“In all honesty, it was the Debt Crisis that ended the Roman Republic. There was a Sovereign Debt Crisis during the Roman Republic period resulted in a dictatorship and a debt default.
…
Therefore, we find that the debt crisis was correlated with a separatist movement – which we are beginning to see worldwide starting in Europe, but will eventually become a contagion in the United States as the conflict between left and right erupts after the November elections.”
Timing was pretty bang on if you consider Jan 6th as a turning point
Why would you consider January 6 protests to be the turning point specifically? It was neither particularly violent nor a first regarding violation of norms. There was no attempt at rallying armed forces in a coup d’etat.
Could just as well consider something like the Tea Party circa 2010 a turning point in separatism.
Wow. I know perhaps this makes sense from a non-American perspective, but as an American, January 6 was incredibly violent. I think some people forget that this isn't normal.
I am an American and I don’t think it was particularly violet. There were 4 deaths. Not 400 or 40 (not like I wanted there to be more). But pearl clutching over some people protesting where they shouldn’t have when Congress wasn’t in session is just silly.
>I am an American and I don’t think it was particularly violet. There were 4 deaths.
There was one death. One. An unarmed rioter named Ashly Babbit who was shot by Capitol Police well after the riot's start.
One Capitol Police member, Officer Sicknick, died of a stroke the day afterwards, but the coroner specifically looked for signs of his either being hit on the head, or exposed to tear gas, as causes, and concluded that neither was true.
Had Capitol Police as a whole done their job and used their training and weapons to stop the invaders in the first place, a great deal of trouble would have been avoided while more rioters would have been shot (which I have no problem with). Why they did not do their job is something that I trust will be answered one day.
>There was no attempt at rallying armed forces in a coup d’etat.
What are you talking about? There most certainly was, and a successful one at that. The mob had firearms and pipe bombs and a wide variety of melee weapons. They smashed their way into the building. Rioters intended to hold lawmakers captive and planned to execute the vice president. Several people died.
The sitting president led a mob to levy war against the United States. The fact that it was ineffective doesn't matter.
One Union boy died, unfortunately, but we gave better than we got!
The people who were shot were killed to defend the capitol and were given ample warning. Ashley Babbitt, for instance, was trying to break down a door.
I love how when I ask that same question, people like asdfgionio [1] obviously do a quick search and find (contrary to what they were told immediately afterwards) that no Capitol police was, in fact, killed during the riot. They either shut up or try to double down. I then point to Officer Sicknick's autopsy results and that usually gets them to shut up.
[1] Who I can only describe, based on his comment, as a Union Army LARPer; "We", indeed. (Actual war reenactors go to great lengths to get the uniforms, gear, and battles right; I doubt asdfgionio has ever seen a battlefield not published by EA.) I've seen several other such instances, of Redditors and such bravely proclaiming how "they" will lead another Sherman's march through states that commit the unpardonable sin of voting for the wrong candidate.
Oh that's what that was, a reference to the civil war? I was wondering what he was talking about, "union guy". Man, these guys really live in a different world than the rest of us.
I was curious about it too because as far as I knew nobody else died from it besides the woman who was shot by capitol police. Every time I think I'm about to learn something new about J6 I don't.
> I was curious about it too because as far as I knew nobody else died from it besides the woman who was shot by capitol police. Every time I think I'm about to learn something new about J6 I don't.
Sicknick's death by stroke the day after the riot was widely attributed to some injury from the incident, despite his having told his family that he had not been injured in the first place. That's why he received the equivalent of a state funeral. That's also why the coroner specifically looked for evidence of trauma causing the stroke, either from a head injury or exposure to tear gas, and specifically ruled out both possibilities in his report. But this still doesn't prevent the gullible from prattling on about how "many" policemen were killed, or that the ravenous mob of rioters were armed with everything but a tactical nuke.
(I think this is also why we haven't yet seen a breathless best-selling account of "The Day Trump Tried to Overthrow the Government", or a Netflix docudrama. Any such work with a pretense of accuracy would have to depict, well, not much beyond 150 idiots invading a public space, refusing to obey Capitol Police's orders, and causing some mayhem until one unarmed rioter is finally shot after an inexplicable delay. No grenades/pipe bombs being detonated, no politicians being lynched, no policemen being fatally beaten by a mob.)
