported their behavior that day. But it was not a show of support for violence, and does not come close to the issues and violence from the left. I have never claimed Trump wasn't a problem or that he doesnt make really shitty choices. Only that he isnt as bad as the other side. that has more to do with just how horrifically bad the other side is and less to do with any merrit Trump himself has.

> Yeah, good idea, dismiss the argumets because some people vaguely related to them were violent.

And again more hyperbole and even a little bit of strawman. No I dont dismiss your arguments, not wholly, though they are excessively exaggerated. What I have said and continue to say is that while there are many points of concern for Trump and a good portion of the ones you bring up, once you wash off the mountain of hyperbole on top of them, even have a grain ot validity to them. but they pale in comparison to the repeated and continued violence and rights violations coming from and promoted by the left and even by Biden himself.

> promoting fringe political conspiracy theories and ignoring the standard decorum of liberal democracy would lead to anti-democratic changes. This was dismissed as alarmist.

What standard decorum, there is nothing remotely respectful of the tactics the liberal democrats have pulled, not even close. Nor is anything trump said anti-democratic, it is conspiracy theorist, and often moronic, but not anti democratic. He thinks the vote was cheated from him. I personally dont (though the last 24 hours seeing at least one state try to pass a law, by democrats, to hide election security auditing from the public is a scary red flag and if i see this pattern continue i might actually agree with him).

> 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.

And this has been shown and proven exactly to be alarmist. He stated early on when questioned if he would leave if he lost, he said very straight forward, yes he would. He has at no point refused to leave and only exercised democratic avenues to challenge the election. Now that the day has come to leave, he has left without a peep... So yes this has quite literally been proven to be 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.

Again, it was alarmist and demonstrated as such. There was no legitimate or sizable number of people who attempted to overthrow anything. A few people rushed into buildings they weren't allowed in and walked around peacefully taking selfies, a window was broken and that was about it, right up until a cop decided to murder one of the unarmed people at which point the crowd got rowdy but even then it was relatively minimal compared to the size of the crowd.

If this statement had even a glimmer of truth to it, if even 5% of that crowd, hell 1% of that crowd had any intention of actually overthrowing anywhing there would be people **other** than protestors dead and they would have gotten a lot farther. Instead you had half a dozen nut jobs and a bunch of people just being peaceful and taking selfies when not being actively beaten or attacked.

while none of what they did is acceptable calling it a legitimate attempt to overthrow the government is absurdism at its finest.

> 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?

Yea half a dozen people having delusion of grandeur thinking they can overthrow a government, none of who were armed, and of that half a dozen who were willing to be violent limited their violence to broken windows at worst and have yet to see even a single video of them physically being violent against a person (punching them kicking them etc). the closest you have is some guy being pushed up against a wall and getting squished by the passing crowd as there were too many people...

I mean hell the level of exageration here as you try to turn a shitty incident with very minimal violence and some tress passing into some rampaging mob out for blood is really hard to take seriously on any level and invalidates any chance you have of coming across objective enough to actually make an argument in any of this.

**I mean hell you already admitted that one video you cited as your strongest piece of evidence of violence, the texas video is one you didnt even watch and after several back and forths finally admitted didnt even depict violence at all**

@antigravman

@freemo

My bad, you are right, in this video https://youtu.be/ba0UR7gITrU they probably just finished their laundry and a politely asking for their pants to be hanged. Definitely not calling for the death of a public official who just refused a request of his superior to throw out the results of an election, and who is present in the building they are attempting to enter.

You might have missed the flagpole being swung at the policeman on the ground.

And you appear to be unaware of one of the basic tenets of law enforcement philosophy on which the concept of police in most democratic countries is built. Police are given a state-sanctioned monopoly (or at least permission, depending on the laws regarding defending one's property and such) on using violence to enforce laws and protect people. That includes stopping burglaries from happening, or more broadly stopping people from entering buildings they are not allowed to enter. This is especially clear when the people attempting to enter are an angry mob that intends to interrupt part of the democratic process. There are obviously considerations concerning how much violence exactly they are allowed to use, and in general what the proportional response should be. And preferably they should be sufficiently prepared to minimize the violence, but that was not the case here.

