The January 6 rioters who breached police lines should have been shot.
The survivors should serve long sentences.
This week the Department of Justice recommended that Guy Reffitt serve a sentence of 15 years for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol. He was a leader of the Texas Three Percenters and he was convicted at trial. His own helmet camera provided much of the evidence that convicted him. He recorded himself saying
"We're all going to drag them motherfuckers out kicking and screaming. I don't give a shit. I just want to see Pelosi's head hit every fucking stair on the way out. Fuck yeah. And Mitch McConnell, too. . . .We've got the numbers to make it happen. We've got a fucking president. We don't need much more. We just get rid of them motherfuckers and start over."
The Justice Department asked that extra time be added because his actions met the definition of terrorism.
I think he is getting off easy. He took up arms against the United States and led others to join him.
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| "We're coming through. Get these motherfuckers!" |
I wish the Capitol Police and whatever other police agencies were there had done their job. They remind me of the Uvalde police. The Capitol has doors and windows and rioters were violently breaking through them. Rioters were battling police at the perimeter. People in front with weapons should have been been commanded to stop, and when they pushed forward, shot. Being killed is what happens when you attack police and invade a public building protected with armed security.
Americans have learned this rule of thumb when encountering a policeman: Don't fight them. Don't frighten them. Obey. We have seen the videos involving police encounters, especially with Black men. The man attempts to flee or he struggles with the police officer. We wish he had just complied; he might still be alive. Instead, he gets killed and the shooting is considered justified. After all, the policeman was attacked and feared for his life.
The January 6 rioters attacked the police. Ashli Babbitt, the one person who was shot and killed by a security guard, was part of a crowd that had already gotten well into to the Capitol. The crowd was smashing through a door to enter the chamber of the House of Representatives. Some 60 to 80 House Members and staffers were sheltering inside that chamber. The officer who shot her did his job. He protected the institution and the people counting on him for security. The rioters got that far because at the first perimeters the security did not do theirs.
I was part of a mass demonstration in Washington, D.C. on November 15, 1969. I may be somewhere in this photo. It never occurred to me that we could storm public buildings and get away with it. I would get shot.
There was a general lack of moral clarity both at the time of the January 6 insurrection and still today because Trump had invited them to go there and "be wild." This is unfortunate. However, there was surely moral and legal clarity at the time rioters began breaking barriers, smashing doors and windows, and attacking police officers. That is when this should have been stopped. They should have been resisted with lethal force.
The rioters' gallows for Mike Pence was a silent but powerful message to the world. It said that the rioters defy democracy and will kill to do it. That is a bad message. A different message would have been in photographs of a dozen bodies of rioters at the Capitol doors. That message would be that Americans defend our democracy. It is a tough message, but it is why we have a military.
We missed our chance then. It isn't too late to send a message for next time. Send the message that Americans consider people who stage violent attacks on our people and institutions to be dangerous criminals. We send them to prison.
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According to reports, Trump is itching for payback against the Jan. 6 Committee for exposing his attempted coup and House Republicans intend to give it to him, assuming they retake the House in November. One of the things they’re planning to “investigate” is the treatment of the “patriots” that attacked our Capitol and are now being held as “political prisoners.”
Has anybody else noticed that the GOP has gone insane?
Can’t help but think that if they would have been minority protesters, shots would have been fired freely. I agree with the blog and wondered at the time why more force by the police wasn’t taken. Plus the image of police taking pictures with the protesters rubbed me the wrong way. Law and order is not a conservative vs liberal issue. People want law and order to live their lives in safety, which is why homelessness is such an issue.
My main reaction on January 6 was amazement and outrage that the Capitol had been defended so incompetently.
The January 6 rioters who breached police lines should have been shot.
The survivors should have been shot again.
(Expressing a feeling here more than a serious proposal.)
To Dave:
Perhaps because the Capitol Police were so outnumbered, they attempted to befriend the rioters hoping to defuse the situation. They should never have been allowed to be that outnumbered.
On the race topic, statistics show that police in general are less likely to shoot blacks than whites. Thinking that the police disproportionately shoot black people is a false understanding based on slanted media coverage.
I wonder:
Why didn't the insurrectionists use their guns? We know they brought them. Was it deliberate knowing the Capital Police would show restraint? Seems so...
The officers are not/were not trained to routinely use deadly force as opposed to a SWAT team. Could it be that their primary function as crowd control made them hold back?
What was the command structure and protocols that would have ordered opening fire?
So far I've heard nothing regarding this in the aftermath.
As to wishing for a body count, I disagree. Likely had it turned into a fire fight many otherwise innocent protestors could have been shot or killed as well as the police. As we have watched the prosecutions proceed I believe most of them are getting justice, ironically more fairness than they deserve.
And now what? Was that it? All said, pretty lame revolution.
It's better, all other things being equal, when people don't die even when one can reasonably argue that they had it coming.
“Being killed is what happens when you attack police and invade a public building protected with armed security”.
Well, unless your cause is politically palatable to the establishment, such as BLM or Antifa firebombing courthouses.
“The police officer who shot her [Ashlii Babbitt] did his job”.
Unarmed Babbitt was shot without warning by one of several armed officers on the other side of an aperture she was attempting to breach. Video released shows a Capitol police officer with an AR or AK monitoring her progress a few feet from Babbitt on HER side of that aperture. A black protester so killed and the officer would either have been charged with murder, or else more riots.
“A different message would have been in photographs of a dozen bodies at the Capitol doors”.
Sounds rather like establishment types flogging law and order…. circa 1970. Leftists certainly didn’t want to see bodies of Weather Underground bombers at the Capitol, nor those of murderous Puerto Rican terrorists there too, later pardoned by Barack Obama.