As I wrote elsewhere:
> Had Capitol Police as a whole done their job and used their training and weapons to stop the invaders in the first place, a great deal of trouble would have been avoided while more rioters would have been shot (which I have no problem with). Why they did not do their job is something that I trust will be answered one day.
Sure but it was a disorganized mob rather than a real coup attempt.
Of course the Pentagon's reluctance to send in the National Guard until there was an > 0% chance that the governor of Virginia would order an "invasion" (with the consent of the city mayor) was pretty concerning but incompetence rather than some conspiracy seems like more likely explanation.
OK, now we see just how rational your justification for your position is. Terrorists? It's like when MAGA people call Democrats child molester demon worshippers. Are you even interested in genuine discourse at all?
OK, ya got me: You managed to find one case from 2017 involving one Dem state senator (who was promptly yanked from all her committee assignments after her comment and "chose" not to run for reelection). Oh, and you found a bunch of rants from comedians, actors, and other powerless publicity-seeking hotheads — who can be found in all walks of life and of all political persuasions. Did you find anything in, say, the past couple of years?
I was honestly at first reading what you said thinking "oh really, I didn't know that. I need to look into this, sounds like it was way worse than portrayed" until you said that. Somebody having a stroke is not the same thing as someone being beaten to death or shot. Even saying "several people died" demonstrates a disingenuous disposition, you have to deliberately avoid going into detail to make your point. The only person that died as a result of the actions there was a woman named Ashley Babbit who was shot by US capitol police.
Given that, I ask you, with all these firearms and pipe bombs and a real attempt at insurrection, how come nobody fired or detonated them?
He called for peace and then later for the mob to leave.
A generous to the other side reading of events would be it was a suggestive display of power, that he could rally even more later. Kind of like his perfect phone call being pitched as a thinly-veiled mafioso threat.
Real coups attempts involve officers rally elements to decapitate attentive movements, leaders, non-supporters.
In no honest reality was the mob action on the Capitol anything other than a nuisance. A police department from a city the size of DC could put down a majority unarmed mob with less-than-lethal and more-than-lethal assets.
And even if the mob magically overpowers the police department, the Nasty Girls would put them down and the inauguration ceremony would proceed as normal or be ignored and Biden installed as needed.
Your anonymous account and dishonest retelling (the pipe bombs were not at the Capitol) are nothing but a thinly veiled political troll. Go away.
wizardrobe didn't say it wasn't a violation of norms. Said it wasn't the first violation of norms. (Mind you, I don't know what specific previous violations wizardrobe had it mind...)
It's like, in Rome, Caesar wasn't the first violation of norms. The Gracchi were. Then came Marius and Sulla. Sulla restored the norms and retired - but the precedent of violating the norms had already been set. 19 years later came the first triumvirate. 11 years after that came the civil war.
This is America. This shit happens. A mob just tried to storm the White House last month: https://www.jpost.com/international/article-771751. The Capitol just happens to have no real security (it never had—my wife used to sneak into the Congressional subway system all the time). It’s been bombed at least twice.
So you're equating a few outliers trying to get attention, with an armed mob of thousands — summoned, dispatched, and then egged on by the sitting POTUS.
> Are you trying to say if only a few outliers bomb a building is somehow ok?
No. That's false-dichotomy thinking, along the lines of, "It HAS to be either A or B, and it's not B, so it MUST be A."
> Or because they were far left terrorist its nothing to worry about?
No. They're both bad. But:
1. The BLM rioting was mostly spontaneous and rag-tag, whereas Jan. 6 was orchestrated by the then-Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces, aided and abetted by his acolytes in and out of government (including outsiders such as the Proud Boys); and
2. The societal risks to democratic governance differed enormously. Unlike the BLM rioting, Jan. 6 could conceivably have played out like the October Revolution in the Russia of 1917, where an armed Leninist minority seized power and displaced the Kerensky provisional government that had itself taken control in the wake of the February Revolution. [0]
> I wonder why they [BLM rioters] are otherwise organized and have leadership and full approval of the party which is currently in power?
I don't think you can support that contention with, y'know, evidence. Keep in mind that some — not all — of the so-called BLM arson incidents were later found to have been done as false-flag operations by far-right extremist types [0] or as plain old insurance fraud. [1]
What do you mean without evidence? You are contesting BLM has leadership? They have a website, you can check it out. Regarding the democratic party support, there are a lot of videos from cnn and other networks interviews where visible member give their support to BLM.