So let's assume the woman was unarmed, and the police were fully convinced of that fact (not sure why they would be, since this is a strange assumption to make about someone crawling through a barricade, but alright). What were they supposed to do? Wait for all the people to enter, fill the room, one of them to grab a flagpole and start hitting one of the people originally inside? Or maybe watch them build a noose, politely ask for somene to step on a chair, put the noose on their neck, and then, as soon as the chair was kicked from under them spring to action? These scenarios are obviously ridiculous, but in none of them violence happens earlier than when it's already too late. Before that there is only implied threat of violence, which is also clearly present when climbing through a barricade. And to be perfectly clear, I would obviously have preferred that they did not shoot her, her death is a tragedy. But I also don't know enough about what else the policeman could have done in the situation to stop it from deteriorating into something even more terrible – if you know I would be grateful if you shared.

They did call for support, eventually, and processing the request through bureaucracy took way too long. This obviously needs to be investigated, including the fact that the national guard was not pre-approved to defend the buildings despite clear signals of what was coming, and it appears that it will be. In the meantime, the policemen still had the duty to protect the people and democratic process inside. As for details as to why the use of violence was justified in this situation see two paragraphs above.

Hyperbole is claiming something was happening for 4 years, when it was actually happening for at most half a year, to strengthen the argument. I am stating facts and pretty straightforward interpretations of them. You can disagree with either, but calling it hyperbole is just wrong.

So when did Biden endorse violence? I tried looking for "Biden supports CHAZ", "Biden endorses violence" or things like that, but the only results that came up were him answering a question about *condemning* violence affirmatively. But maybe I just missed it?

Things like accepting the election results when they are not favourable, he hinted at only acepting results when he wins, multiple times. Also talking about Lugenpresse, when the media are reporting unfavourable facts about him. There are probably other things, I can try making a comprehensive list on request, but it kind of doesn't matter for the argument – liberals and the left warned about mutiple things he was doing ending up in anti-democratic consequences, and it could have been debatable at the time, but now **after the consequences happened** it is clear. In this case the left and liberals clearly had a better model of reality than you.

He didn't accept the result of the election, he never admitted he lost. He admitted that he will be leaving the White House and a new administration will be sworn in, but he still has not accepted the results explicitly, he did not say "Biden won" or "I lost" or anything else to that effect. He only accepted that he does not have enough support to stop the change in power, and even that was after the coup attempt. At best this may be seen as a win for US democratic institutions, which were strong enough to force out a president who refuses to accept election results. Also note that even if he actually admitted he lost _after_ the coup attempt, this would not invalidate the reasoning that lead people to believe that him refusing to accept the loss could lead to a coup attempt. Oh, and this distinction between accepting the results and accepting the change in power is important, because now his supporters will still believe the election was "stolen" from them, which will increase anti-democratic sentiment and lead to even worse things happening next time. Yes, this is another one of these predictions that so far seem to be scarily coming true.

(Side note, please don't get offended: you are you not trolling me and actually believe the stuff you are writing, right? I normally wouldn''t ask, because in general you always gave me the impression of someone who treats these things seriously, but the "left without a peep" phrase was so ridiculously outlandish that the surreal feeling it gave me made me consider the possibility. Sorry if it was just a turn of phrase, and you did not notice how strange it sounded in the context of an enormous rally against the election results.)

It was a coup attempt, pathetic and clearly unsuccessful, but an attempt nonetheless. If there were more and better organized people the coup could have been successful – at least as far as getting to the people certifying the election, likely the US democratic institutions would be strong enough to stop Trump from actually assuming power. It came scarily close to a successsful attempt, considering how easily these people got inside and how close they were to apprehending congresspeople and the vice-president. If you wait for a sucessful attempt to call it a coup attempt, then you likely won't be able to call it that for long...

It's not the strongest piece, that is the fact that all this is happening after warnings from the center and the left (and also, to be fair, parts of the right before Trump won the primary and they fell in line) that it would happen due to what Trump was doing. And creating dangerous, life-threteaning situations might not be literal violence, but it is so close that I'm not sure it matters. If it continues, there might even be a coup attempt by supporters who see this as permission to pursue undemocratic ways of obtaining power... Oh wait.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

I'm sorry but at this point I have to exit the conversation, it is feeling far too much like **arguing with a conspiracy theorist** than someone with any sort of practical outlook. Now **I do respect that you will debate respectfully**, so do **feel free to disagree or interject in the future**, but hopefully next time around it wont be on this level of **absurdity**, **denial of facts**, **lies**, and **exaggerations**.

Just to be clear on why im calling this conversation quits I want to highlight the main points in your discussion that have led me to that conclusion.

