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It's been one heck of a week:
Against the backdrop of record-setting numbers of COVID-19 deaths and infections in the US and around the world, there was turmoil in Washington, DC. As court cases surrounding the presidential election were filed and dismissed, a close race in Georgia was coming down to the wire and with it control of the US Senate. While the US Congress was completing the Electoral College tally and certification, a mob formed outside — and eventually broke into — the US Capitol. This resulted in a 4-hour lock-down. Eventually, the intrusion was repelled, and the Electoral College count was completed: Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was confirmed as the 46th president of the United States of America.
Conspiracy theories have flourished. Propaganda has streamed forth across multiple platforms. Tempers have flared.
And SoylentNews has been there for you. And have you ever spoken up! Two of the most-commented stories in the site's nearly seven-year history were posted in just the past week!
Insomuch as the activities in the US Capitol were far from the US' most shining moments, neither were things all unicorns and rainbows on SoylentNews. Tempers flared. People were attacked and called names. I even accidentally deleted a story and the 17 comments attached to it! [NB: Problem addressed: the delete button no longer appears by default for our editors.]
IRC (Internet Relay Chat):
Even our IRC service was not free from controversy. We had a spate of nick (nickname) impersonations. Going forward, IRC users are free to use whatever nick they like with the following caveats:
- Prefix / suffix of a nick is fine for practical purposes (e.g. ${nick}_laptop)
- Impersonation or misrepresentation will not be tolerated
- The use of another user's website nick or derivative thereof on IRC will be subject to sanctions up to and including perma ban.
Further, we understand conversations can easily ramble from subject to subject, but there are separate channels for different topics. (Use the /list comand to see what is available.) As #soylent is the default landing channel, we want to keep the discussions there civil. Name calling and personal attacks are grounds for a timeout. I have had discussions with deucalion (the site's CEO and also IRC-maintainer) about these activities.
NOTE: we are NOT going to sit there watching every discussion, poised to take action. But, if such activity is seen by staff on IRC, they are free to take such actions as they deem necessary.
Aspirations:
As I approach posting my 10,000th story(!) to SoylentNews, I think back to when it all started. How a group of people got together. They shared freely of their expertise, of their free time, and of their hard-earned funds. They tried to create a place free from corporate overlords where people could engage in discussions that focused primarily on technology, but with a dabbling in other areas and current events.
SoylentNews provides a forum for discussion. It also provides tools so the community can express themselves in the comments and moderate those comments, as well.
This got me to thinking. What are our aspirations today? What are our guiding principles? I will list some of my guiding principles, and I encourage the community to share what guides them in the comments.
- "Explanations exist; they have existed for all time; there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong." --H. L. Mencken (cite)
- "People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do." -- Isaac Asimov (cite)
- "If you speak when angry, you'll make the best speech you'll ever regret." -- Groucho Marx (cite)
- "Say what you mean, mean what you say, but don't say it mean."
- "Don't get furious, get curious" -- Miley Cyrus (cite)
- "Humiliation is when someone points out my shortcomings. Humility is when I confess them myself."
- "I need not participate in every fight I am invited to."
- The most difficult behaviors to observe in another person are the ones I dislike in my own.
- "You have not converted a man because you have silenced him." -- John, Lord Morley (cite)
How about you? What sayings guide your aspirations?
Thank You!
Lastly, I thank all of you for supporting me as Editor-in-Chief. I have no formal background in writing or management. I've made mistakes, but I've tried to own up to them as they happened. I strive to be fair, impartial, and open-minded. Under the watchful gaze of the community, I have grown. It is my hope that I may continue to earn your respect and continue in service for many years to come.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:31PM (21 children)
Can you "say" all those things were done by Trump supporters? You can but are you right? And if a Trump supporter kills someone somewhere; it that Trumps fault?
The people are responsible for their actions, no one else. Some will go to jail. Many won't. Panic Action mentality will not fix anything. It will bring on the "which" hunts. (sp. yes that's correct)
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:35PM (6 children)
You morons have some serious morality problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @06:53PM (5 children)
Wow so smart you are. Nothing moral about pointing at the wrong person. Give it up. Your an ass and you know it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @07:25PM (2 children)
Trump told them to march on the captol to help the "weak" Republicans, Rudy called for trial by combat, and over the last 4 years Trump has repeatedly encouraged violence.
You will burn in hell for trying to excuse his behavior, and you are now complicit in the violent insurrection that has left people dead. Truly you are a horrifying person. Don Jr. is that you?
Here is hoping the FBI has you on their list.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @10:18PM (1 child)
Hello FBI.