You're painting with a broad brush: "BLM" ≠ "rioting."
EDIT: From a 2020 Trump Administration report: "President Donald Trump has blamed leftwing extremist groups for instigating nights of looting and violence in cities across the United States, but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil. [¶] In part of a June 1 internal intelligence assessment of the protests seen by Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said most of the violence appears to have been driven by opportunists." [0]
>> You're painting with a broad brush: "BLM" ≠ "rioting."
And you don't see yourself doing the same to the "other" side?
>> but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil
"limited evidence"
If you have ever read a book about communist revolutions or by chance even lived in a a country which had a violent leftist takeover of power, you would have recognized the tactics and methods of those takeovers in BLM protests.
> Unlike BLM rioting or bombing of the capitol by the far left terrorist they didn't do any property damage or attack other people on the street.
Oh. I guess that makes it OK for the armed right-wing mob to try to seize control of the national government — and to go looking for the sitting VP and Speaker of the House, seemingly with lynching in mind.
(Leftist bombing? You mean by the Weather Underground in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War? That doesn't excuse it by any means, course, but it's so old as to be irrelevant to today's discussion.)
You are the one claiming leftist violence is just a fluke, just kids having fun with robbing, beating and arson. At the same time claiming a much smaller right-wing transgression is the end of the world. The are an examples of right-wing terrorist actions that are much much more despicable and truly destructable. Unlike you I have no problem condemning either side when they are wrong.
>> That doesn't excuse it by any means, course, but it's so old as to be irrelevant to today's discussion.
You must be kidding. Should we also not talk about people and ideology that brought us world war 2, since it has been even longer then the Vietnam war?
I think people also forget that before January 6th we literally had:
* Separatist movements from Antifa and the Left set up autonomous zones within US cities[1].
* Multiple calls for violence from prominent Democrats and other Leftists towards Republican politicians, judges, and a sitting US President [2]
* Billions of damage and looting by Antifa and BLM [3]
* Multiple Antifa and BLM attacks on Federal buildings, including courthouses [4]
I could go on for quite a while, but my point is that any of these events alone is comparable to January 6th. It would have been unimaginable to a 2000s American that any of these things not only take place, but were allowed and even encouraged by a major US political party.
All of these were more violent, damaging, and should carry much stronger legal consequences for the separatists, terrorists, and perpetrators; but because the Democrat-backed groups did it, it is barely even remembered.
None of these were in any way remotely existential threats to actual political stability. Minor protests. The Axios article - a fairly right-ish folk - happily points out that the insurance claims for regional natural disaster like a wildfire season are way higher cost & ongoing, where-as $1-2B estimates over 2 years across the entire nation is not excellent but honestly not bad. And an estimate from a company with a vested interest in exaggerating claims
The gentleman doeth protest too much. The Whataboutisn here is the ridiculous talking points the right wing has had to instill fear & terror in their base. Telling a people they are under attack, that their way of life is in danger, that the cities are all burning & awful: that's propaganda, fear to get folks afraid and concerned and glued to the TV. As known bad guy stated, "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Some of these protests & situations have been tense & ugly & unruly; yes. Their cost wasn't nothing. But there's just so little to fear here. These were mild inconveniences in any broad scope. More generally the false equivalence at large here doesn't sit right with me at all, seems wild. The decorum on the right has severely degraded, to where the party can't even whip itself. The presence of violent & extremist rhetoric is shockingly prevalent & ongoing, from a wide cross section of elected & nominated people. It's inconceivable to imagine a threat from the left now, to see a cycle where the left is broadly working themselves up towards a crisis point. There is no left threat. We've already experienced a major attack from the right & many seem to be campaigning on a platform of only further extremism.
It's the closest thing we've seen to the Beer Hall Putsch, an event that was also so ineptly-orchestrated as to appear comical to many, that had no immediate effect on most peoples' daily lives, and that also led to grossly inadequate punishment for the perpetrators.
Possibly. But the Beer Hall Putsch was a (relatively) highly organized attempt by a militarized organization to a achieve some very specific goals (even though the coup attempt itself was a complete failure since it only took the army a couple of hours to stop it). It wasn't even necessarily such a big deal at the time, the nazis remained an insufficient fringe party for years (until the Great Depression hit).
