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Comment by riversflow | Hacker News Reader

It is a paradox. His point about ISIS vs Republicans is pretty on the money. I think a lot of people in the West are so saturated with tolerance that they don't even recognize what it is. There are countries in the world where being an atheist or being raped is punishable by death and plenty of people there cheer on. In that light, republicans I know are very tolerant people on the whole, possibly even more so than the average Democrat. They have strong feelings about what the government should or shouldn't do, but I haven't met one yet who would actually advocate killing someone for things we think about in terms of tolerance.

If you truly think that the entire republican party, a huge portion of the country's population, have all broken the social contract, I don't think that social contract is worth much.

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Enough of them believed that to storm the capitol.

Enough of them believe that to pass draconian health laws that are causing the death of women: https://www.propublica.org/article/tennessee-abortion-ban-do...

We can have reasonable debate and differences of opinion over economic policy, but when one side is denying that people have human rights and trying to restrict their right to live and for people to learn about them, it's not a "both sides are the same". https://apnews.com/article/florida-transgender-health-care-a...

It's not innocent mistakes. After the most corrupt presidential administration in US History, with a President slinging lies and abuse on Twitter every day, nearly half the country still voted for him anyway. What social contract?

Have you considered whether you're overly attached to the ingroup/outgroup thing with how you characterize the above?

A bunch of liberal people shut down the Seattle capitol for a few days at the height of Black Lives Matter and ironically shot several young black men in the process. Yet I never hear a word about it. They were the ingroup.

So there no difference between storming the national capitol because your candidate lost and you would rather violently overturn the election because you lost and a group protesting the injustices built into our society?

Nuance is important and if you want to say BLM and jan 6 are the same you are severely lacking it.

How many black people did the Jan 6 criminals shoot?

It sounds like allegiance is more important than deeds. Ingroup, outgroup.

The Jan 6 rioters injured 114 law enforcement officers (leading to one death) in a few hours. The leaders expressed a desire to overturn the government unlawfully and their followers proved they were willing to use violence to do so.

The fatal Seattle shootings happened more than three weeks after the CHAZ/CHOP zone was established, and when most of the protesters had gone home. The organizers were using their illegal occupation to push for political reforms through the local government.

Those are substantively different situations.

P.S. It’s clear that the CHAZ/CHOP organizers lacked the skill to maintain security for such a large area. Whether they bear criminal liability is up for the courts to decide. (Just like it is for the Jan 6 rioters.)

> your candidate lost and you would rather violently overturn the election

Yes, so violent that entered the US capitol building unarmed, and just broke some decorations, taking selfies while laughing, and never attacked anyone (EDIT: talking about inside the capitol building, I didn't watch footage of the streets outside). It's just like the storming of the palace during the French revolution!

Seriously, the most extreme footage I could find shows the attackers running past the police guarding the doors instead of stopping when told, but the police repeatedly turn their back to them and no one even attempts to hurt them. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ibWJO02nNsY . At one point the guy in the lead ends up just debating the police calmly.

Wikipedia says they caused $2.7M in damages. Assuming that figure is anywhere close to true, it's probably less damages than your average "fiery but peaceful" BLM riot, which totaled 2 billion in damages. (https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2022/02/22/fac... )

Do you think you might be overselling the severity of either the Jan 6 capitol breach or downplaying the severity of the BLM riots? Or maybe your post is satire of how liberals do this systematically, if so then A+, you got me.

If the capitol breach had been done by BLM protesters, the media would be running stories about how the rioters didn't do nothing wrong, and the reaction to the verdicts would've been more riots. Surely even in the worst Twitterati echochamber they must realize this when they lie down in bed at night and do some honest introspection without having to virtue signal in public.

EDIT: the only policemen dead was 1 from natural causes (a stroke, 2 protesters died the same way), and 4 suicides long after the riots. https://www.factcheck.org/2021/11/how-many-died-as-a-result-... . This is your violent revolution?

I’m not sure you realize how much your reply says about you, versus the person you’re replying to.

The fact that your opponents' party got into power recently and just barely got defeated in the last presidential election says that there jolly well can be differences of opinion whether you like it or not. Instead of futilely insisting otherwise, it's time to start figuring out how to appeal to the electorate so your opponents don't gain power again.

Nah, they are not tolerant. They are just less murderous then ISIS.

> They have strong feelings about what the government should or shouldn't do, but I haven't met one yet who would actually advocate killing someone for things we think about in terms of tolerance.

There have been multiple mass shootings literally in that category. Compared to ISIS places, yep, it happens significantly less often. Plus, I have seen such calls against transgender and clinics. And acts of violence against both in fact do happen.

    There are countries in the world where being an atheist or being raped is punishable by death and plenty of people there cheer on.

Are any of these countries high developed and democratic?

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