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Surprise surprise, 4 out of 5 of the people who died at the capitol hill riots were unarmed and non-violent pro-trump supporters, the one none Trump supporter killed was a cop who was struck in the head while he was actively beating people with his baton, effectively the one initiating violence and the crowd defended itself by the sound of it, in the interaction he got struck and died a day later from the head injury. Its sad that he got hit and I dont justify the violence overall, but if your the one sitting there beating people with a stick people fighting back is kind of the expectation, its not an acceptable tactic against unarmed civilians IMO.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/11/us/who-died-in-capitol-building-attack.html
@freemo Looks like one of those deaths was trampled by other rioters, one had a heart attack and another had a stroke.
Hard to blame the police for any deaths except the woman who was shot.
@pganssle I dont recall me saying anything about blaming police for those deaths, nor did I place blame on anyone.
The point here is that the 5 deaths are continually mentioned without context and causes people to imply that the crowd was violent and going around killing people, which simply wasnt the case.
@freemo I mean, the crowd did kill two of those people... One deliberately, the other accidentally.
@pganssle Not really.. one was an accidental death, so irrelevant as you point out.. the other (the police officer) was actively beating people with his stick, so striking him would count as self defence, not deliberate murder. Not that I justify the violence on either side.. but if your beating people bloody with your baton and the group retaliates by hitting you in the head, your hardly innocent.
Found wrong about what exactly? Are you saying those 5 people were intentionally killed by Trump protestors now?
As I said in the OP, aside from the cop who was violently beating people trump protestors didnt murder a single person. Who has shown that not to be the case, i havent seen it.
@freemo @pganssle Nah, nobody's saying that they were intentionally killed. You'll never hear me stick up for cops using lethal force- there's no reason to take a life. That goes for the cop that shot that woman and the folks that killed that cop. Those other folks died in a sad accidents for a shitty non-purpose and that's that.
So in other words you agree 100% with my original post but decided to call me out anyway for being "wrong" about something you just agreed I was correct about? Ok.
Sure, but I also said that in my OP:
> Its sad that he got hit and I dont justify the violence overall, but if your the one sitting there beating people with a stick people fighting back is kind of the expectation
I made it clear i did not approve of the violence in that quote, but also that if you are beating people bloody with a stick you arent exactly innocent either.
Everything you just said is pretty much the same thing I said.
@freemo @pganssle Maybe, but it's that expectation of fighting back that sounds short of condemnation. The very sentence structure "I disapprove of this thing but, " is not a good one for disapproving of a thing. And then you repeated it in your reply. Not being innocent cannot be said in the same breath as dying without a tacit implication that the cop was somehow partly culpable in his own death. He wasn't.
@sergiopantalone depends, the point of the post was not to disaprove violence, that is a secondary remark. The point of the post is to debunk the general notion of the crowd as the initiators of violence when in fact most of the most violent initiations started from police. The very first injury being the murder of an unarmed protesters who had not physically assaulted anyone.
Since that was the focus of the post, and because disavowing the violence from both sides (even when it is a rebuttal) is only secondary to that point, well thats why you have the structure you have.
Point is, the structure isnt about moral priority it is about focusing on one coherent point as the ain focus of the post and therefore emphasizing it.
@freemo But those other folks weren't killed by police either. If anything you could say that the real thing that laid their insurrection low was a high-sodium diet. The point is that this is about context. Those protesters charged the Capitol and scared our elected officials at the behest of a fat old sad orange narcissist who couldn't admit defeat. Of all the reasons to scare our representatives! That's pathetic and stupid and that's what we should all be saying.
> But those other folks weren't killed by police either.
I never said they were, nor did I say the OP was suggesting they were, so whats the relevance.
Of the list everyone on it but two people were accidents. Of the two that died one was killed, unarmed and having never assaulted another human being. The other died when they were beating a bunch of people silly with their baton and someone hit them in the head.