IMHO Jan 6th was a lot closer to something like the "13 Vendémiaire" just of course with no Napoleon, much lower scale and a lot less violent. In the sense that it was a generic insurrection than an actual coup attempt.
But the Beer Hall Putsch was a (relatively) highly organized attempt by a militarized organization to a achieve some very specific goals (even though the coup attempt itself was a complete failure since it only took the army a couple of hours to stop it). It wasn't even necessarily such a big deal at the time, the nazis remained an insufficient fringe party for years (until the Great Depression hit).
It seems like you meant to start that sentence with "And" rather than "But." January 6 was organized at the highest levels of the executive branch, which is in command of the US military. We can thank our lucky stars that the executive branch was populated by bumbling fools at the time, and that no major economic crisis was in play. But these factors won't always work in our favor as Americans.
It's hard to avoid seeing a disturbing resemblance between the Brown Shirts and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Enrique Tarrio and Ernst Röhm would have a lot to talk about if you locked them in the same cell. They were both betrayed by the personality cults they fought for... which, after all, were chartered to eliminate people like them.
>Timing was pretty bang on if you consider Jan 6th as a turning point
of all the things happening around that same time-frame, the Jan 6th events seem to have been some of the least impactful, aside from just being a huge talking point in these type of "world is decaying" conversations
the media decided to report on that event in such a way as to draw more outrage than the other stuff -- but looking back the other stuff seems to have created a larger last impact; BLM/lock-down/pandemic/WFH/disaster-recession/George Floyd/Rittenhouse/social-distancing, just about any affect of that time period seems to have created deeper scars than the Jan 6th stuff.
now, Jan 6th stuff drew a lot of public outrage -- the sanctity of the office and so on and so fourth -- but real social and physical trauma that has lasted into today? There were more important events during that time-frame in that regard, personal opinion.
If you're just counting physical violence/death/injury then there are more severe events to consider unless we're weighing stuff like "a politician's life is more valuable than a bystander" type rationalization.
and to be clear : i'm not even debating the whole fall-of-Rome premise, i'm just saying that as an individual that witnessed this whole history it feels as if there was greater chinks in the armor than the Jan 6th events.
> now, Jan 6th stuff drew a lot of public outrage -- the sanctity of the office and so on and so fourth -- but real social and physical trauma that has lasted into today? There were more important events during that time-frame in that regard, personal opinion.
You should listen to some Constitutional law folks talk about this stuff. We are crashing headlong into a legitimate constitutional crisis because of January 6 and the resultant cases.
It's unfair to compare the single event on January 6th with every BLM protest, or every state's implementation of lockdown and the resulting clashes, etc. I'm appalled by January 6th because the representative for my district accepted his win in the November elections, went to D.C., and then voted to throw out all votes for my state as being dubious. The riot, building-storming, and literal lynch mob were the natural outcomes of months of cynical choices by politicians to control the government in spite of democratic elections. It's not a thing to let slide.
What state are you from? January 6 didn’t register for me at all, and I grew up in the area and work in DC. I grew up in Virginia, with a very Jefferson heavy curriculum. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants,” and whatnot. I wonder if that has something to do with it.
The natives were heavily armed and owned tons of slaves. A prevailing view was slaves were foisted on the colonists by King George III through a combination of debt and the trans-Atlantic slave trade, so a big goal of the Revolution was ending that trade. Of course Jefferson was wrong, and chattel slavery continued.
Except it was the civil war that caused a debt crisis in Ancient Rome and not the other way around. Repaying debts is somewhat hard when most of your productive assets are destroyed or completely devastated.
Debt forgiveness was a common in such cases because back then government didn't really have any other monetary policy tools or ways to stimulate the economy.
Seems like an extremely poorly written article with an agenda.
Specifically the Roman Republic ~100BC had massive issues which were not necessarily directly related to some "Sovereign Debt Crisis" at the time. Which conveniently the article hasn't described at all jumping to the civil war which it allegedly caused (even though it was the other way around). The Social War was mainly fought over land redistribution, civil rights, equality before the law and the right to vote...
And in any case the debt crisis they are referring wasn't about "sovereign" debt (not really a thing back then) as much as about personal debt and it was a direct outcome of both the devastation during the civil war in Italy and the semi-genocidal Mithridatic war in Asia Minor which began with the rebels executing every single Italian they could fine (which was a bit of a disaster for Italian commerce..).
