the sticky mirror

Donald Trump encouraged his supporters to protest and tried to maximize how angry they were while making claims about the election not much different in magnitude then the Russia hysteria. They then went on to break into the capitol and interrupt the counting of the electoral college votes. Everyone including conservative commentators seem to agree this escalation was his fault for encouraging them to protest. I would like to compare this invisible inferential leap to some other examples. During the BLM riots high ranking dems said things like “there needs to be unrest in the streets”, “if you see anybody from that cabinet…you get out and create a crowd and you push back on them and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore anywhere” after riots, fires and violence Kamala Harris said protesters should not let up and asked for donations to bail rioters out of jail. Unlike conservative commentators over the past few days, there were no liberal or leftist commentators saying it was obvious Democrats or the media were inciting violence.

The two days of violence in Minneapolis over George Floyd were much more intense then the MAGA mob days ago, and when it came to DC after all the rioting and looting it would make sense the defenses would be very high and that the branch with its own praetorian guard would be harder to assault then the branch without. Although it is strange the defenses of the capitol were so light, greater manpower was apparently declined by the mayor of Washington DC who is rabidly anti Trump so it hardly makes sense this was some internal cop pro trump gambit. If your points of comparison for one movement is fire and destruction and the other is covington teen drama you should if anything assume less security but even that doesn’t explain it. That having been said if you think BLM rioters would not have stormed and burned the White house to the ground if it was as lightly guarded as the capitol was a few days ago, you are completely totally deluded. I think if the white house burned, people would have mocked the president for leaving it undefended and claimed it was proof at how unpopular he was. To my mind, congress has consistently had a much lower approval rating, and the person seemingly responsible for the light defenses is Mayor Bowser who no one seems all too angry at. And if you could imagine for a second, the white house burning, after the news defended the riots and spent years ginning up the anger for it, would anyone even think to say this was incited? I have a feeling even after all that they would not, and people would still somehow insist designating BLM or antifa as terrorist organization as absurd since its just an idea or whatever such talking point.

Now imagine if the supreme court had thrown the election to Trump, you don’t think every last democrat would be encouraging as much anger as possible and demanding as much protest and noise as they could muster. Do you not think they would attempt to burn the Supreme Court building to the ground then offer that hey what did they expect they had it coming. Would anyone even bother to argue this was inciting violence and whoever should be removed from their seat as obviously at fault.

Personally I think intent to wander around and take selfies is less bad then intent to burn and destroy, no matter the timing of either. Personally I think breaking in then going home and then security never allowing it to happen again is better then months of destruction and it being unthinkable to call the national guard. If buildings are destroyed and people have intent to burn the White House to the ground, every last general will come out to denounce using tear gas and condemn using national guard. If Maga people mob up for the first time, suddenly the national guard can be summoned within military automatically without even needing the president at all.

David Shor posted a political science study suggesting that violent protests made Democrats more likely to lose elections, he was fired. Can you imagine conservative pundits being fired for suggesting using a study with no commentary that things like breaking into the capitol would make them lose elections? I can’t. I am pretty deep in the right wing and I posted out in the open that people who broke into the capitol should go to jail and received no pushback whatsoever from anyone at all. I saw others post similar and not much happen all in super duper MAGA land. I strongly suspect the reverse was not true over the summer.

Every way you cut it things are only sticky in one direction. Donald Trump wanted to protest at the capitol, when things got out of hand he told people to go home and the next day said it was criminal. Democrats in the comparable situation told their supporters to not let up. For conservative pundits could you imagine if a march for life got rowdy and libs turned around and said well you argue abortion is murder, what did you expect you were inciting violence? Can you imagine anyone ever taking any of the insane rhetoric Democrats have engaged in as inciting violence? Joe Biden’s response to get people to come together included comparing republican politicians to Nazis. Is that inciting violence? Was the republican baseball shooting incited? Were any of the pro BLM shooters incited? When a block of seattle was occupied were all the murders incited?

If a standard for conduct is applied to one specific situation and to one specific person but never to anyone else then it is no standard at all. For three years his opponents basically convinced people he took orders directly from Putin like its a cartoon show but now insist that any claim that is a bit too heated a bit too charged will incite whatever violence ensues. And when it comes to the political and the presumably to increase partisanship going forward what else does that mean but a demand to give in and never rock the boat ever again. Conservative pundits that believe millions of babies are being murdered somehow want to insist that claiming the 2020 election was stolen the same way it already was in 1960 is just not something you should argue too hard and the belief is responsible for whatever violence follows. Everybody has beliefs that could cause violence given how important they claim to be.

Donald Trump encouraged people to protest but did not encourage anything further, and called on them to stop. He acted quicker and gave more substantial statements then Democrats did over BLM and the MAGA mob stood down quicker as well. The difference is most lib cities in America renamed street names to Black Lives Matter, corporations adopted the slogan, and workplaces across the country begin to implement this mild social terror at the behest of the mob. I do not think a MAGA mob will ever harass random people eating at restaurants, I don’t think they would burn down random peoples businesses, I don’t think they would assault people in their own gatherings if they say make america great again and you do not repeat the phrase, I don’t think they would bully corporations across the country to have patriotism struggle sessions or loot and burn until streets across the country are named Make America Great again street. In spite of this the narrative makers will work as hard as possible to insist the one that lasted hours is a world historical event that is representative of millions of people, it will stick to them, and it will stick to Trump. Even if it were to never repeat it will be so sticky people will always refer to it. But the months of leftist violence, destruction and burning already seem to be like a haze, a joke, a punchline. See it fizzled out after months, it wasn’t that bad! The lesson will be if leftist spasm of violence happens or a mild cultural terror takes place that we should not take it seriously because the last twenty fizzled spasms fizzled out.

Politics as it stands now is about maximizing emotional arousal and attempting to manage it for political gain. Donald Trump did this and it should not be allowed, anyone else does it and that’s politics. The people who say Donald Trump maximizing anger over claiming election fraud took place is evil will now continue to maximize the events of a few days ago as much as possible. Every pound of flesh, every morsel of anger and outrage and emotion will be wrung. Every last drop will be collected. People will claim this is like another 9/11 and that we need another patriot act. Out of millions of people, not that many people broke into a weirdly lightly defended capitol building and the fact it was lightly defended was not their fault. They probably wont do it again, and more of them are being arrested already at the time of this post then were arrested over first two most intense days of rioting in Minneapolis. If a second patriot act occurs and a pseudo great firewall of china occurs to suppress q anon people by silicon valley and who knows what else, I suppose people will go geez I don’t think that kind of thing would happen I just wanted to maximize emotional arousal over people breaking into the capitol! How is this my fault!

That is all fine and well, and they should not have broke into the capitol, but between you and me the inferential leaps being made now are just because being angry at Trump as possible is something not even conservative pundits can resist. If all these people could have an anti MAGA rally and rile people up as much as is possible against Trump I do not think they would pass it up for a moment. Twitter was a mad libs word game so such people could argue whatever Trump thing was as bad as possible. They are loving this, the clock is almost run out, they booted him out the door, and now they can finally convince themselves of one last excess for the road. He really was a dictator or uh something like that all along, I was right to catastrophize and exaggerate as much as possible about him those four years, and to prove it I will exaggerate and catastrophize one last time.