Trump told you to jump off a bridge. Why didn't you do it? if I scare you; maybe you need to log off and take a nap. You might feel better when you woke up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @05:12AM
u r srsly dum
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 11 2021, @08:25PM
Starting to be like Trump signs here on SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @12:39AM
wat
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday January 11 2021, @08:36PM (13 children)
I'll put it this way: Of the people who have been identified, lots of them spent years making pro-Trump social media posts, in some cases have become leaders of right-wing political and terrorism groups, have been observed at many Trump rallies, and showed up to this event waving Trump flags and wearing "Make America Great Again" hats among other symbols. If they're "crisis actors" or "Antifa plants", then it's awfully strange that neither Trump's campaign nor any of the groups they've been a part of have noticed that fact up until it suddenly became convenient to hang these folks out to dry to protect the Don.
this covers the legal ins and outs better than I can [lawfareblog.com], but the fact is that by the book if you entered the Capitol or brought a bomb there you can be jailed for it. And of course private entities are free under US law to punish people who took part by firing them, refusing to serve them, kicking them off of social media accounts, etc.
The general legal rule for incitement charges are that the person who tells a crowd to do something is among the people responsible for the crowd doing that thing. So, for instance, if a union president gave a speech telling the union members to go beat up the scabs, that union president can and probably will be charged with incitement if the union members do in fact beat up the scabs. And by the same token, when Trump told his people to, say, beat up people attending his rallies, he should be held legally and morally responsible for inciting - it's not that the people doing the beating aren't responsible, but he's also responsible for his part in what happened. Trump's speech right before the crowd attacked, and his tweets during the attack, is definitely a borderline case that I could see the jury go either way on: For example, he tweeted how much it was a shame that Pence hadn't helped him overturn the election results just before a group of people treated that as cause to kill Mike Pence.
What is a more likely tack towards making Trump at least partially immediately responsible is the actions he took both before and during the assault to prevent reinforcements from coming to the aid of the Capitol Police. He could have sent the DC National Guard and National Park Police but didn't. Shortly after the election was over, he replaced the Secretary of Defense with somebody who was oddly slow to allow the governors of Maryland and Virginia to send in their National Guards. After the election was over, he put in place policies that prevented the DC Police from going in. And the FBI was notably reluctant to arrest the people who were posting on social media about how they were planning some sort of big event at the Capitol on January 6 and telling people to bring their guns and other weapons to said event.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Informative) by arslan on Monday January 11 2021, @10:55PM (12 children)
Not an American. But from what was shown in the news in here in Oz, all he said was lets march on the capitol - similarly all his tweets shown in the news was about him being disappointed in folks or that the election was stolen, etc. Nowhere did I see any "lets go violent".
His support base seems to be rife with folks that can certainly cross that line but there's no real evidence where he actually asked them to. Its a slippery slope - if this is a precedent to indict him, any organizers of protests in the future will be indicted the moment a single person in that crowd goes mental.
I get that everyone hates him - but the amount of unreasonable hate is itself a problem. The dude is out of office in a few days - if they want to go on a witch hunt because he gropes someone or evaded taxes or had shady business dealings, go forth. Holding someone responsible for organizing a protest what ended up becoming violent because there were some nut cases in the crowd is setting a pretty bad precedent. Find hard evidence he actually asked them to go violent, then its a different matter.
All those folks that crossed the line should absolutely be punished.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 11 2021, @11:29PM (1 child)
You can read / watch the full speech here [rev.com] and decide for yourself whether he was intending to cause what happened with that speech.
As my last paragraph is talking about, what's more damning are the official actions he took before and after that speech that made it more likely that the attempted attack would succeed, which makes it seem a lot less like a "whoopsie-daisy" or even members of the crowd acting on their own, and a lot more like they were one prong of a plan.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @03:12AM
The article of impeachment [cnn.com] uses "if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore" as an example statement that "encouraged - and foreseeably resulted in - lawless action at the Capitol".
From the transcript, it sure seems like he used the words "fight", "fighting", or "fought" many times. Is it forseeable that talking about fighting so much and then directing an angry mob to the Capitol would result in lawless action at the Capitol? Maybe...
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Monday January 11 2021, @11:50PM (9 children)
Actual transcript [aljazeera.com]
What do you reasonable think he meant when he said "And we fight. We fight like Hell and if you don’t fight like Hell, you’re not going to have a country any more."?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @12:03AM
They are fascist liars, they know exaxtly what they are defending and discussions are pointless. They are spineless twerps that don't want to take responsibility for supporting evil.
(Score: 3, Touché) by arslan on Tuesday January 12 2021, @04:24AM (5 children)
Uhh.. I dunno as someone with no dog in the fight, it could mean either "let's literally go violent" or "figuratively protest your brains out". What language should a protest organizer use? "Let's make love! Let's make love like no tomorrow so we will get back xyz!"?
It is quite _obvious_ which direction the folks that hate him are leaning. It is quite entertaining and a tad sad when you see folks that are supposed to be leaders and smart, educated people let their hate consume them - these are no Gandhi for sure; much like the other side. What's scary is they are leaders of the free world.