Modern would just print massive amounts of money during such situations (e.g. Covid) Romans obviously couldn't, so they ended up abolishing 75% of all debt held by anyone which would've achieved the same result, stimulating the economy.
It's easy to solve the debt crisis. Just cancel the debts. The issue these countries have is they lost their sovereignty by getting into debt in a currency they don't control. Going into debt in a foreign currency means you lose sovereignty. Better issue more money in your own currency and risk inflation instead of lose sovereignty.
Because the most important thing for a state is to make sure it does what it promises to. As soon as you let the IMF in, they will force you to break promises and gut public spending. This weakens the country and makes it easier to exploit.
Debts just need to be cancelled. It's all accounting in the end.
So cancel dollars? Or is that debt ok because it's an "IOU nothing"?
Everything comes back to flows, and debt is simply a symptom of a political system unwilling or unable to balance their books. If you start "cancelling" debt, first of all you just cancelled the Federal Reserve so you cancelled yourself. Second of all, you just stole a bunch of money from a bunch of people some of whom may have a standing army ready to ask for it back. Third, you just required yourself to do the budget-balancing you refused or were unwilling to do that got you in this mess in the first place-- because no one will lend to you ever again. Fourth, where does the cancelling end? Social Security? Medicare? Government pensions? No, "just cancel the debts" is not a solution.
The article is about poor countries and their sovereign debt denominated in dollars. That's the debt that needs to be cancelled. In my opinion, all private debt would be good to cancel too. I'm not suggesting the treasury doesn't pay back their debts.
Which part of the US Constitution does cancelling Argentine debts fall afoul of?
Cancelling US debt without consent of the lenders would likely be unconstitutional, but the article seemed to be discussing IMF loans, and I don't think the US has taken any of those.
The US doesn't need to cancel any debts that are denominated in dollars--which means all of the debt that is causing all the ruckus. The US can print dollars. That amounts to devaluing the debt, i.e., it favors debtors at the expense of creditors. Historically, that is exactly how the US has dealt with its debt once it went off the gold standard and dollars were purely fiat money.
If I loan you $20 and a day later you let me know it won't be paid back what will I do?
Retrospectively nothing. The money's gone and I'm not getting it back.
Prospectively? I'm either not lending you $20 again or I'm changing the terms of any future loan to better take care of myself.
Read David Graeber’s book - it's a great chance to think through the possibilities and nature of debt. Mind that Graeber himself does none of that so it's a bit on the reader.
Issue with cancelling debt is that after you do that you won't get more debt. And if your system of spending is setup on what is essentially revolving credit it will very quickly mean you have no money to spend on anything.
Strange, history is littered with debt cancellations and yet here we are. A debt jubilee is like hitting the reset button. The modern financial system will still create debt as it must!
> “Every country has adopted a bankruptcy law,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a former chief economist at the World Bank, “but internationally we don’t have one.”
The United States, though, has repeatedly opposed the idea, saying it is unnecessary.
I don't know when the US said it's unnecessary, but it certainly is unfeasible. Normally, when you are not solvent, you go to a bankruptcy court. The deal is that you accept the court's rulings and the creditors accept them too, and if anyone's unhappy, they can argue within the confines of the judiciary system, and the law enforcement is always present to make sure everyone plays nice.
None of these things exist in an international setting. And the most important missing piece is the law enforcement. If we set a bankruptcy court in Hague, let's say, and one of the parties does not respect its rulings, what exactly is the consequence? You can set up such a court, but it would lose its legitimacy in no time as more an more parties will disregard what it says.
Internationally binding arbitration does exist and is written into trade agreements regularly, e.g. ISDS.
As long as the disputes are small enough to not call into question the entire trade agreement/framework, you can have a backstop that makes this enforceable. The countries that are signatories agree to comply with the decisions so that they remain in good standing wrt the trade agreements.
They are still relatively small on the scale of all international trade. This article talks about a $44bn debt.
And a bankruptcy court does not have to write off debts entirely; it could force new interest rate agreements, fractional haircuts, etc.
I think the bigger question is really if people want such a system or not: would the EU be willing to put tariffs on Chinese goods because they were refusing to restructure Argentinian debt? Would China ever sign on to such an agreement?
I do not think they would, but the issue is not that such a system is impossible, it is that people have to want it and be willing to stake something larger as collateral (i.e. trade) in the first place.