## Completely changing fundamental facts

This one is the most obvious and the exchange we **just** had in the last message shows that

You said:

> So an angry mob walking towards people they just chanted about killing

and then your presented evidence in the very next post here:

> My bad, you are right, in this video https://youtu.be/ba0UR7gITrU they probably just finished their laundry and a politely asking for their pants to be hanged.

So now in the most absurd fashion possible you went from a video of people chanting "We want Pence" to that being equivalent to "chanting about killing"

On top of that your claim was they chanted about killing the cops (people) they were walking towards to get int he building. Pence wasnt seen by the crowd at any point and the video not just had nothing to do about chanting death threats, but it wasnt even remotely aimed at the cops they were walking past

## You didnt even watch your own video evidence

At least twice now, at least that you have proven, you have made exaggerated and absurdist claims and repeatedly claimed videos to back it up. In ever case the video didnt have the slightest relationship to the claims you made and in one case you outright admitted to not even watching the video you had claimed to be the biggest piece of evidence you had.

See the following quotes from you:

> 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.

> Biden ever endorsing political violence, like the Texas tweet did.

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

> I only watched the video with the cars surrounded and heard the claims about someone being forced off the road.

You literally strung out that example as some defacto impossible deny example across four different messages and literally never even watched it, and just assumed what you "heard" was true, putting no effort in of your own to verify truth. Which leads me to the next point...

## You are just parroting liberals

This point is evident from the last, and your general pattern. You have sworn up and down atrocities, which almost certainly is little more than a parroting of what you heard on mainstream media or from liberal friends, from sound bites and 5 second clips.

Then when actually pressed with evidence it is clear you never even watched the videos you held as evidence. Clearly im just arguing with dogma here and a parroting of what you heard, and despite having the weakest evidence those arguments are also the hardest to argue against and change anyone's mind.

## Exaggeration to the point of dishonesty

We covered this already:

* "We want pence" turned into "chanting for murdering the people (cops) they are approaching"

* An anti-trump protestor trying to ram a trump protestor off the road turned into a trump protesters being violent

* Claims of violence from a group where every video you showed to prove it shows no violence from the group towards people of any kind and multiple acts of violence against the group including being beaten with sticks and in one case an unarmed protesters/rioter being shot and killed.

* Implying it was organized, when there was no organized effort for any of it. You had a handful of wackados online who made a few absurd and inappropriate threats but pretty much 0 coordinated effort outside of that.

* Calling a bunch of people taking selfies in the capitol who are unarmed and nonviolent with only about half a dozen actually being destructive or threatening, and even they were completely non-violent against individuals, a "coup".

Honestly I just cant engage in a conversation that has this sort of level of intellectual dishonesty. It isnt a good use of my time.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo

"We want Pence"? Did you watch the video on your phone, or something with terrible sound quality? I re-watched it twice and it's not even that unclear, especially as the person recording enters the doorway -- they are **very clearly** chanting "Hang Mike Pence". I suggest you rewatch it in better sound quality or something?

Well done though, you made me doubt reality, I re-watched it a third time just to be sure. Still very clearly "Hang Mike Pence".

(Once again this made me wonder if you are trolling, because if you are, you are being amazingly successful.)

As far as I understand the policemen were not the only people behind that door (and why would they be, no sense in guarding an empty chamber). So I was referring to the congresspeople who were still there. Unless you have reason to believe the mob that chanted "Hang Mike Pence" would be more forgiving of members of congress, especially the better known D ones, then my description is accurate.

I was clearly wrong about the original claim concerning the Texas video -- I originally watched the surround video, though to myself this was terryfying and was appaled when Trump tweeted his support. Somewhere along the way I fell for the echo chamber claim that they were also pushing the bus off the road, and that was clearly a mistake I have to be careful about in the future. But I already learned from that, I looked for the "Hang Mike Pence" video and watched it _very carefully_ to make sure I'm not falling for some propaganda. And this time, I wasn't. So yeah, I'm trying not to repeat my mistakes, even being a bit paranoid about that -- that's why I rewatched it more times, as mentioned above.

This should also cover the "parroting" argument. I often try to double check accusations against Trump, especially the more outlandish ones, and they are correct a surprizing proportion of times. But since he was doing _so many_ terrible things it would be a full-time job to double-check all of them. Now I'll at least double-check the ones I use as arguments, sorry for being late about that.