Justice is in large part about equal treatment for the equally situated. A Capitol officer was indeed killed in terroristic violence around 1/6, the only one, in fact….when a Muslim jihadist rammed a security gate. Media memory-holed. Ox. Gored. Whose.
Swift, serious punishment has indeed arrived for a large number of 1/6 insurrectionists, unlike BLM/Antifa Floyd thugs. But bullet duly dodged. It almost was The QAnon Shaman at the Abe funeral as Secretary of State instead of Anthony Blinken.
Re: Low Dudgeon's post
The anarchists who co-opted and hijacked the BLM and Floyd protests did huge damage. The BLM people who didn't point them out to the police made an error. Oregon politicians who didn't jump on those violent actors made an error. Many Democrats, eg Wyden, spoke out harshly against the violence. Good. Liberals need to be comfortable calling out violence where-ever it comes from.
Conservatives (or whatever Trump is) praised Ashli Babbitt, and LD seems to be minimizing it and blaming the police for shooting her. She was within a group shouting about entering a room sheltering Members of Congress hiding from a mob. If she thought that breaking trough a door to attack others is legitimate, then she should have been shot and killed for arrogant stupidity. In fact she was shot because she was in the act of entering a secure space to attack others. Of course she was shot. Had she survived she should have been prosecuted and imprisoned if and when found guilty. Trump excused Ashli; I would hope my readers would not.
I want the distinction restored between legitimate assembly and protest and illegitimate violence. I would urge LD and my conservative and Trump-tolerant readers to resist the temptation to tolerate and minimize and "whatabout" political violence. I don't, and this blog never has. Trump does it proudly. Alas, otherwise reasonable people are infected by Trump's position.
Bottom line: People who attack police officers to attempt to stop Congress from doing its work risk getting shot and killed. When they get shot and killed we should be grateful that democracy has the capacity to protect itself.
What unfolded on January 6th was medieval combat-style storming the castle. What was lacking was the high wall counterattack. Nancy Pelosi fired the Sargent at Arms for his failure to defend the Capitol. I am left wondering if the Sargent at Arms gave an order to use nonlethal means only to hold the walls.
Breaching the House Chamber was when the shot was fired and a protestor killed. We know from testimony now that those individuals with backpacks and zip ties had their plans to capture and kill members of Congress. The angry Trump supporters were being used as the battering-ram. Once the Chamber was breached mayhem would ensue Maximilien Robespierre-style . Members fleeing through the tunnels would have been captured. Sheltering inside was the safest means to protest the Members. The delay at the Chamber door allowed assembled observers and House and Senate members time to evacuate to shelter. Mike Pence's reaction to getting into the limousine with his detail was telling. And now we see why, he suspected that Secret Service agents not part of his detail, possibly had plans to spirit him to a location from which he could not fulfill his ceremonial role of announcing the Electoral College results prescribed in the Constitution.
We are just now learning the extent of planning for the attack. Apparently the plan involved key people simply delaying a response. Long enough that hostage-taking would delay further the proceedings. Said simply this was a carefully coordinated coup-attempt wrapped in the costume of a protest movement.
The coup is proceeding still. An Electoral College win for Trump is being crafted by red State legislators to insure Trump or Trumpism wins and the defenders of The Constitution are defeated in 2024. Whether the authoritarian locomotive can be stopped is uncertain. Too few Good men and Good women stood up against coup attempt leading up to the attack, just enough did to stop the seizure of power in that moment.
The weakness now in our system is exposed: The ballot box. The coup proceeds now by legislatively sealing, delaying, over regulating the "free and fair" election. And if that fails cast enough doubt on the electoral process to challenge successfully the results.
My God Save and Protect The United States of America
Would the Capitol police have been more inclined to shoot if the insurrectionists were black? Here’s a little fact-check from a 5-year study by the Washington Post:
“Although half of the people shot and killed by police are White, Black Americans are shot at a disproportionate rate. They account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/investigations/police-shootings-database/
Expressly and specifically declining to exaggerate an otherwise important incident is not really the same as minimizing the incident. I have no doubt some of the 1/6 thugs were capable of beating certain targets to death if able. In this case, thankfully, they did not. As I’ve noted here before, without factual or legal contravention (that I recall), had Pence gone along after all by plan or intimidation, due authority in the Capitol including Biden’s proper nomination would have been reinstated by federal law enforcement within hours.
Like “conspiracy” and “talking points” the other day, “Whataboutism” is another overused, overbroad avoidance of debate on the merits. It should signify only critiques or rejoinders which as largely irrelevant, makeweight or in bad faith. Otherwise, any comparison-contrast whatsoever, including via contemporaneous or otherwise comparable events, would by definition be ”whataboutism”. These days yahoos hit the streets when an armed black felon is shot. Babbitt is no hero. Just less important to folks on the left.
I too would like the distinction clearly drawn between legitimate assembly and protest, and illegitimate violence. It hasn’t been drawn here yet, today or on previous occasions, except as a predictable function of politicized priorities which even then bespeak differences in degree, not kind. Regular folks don’t condone violence. They rationalize and contextual it, however, depending on sympathy with the cause. Or simply forget it post haste, as with the attempted assassination of Justice Kavanaugh. Ox. Gored. Whose.
"I too would like the distinction clearly drawn between legitimate assembly and protest, and illegitimate violence."
The distinction has been clearly drawn here and elsewhere. It's almost self-explanatory. There's no such thing as legitimate violence, with few exceptions. No amount of obfuscation can change the fact that a deranged president tried to illegally cling to power. Inciting an insurrection was only his most obvious ploy.
Displaying an American flag defaced with a "thin blue line" and a Trump flag approaches the ultimate irony.
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