The cops intent was to kill (thats what guns do).. the person who hit the police officer in the head was self defence and no reason tot hink they intended to kill him, though clearly were trying to knock him out so he couldn't continue to beat people.
this illustrates the point I said I intended to illustrated:
1) the one death of someone being non violent was caused by a cop
2) the one death that was the result of a trump supporter was carried out in self defence of violence being acted out on him and/or the people near him.
The fact that the cops didnt go around killing anyone else was neither suggested in my OP nor related to those points.
> Those protesters charged the Capitol and scared our elected officials at the behest of a fat old sad orange narcissist who couldn't admit defeat.
While I feel Trumps whole "the election was rigged" nonsense was conspiracy level bullshit, and made him look like a fool (as he often looked) lets be clear about one thing, Trump did **not** encourage or ask for violence that day. He intended to march on the capitol, as many peaceful protests have, and the second any violence was reported on TV Trump was very quick to get on TV and tell them to go home and to not be violent.
The blame is on the stupid people who believed his conspiracy theory ramblings enough to act on it (and they were a small minority of the overall crowd thankfully), neither Trump nor his supporters as a whole are to blame beyond just being idiots.
@freemo It's your second point where you're wrong. That 'self-defence' is a loaded term, and not applicable and never, ever, ever justifies killing someone. You've used a fire extinguisher before? It's not like you could hit someone over the head with one and not realize the consequences.
And I don't know if he's legally guilty, but it seems odd to be guilty of being stupid enough to believe a conspiracy but not guilty of being stupid enough not to know that people will believe your conspiracy.
I wouldnt exactly agree that self defence is not an excuse to kill someone, but I would agree that self defence should only kill someone if there is good reason to think they are about to kill you, which doesnt apply here.
With that said, it depends on the situation, i could see someone using a fire extinguisher against someone wearing a helmet as the only means to inflict enough of a hit in return to incapacitate them without the intent to kill.
I have not seen the specific events of the encounter so I cant **really** judge, but from the reports he was physically beating people from the crowd including one such individual whom he beat **after** being detained. So from the reports hitting him with an extinguisher while wearing a helmet does, in fact, sound like reasonable self defense.
@freemo Wow. Okay. 100% of the blame. Doc, I gotta say I lost a little respect for you tonight. I'm going to sign off now. Maybe we can debate again when you're in a better space.
@sergiopantalone Yea, he was beating a subdued person senseless.. the dude casually threw a fire extinguisher at a distance at cops with full helmets on.. by looking at it I wouldnt have expected the fire extinguisher to do any actual harm, and even reports dont seem to agree on if it killed or injured him (he didnt collapse until he was at home many many hours later, so seems kinda unlikely it had anything to do with it at all, yea).
Considering the fire extinguisher almost certainly, or at least very unlikely was the cause of his death, then yes, he is 100% to blame for everything that went down.
@sergiopantalone Ok so after a bit of searching I found the video of the actual event (this is the first I saw it).. seems two points that are important here, but before i get into it let me say tht i wouldnt describe the attack with the extinguisher as self defence, but it is also clear that if it killed the officer (the reports vary and disagree if it was even the cause now that i look around) it clearly was not intended and in fact would be rather suprising fro watching the video to think the extinguisher caused his death at all.
1) the person who threw the fire extinguisher did so from a distance and was not in any immediate threat, and was not personally beaten by the officer. The officer, in that exact moment also wasnt being anyone, BUT had been brutally beating people through out the day, or at least earlier.
2) you can see the scene they cut too later where you see the officer beating the person as described by eyewitnesses which, as they claim, happened before the extinguisher incident from what I read. You can see the officer clearly has the subject on the ground, cuffed, and detained and despite being incapacitated is wailing on him repeatidly punching him while a second officer coes over with his baton to likewise throw in some beatings (though it cuts out before he strikes hi)
Based on #2 and the fact that #1 was violent but clearly not intended to kill, I'd say 100% of the blame in this is pretty much on the officer.
@freemo @pganssle It's not quite that either. Don't stick up for the cop-killers. They weren't reacting reasonably to excessive force. They were there without permission and they took a man from his wife and kids for no *fucking* reason whatsoever. That's disgraceful full stop. No extenuating circumstances, no mitigation of what they did.