* The first point is incorrect, they were chanting "Hang Mike Pence" and I was referring to the congresspeople in the room as being threatened.
* Here I was wrong about important details, but Trump sending signals that putting his political enemies in danger is not only acceptable, but laudable is still enough to support my argument.
* The policeman being hit with a flag-pole (or at least some long object; yes you made me rewatch that video too) is a counterexample to these people not being violent. Most of the non-violent moments are when they are not meeting any opposition, as I mentioned previously.
* They made absurd threats, right, no way they could ever get inside a government building while an election certification is happening, how silly of me for thinking there was any danger. To be more serious, clearly a significant portion of the people there was just riled up and without a plan, although very useful in helping everyone get inside. And there were clearly people in that group that had more dangerous plans, most obviously the zip handcuff guy, but I also don't know about all the people chanting "Hang Mike Pence".
* Yeah, the previous point covers this.

I hope I convinced you that I am trying quite hard to be very honest and precise. So far I have been clearly wrong in one point during this conversation, surely that shouldn't be enough to dismiss everything I am saying. Although, obviously, you are welcome to disengage from the discussion, I don't want to be an unnecessary drain on your mental resources. I only want for more people (including me! so thanks for correcting my impression about the Texas video!) to be less wrong about the world, that's why I partake in such conversations.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

1) I told you I was done with the conversation, please respect that.

> We want Pence”? Did you watch the video on your phone, or something with terrible sound quality? I re-watched it twice and it’s not even that unclear, especially as the person recording enters the doorway – they are very clearly chanting “Hang Mike Pence”. I suggest you rewatch it in better sound quality or something?

Even the official CNN transcript has it written as "We want pence", and CNN is liberal leaning and in general misrepresented a lot of clips out of context, so thats pretty damning that they recorded it as such.

From the transcript:

CROWD: We want Pence. We want Pence. We want Pence. We want Pence. We want Pence. We want Pence. We want Pence.

http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2101/11/ebo.01.html

> Well done though, you made me doubt reality, I re-watched it a third time just to be sure. Still very clearly “Hang Mike Pence”.
>
> (Once again this made me wonder if you are trolling, because if you are, you are being amazingly successful.)

Apparently me, CNN, and tons of other people who all watched the clip are all trolling you then. More conspiracy thoery talk.

After this lead in I'm not even going to read the rest of your post.

**I asked you politely to drop it, please do.** I do not find the conversation productive or your current mentality remotely objective enough to be a useful conversation.

PS: I just watched the video again just to make sure, cant imagine how you hear "Hang mike pence" on that video, seems clearly "We want pence", just as CNN transcribed it.

@2ck @antigravman

@freemo

Sorry about bringing this up again then, but really, watch the video. No idea why the transcript says that, maybe it's some shitty automation, but the video is extremely clear. And from now on I will not write any more about this to you, unless you explicitly ask me to. Sorry again.

@2ck @antigravman

@timorl

Apology accepted, no worries, as I said we are generally respectful in both directions and its appreciated.

As i said in my last comment at the very end (see the PS).. aside from the transcript i did watch it again before typing that comment and it still sounds like "we want pence" to me. Though there are parts where its a bit garbled, but even when I try to hear or pick out "hang mike pence" from that my brain can not hear anything remotely close to that.

@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

@freemo
I feel the ground beneath my feet shifting. If we can't agree even on the basic vocabulary of questions and answers, no wonder that it remains very difficult to question others to learn oneself.

But okay, let's play a game. So far people spend immeasurable time and effort to define what is morality and the outcome was a relatively short [Wikipedia page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality) exactly using the words proper and improper as probably the most neutral terms out there. So if you deem that vague definition not good enough, I invite you to provide a definition of what is objectively moral or immoral to you so that we can at least discuss, if not persuade each other. You claim you know what the objective morality is, so it should not be too difficult to work it out for me.

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward

Yes, I've stated what that is twice.. Good is that which produces net happiness over time, bad is what produces net sadness over time.. Morality is acting on good things and avoiding bad.

Ergo if I can look back on an act and see it produced happiness in the world, then I can claim it is objectively moral.

To go back to the example of explaining slavery to a roman commander, I can with certainty assert that when slavery is legal the net sadness this produces is significant but due to the extreme suffering of the slaves, as well as the callousness for life and harshness it promotes in its master (which pours out and effects other people and generally promotes a world where there is little value for life even outside of slavery and thus much sadness is produced).

Therefore the objective measure I have of good and bad would show that even though in roman times the vast majority might disagree with me on the fact that slavery is immoral, the objective measure of morality I defined shows otherwise.

@timorl @2ck

@freemo Thanks. That is good enough definition we can explore.