Again, as stated before those actual violent mob should be punished to the full extent.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by c0lo on Tuesday January 12 2021, @05:07AM (4 children)
Whatever is appropriate to the mob's ability to understand (very low in high emotional conditions) and the closest to your intention. If you can't control the mob, you don't gather the mob.
This is why the best circumstances I can infer in Trump's favor are to assume his intentions was to raise the mob by any means (including highly inflammatory rhetoric to drive the emotional load through the roof) with no regards on the consequences of doing so (i.e. not even considering the possible consequences, much less considering them and make mistakes on the possible outcome). In this best case scenario, Trump acted irresponsible - not a thing that you don't want from POTUS or any leader of whatever country.
What I feel like the most probable scenario is that Trump wanted chaos creating opportunities that he can seize. One of that possible opportunities involve troubles spiking to a level in which martial law can be justified, see https://www.propublica.org/article/before-mob-stormed-the-capitol-days-of-security-planning-involved-cabinet-officials-and-president-trump [propublica.org]
But, whatever the actual case may be, Trump cannot be exonerated by the responsibility from the results of his actions. There's no defense on the line "But I didn't intend to end this way" that can get him off the hook.
[Citation needed], mate, for the "let their hate consume them" part.
Besides hate, there are multiple explanations possible for the reactions of those "folks that are supposed to be leaders and smart", what makes you chose the "irrational hate against Trump" as THE explanation for this case?
Retribution to be paid to the "tools", throw the bus on top of the inconsequential scape goats, but let the wielder of those tools be?
That wouldn't be in any way less morally reprehensible than Hillary's "basket of deplorables", with the note that Hillary's brainfart didn't kill anyone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 3, Informative) by helel on Tuesday January 12 2021, @05:36AM (3 children)
Even in this most favorable interpretation his recent appointment still blocked calls for the national guard six times [businessinsider.in] and the situation only started coming under control after Pence [cnn.com] decided to exercise his own authority. Or to put it another way, even if he wasn't actively trying to raise a riot he was more than happy allowing it to rage unchecked for hours.
And even that's ignoring the fact that the DC National Guard and Capitol Police were both ordered not to take normal precautions that are routine for any big event in DC. That strongly suggests premeditation which leaves only the question of who knew what when.
(Score: 2) by arslan on Wednesday January 13 2021, @04:04AM (2 children)
This is probably a more saner reason, i.e. him not doing his job to end the riots - assuming it is, I'm not really clear on what his active responsibility is here - he did go on TV saying that is not what they should be doing, asked them to stop and go home; of course he did continuing to sneak in his dissatisfaction with the "stolen election" nonsense but that's not a crime; poor form form & sore loser for sure.
So far all the other arguments seems to be interpreting his speech & intentions instead of providing hard evidence - and interpretation is a slippery slope. It is pretty common for protest organizers use the word "fight" figuratively, i.e we have to "fight for our right".
And no, in my opinion you cannot pin the actions of mobs that was not clearly and directly asked to break the rules on the organizers otherwise we'd shutting down a valid channel for free speech as anyone that disagrees with any protest agenda can easily just embed any hooligan in any protest to enact some violence and the protest organizers all cop the consequence. Like I said, slippery slope.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 13 2021, @04:29AM (1 child)
He told the terrorists that attempted to kill legislative leaders and the Vice President "we love you, you're very special."
As for ending the insurrection, it is his job. He's the head of the executive branch. He has the authority to send in the DC National Guard, even if the guy he appointed says no. This right here is why Democrats calling to invoke the 25th amendment are offering an easy way out. The 25th is for a president that is unable to perform their duties, such as due to illness or general incompetence. If Pence invokes it and Trump doesn't fight it he could quietly leave office as merely not up to the job of president because the alternative explanation is that he intentionally allowed a group of violent terrorists roam the capitol building for hours while his silence indicated his agreement with his appointments refusal to end the attack.
And lets not forget, before the sixth somebody ordered the Capitol Police and DC National Guard not to take the normal precautions they would take for any large gathering, this despite the fact that the FBI knew an attack was coming [rollingstone.com].
So our options are Trump is so incompetent that his appointments and advisers have orchestrated a coup attempt around him without his involvement or knowledge and then he just went along with it when they pulled the trigger or he himself attempted the coup. In the former case we might say that his rhetoric was inciting but not intentional. In the later case there's no question what he was attempting.
So, what do you think? Is Trump so weak he can't even bring himself to override Senior Army official Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, a man he appointed last month, or did he just try to overturn the vote by violence?
(Score: 2) by helel on Wednesday January 13 2021, @04:31AM
Accidentally posted AC, didn't notice I had gotten logged out by mistake. That's one downside of allowing AC posts, I guess?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 12 2021, @11:15PM (1 child)
From the transcript.
"we become president," - We? Is that the royal "we"? Divine right of kings and all that.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday January 12 2021, @11:25PM
Nah. He's a senile narcissist.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford