the right blame game, and the wrong blame game
People are missing something very simple when they claim the events of a few days ago were worse then the summer of BLM riots. Let us concede the point for the sake of the argument I am about to make and take for granted that it is worse.
Why is it worse?
The MAGA mob broke into an important building on an important day. BLM did not break into any important buildings, and did not do so on any important days. I think Democrats are not allergic to maximizing emotional arousal during important days by the way: you could see this during the Kavanaugh hearing but I will handle that point more lightly. The building Congress convenes in is very important, BLM did not break into a building that important, therefore the MAGA mob is worse. This is the logic used to claim the MAGA mob was worse. But BLM is certainly willing to do worse things: they are willing to burn it to the ground, possibly more. If we treat this as within the same order of magnitude of what the MAGA people wanted to do, we can compare the mobs.
Both mobs had intent and motive to use violence regarding an important building. If the White House was as lightly guarded as the Capitol was a few days ago, the White House would have been burned to the ground. If Trump was there they might have tried to kill him even, who knows. The fact they would have done so on a day that was not very important doesn’t really seem to matter much to me--I think the image of the White House burning would have been a much bigger deal then what we saw a few days ago. They had the motive and intent to do this. The reason they could not was they lacked opportunity. The White House was heavily defended. If the Capitol was as heavily defended as the white house was, none of this would have happened. It's bad that this happened, but people are engaging in a rhetorical slight of hand when they take the fact it is worse and blame it on the mob.
If you take two mobs and both want to do the same thing, and only one succeeds, it probably isn’t because they have more evilness evil rays giving them evil powers that make them more effective then the other mob. If two rabid animals charge a herd of prey and only one gets the kill, it is not because one is more evil then the other. Being more evil as a mob does not magically make them more capable of storming a building. If two criminals attempt the same crime and only one succeeds, it does not prove which is a witch.
Is a MAGA mob more evil then a BLM or Antifa mob? Does this explain why they could do something the others could not? If Donald Trump is trying to make his supporters as riled up as possible, imagine him giving a rowdy speech right outside the capitol with the crowd chanting for those inside to hear. It would not be strange to imagine this was what he was envisioning. For mysterious reasons, Trump did not walk with the crowd (if he did he might have been able to avert this, believe it or not!) and we have not seen him since. His opponents too try to rile up people as much as possible. Over the summer, even AFTER cities were burned, politicians told them to not let up and went marching with them. They not only incited violence--and maybe we could claim they did not know it would go that far--but even after seeing they had done so they continued. We are to believe that Trump's opponents can rile up their supporters as much as possible and let no outrage go to waste, while Donald Trump should not. All the while, the reason his mob broke through and others did not has nothing to do with him. Maybe he thought there was no risk of this because he thought the Capitol would be correctly defended. It was supposed to be. We actually all should expect that all mobs that storm our Capitol building should be beaten back. This was not supposed to happen. Why did it happen? Well, unfortunately for public commenters the reason has nothing to do with Donald Trump!
All political violence should be stamped out. All mobs should be put down. I hope we all agree. For some reason over the summer people did not, and by going easy on the mobs people were playing with fire. Those that do political violence want to escalate the cultural struggle and political situation to a breaking point--they would instigate civil war if they could. Unlike those that maximize emotional arousal over things that happen, these people want to take actions themselves to escalate things as much as possible using violence. One takes violence that happens and catastrophizes it as much as possible for gain, the other does violence to make everything more extreme hoping to win on the other side.
We use state violence to suppress this not only to protect people, property, and our political structure, but to protect those doing violence from themselves. By punishing them for violence, we prevent them from being punished for something even more extreme. We not only need to be protected in the literal sense but we must be protected from what violent political escalation does to society. When people say the events of a few days ago were worse, they do not mean it in a literal sense, because businesses and cities were burned and many more people were killed under BLM riots. They mean it is worse in what it does to society. In how things have been escalated in a way that can’t be turned back. We were not only denied protection in the mundane sense, but our country was denied protection from political escalation, and the MAGA mob people were denied protection from themselves. Whose fault is all that? Not Donald Trump's.
People have been theorizing why the Capitol was not defended but I will leave that to them to figure out. I notice everyone seems to be focusing on the police and not on the mayor who approvingly tweeted she was refusing federal assistance. Why did she refuse protection, to protect our country from what could happen? Nobody knows. This seems like a more crucial question then being angry at Donald Trump one last time. I do not blame a politician for behaving how all politicians behave, and I do not blame a mob for acting like other mobs. I blame the way this day was different then other days, I blame whoever’s fault it is that the capitol did not have strong enough defenses.