You seem to be a physicist, so this might speak to you:

> “Give me a place to stand, and a lever long enough, and I will move the world. ”
> ― [Archimedes](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/16830-give-me-a-place-to-stand-and-a-lever-long)

My vector of challenge is that you do not have that fulcrum, that fixed point you need so that you can use happiness as an objective measure. I claim that it is a relative measure (this is more happiness than that), not an absolute one.

Now, I am only an amateur philosopher, but one thing I know from experience: happiness is deeply subjective.

Your happiness is easily my unhappiness: c.f., any social situation which boils down to a zero-sum game. Winning a war is happiness for some (often more than the number of unhappy ones!), deep unhappiness for other.

Two "happinesses" often sum up to a single big unhappiness: just look at almost any divorce. They started with attempts to make each other happy, only to deeply harm each other in the end and on top of that their innocent children too.

Happiness is ephemeral and changing: small doses of hedonistic happiness every day can easily make for a single unhappy life (look at many people who sooth their sorrows and pain with food, become obese, suffer in result and become deeply unhappy. Or many people with a burn-out: attempts to make themselves happy and satisfied turned into one big lump of unhappiness later on).

And so on, and so on. How do we measure that happiness?

Just to finish it off, take [Epictetus](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epictetus) who was one of the biggest stoic philosophers. Yet he was a slave. Given what we know about his philosophy, I highly doubt he considered himself unhappy. The point is, if you are a fatalist (typically because of God), being a slave does not necessarily feel all that bad after all, so there is a lot of space for happiness in such a life. And this is not just a pointless jab. Every day many people look into themselves and try to accept their emotional pain and find their own happiness nevertheless. And many succeed. Happiness is a deeply subjective concept, not an objective one. To achieve it, you need to change something about yourself, rarely something about your external environment.

Just consider Huxley's Brave New World. If there's any objective measure of happiness, Soma would be the sole biggest gift to humankind. Is that what you meant by objective happiness?

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward

> You seem to be a physicist

Nah, not a physicist at all, though I do have RF EE background which has some deep physics roots. But I would not call myself a Physicist.

> My vector of challenge is that you do not have that fulcrum, that fixed point you need so that you can use happiness as an objective measure. I claim that it is a relative measure (this is more happiness than that), not an absolute one.

Sadly I do not have the time or energy right now to invest in your entire post or the discussion, its a busy day. But I do want to comment on this one point as I was thinking about it all night as I slept.

I strongly disagree with the idea that happiness is not an absolute quality and lacks a fulcrum point. I suspect what you are confusing it for is an unbounded, yet absolute, quality. that is there is always someone who can be more happy or less happy than you,a nd likewise you can adjust to your level of happiness to the point where it feels less rewarding than someone who just came out of a depression. But it is an absolute quality with a fixed "fulcrum point" as you put it.

I would express this assertion by the simple fact that we all know and easily identify (I would think, at least I feel I can) what that 0 point is. There is sadness (negative happiness), there is happiness (positive) and then there is feeling nothing, neither happiness or sadness, this is the 0 point. If i am in an emotionless state at the moment I dont think i could ever confuse this for happiness or sadness due to a relative comparison with a prior state or someone else. If i have no emotional stance at the moment but am in an environment where everyone is sad, I wouldnt say "I feel happy", I would still be fixed at 0 with no emotions.

I think the problem is just that the language is nondescript when it comes to this. If i say "I am very happy" this may mean something very different for someone who is usually depressed (as a little happiness feels like a lot) than someone who is normally happy.

This doesnt mean that happiness is not absolute, it just means that at present time we lack the physical tools to measure it quantitatively, we lack the ruler for happiness. But just because you lack the ruler doesnt mean that length is relative, nor does it mean happiness is relative. I would imagine if an MRI were sufficiently advanced to measure neurotransmitters accurately, and our understanding of that were advanced enough to determine a persons happiness from an MRI scan (which we are getting surprisingly close to doing) then we could measure happiness in very specific quantitative terms.

@timorl @2ck

@freemo 👍

> But just because you lack the ruler doesnt mean that length is relative, nor does it mean happiness is relative.

Just a day or two ago, in that other time space dilatation conversation you (BTW very skillfully, kudos!) explained to somebody else how length actually is relative. 😀 Maybe similar arguments (who is an observer and how they move) apply to happiness too (this time in the engineer space)...

Let's call it a day.

@timorl @2ck

@FailForward

Hahah, very true, length is actually relative.

Good conversation, look forward to the next one.

@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 @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...