Right now incentives are misaligned. Politicians have no incentive to be responsible with the money.
Time to implement Warren Buffett's proposal: passing a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. This would realign incentives - politicians who seek power will need to be fiscally responsible to attain it.
Can you give some examples? I don't see any other viable solutions. What else will motivate congress to balance the budget than threat of losing their careers?
I feel like our monetary system as a way of balancing resources is failing, most of the debt nowadays doesn't really matter and doesn't represent what actually happens in the economy.
I've been saying this for 5 years straight. I explained in great detail what was wrong and how to fix it but was suppressed on social media. Now that it has become obvious that I was right all along, I'm still suppressed and those who created the problem and suppressed me have the largest following they've ever had as they lead us all deeper and deeper into the catastrophe.
Abolish reserve banking or make interest rates so high as to make it redundant.
Make national currencies be backed by gold or crypto to constrain supply. If that approach is not feasible, then I'd advocate for UBI to even out the playing field and opportunities until we are in an economic position to transition to a hard money system.
Increase penalties and liability of corporate directors who break the law.
Make it harder for corporations to operate. Roll back corporate personhood.
Implement a more granular way to allocate liability in our legal system with a focus on partial liability.
Reduce income taxes.
Regulate social media algorithms to prevent discrimination when it comes to reach (both positive and negative discrimination).
108 comments
[ 2.5 ms ] story [ 176 ms ] thread…
Therefore, we find that the debt crisis was correlated with a separatist movement – which we are beginning to see worldwide starting in Europe, but will eventually become a contagion in the United States as the conflict between left and right erupts after the November elections.”
Timing was pretty bang on if you consider Jan 6th as a turning point
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/ancient-economies...
Could just as well consider something like the Tea Party circa 2010 a turning point in separatism.
For the modern era, at least.
Wow. I know perhaps this makes sense from a non-American perspective, but as an American, January 6 was incredibly violent. I think some people forget that this isn't normal.
seemed pretty violent at times, but it wasn't deadly
There was one death. One. An unarmed rioter named Ashly Babbit who was shot by Capitol Police well after the riot's start.
One Capitol Police member, Officer Sicknick, died of a stroke the day afterwards, but the coroner specifically looked for signs of his either being hit on the head, or exposed to tear gas, as causes, and concluded that neither was true.
Had Capitol Police as a whole done their job and used their training and weapons to stop the invaders in the first place, a great deal of trouble would have been avoided while more rioters would have been shot (which I have no problem with). Why they did not do their job is something that I trust will be answered one day.
What are you talking about? There most certainly was, and a successful one at that. The mob had firearms and pipe bombs and a wide variety of melee weapons. They smashed their way into the building. Rioters intended to hold lawmakers captive and planned to execute the vice president. Several people died.
The sitting president led a mob to levy war against the United States. The fact that it was ineffective doesn't matter.
Care to list which side the people were killed? And were they armed?
The people who were shot were killed to defend the capitol and were given ample warning. Ashley Babbitt, for instance, was trying to break down a door.
There was only one person shot.
I love how when I ask that same question, people like asdfgionio [1] obviously do a quick search and find (contrary to what they were told immediately afterwards) that no Capitol police was, in fact, killed during the riot. They either shut up or try to double down. I then point to Officer Sicknick's autopsy results and that usually gets them to shut up.
[1] Who I can only describe, based on his comment, as a Union Army LARPer; "We", indeed. (Actual war reenactors go to great lengths to get the uniforms, gear, and battles right; I doubt asdfgionio has ever seen a battlefield not published by EA.) I've seen several other such instances, of Redditors and such bravely proclaiming how "they" will lead another Sherman's march through states that commit the unpardonable sin of voting for the wrong candidate.
I was curious about it too because as far as I knew nobody else died from it besides the woman who was shot by capitol police. Every time I think I'm about to learn something new about J6 I don't.
Sicknick's death by stroke the day after the riot was widely attributed to some injury from the incident, despite his having told his family that he had not been injured in the first place. That's why he received the equivalent of a state funeral. That's also why the coroner specifically looked for evidence of trauma causing the stroke, either from a head injury or exposure to tear gas, and specifically ruled out both possibilities in his report. But this still doesn't prevent the gullible from prattling on about how "many" policemen were killed, or that the ravenous mob of rioters were armed with everything but a tactical nuke.
(I think this is also why we haven't yet seen a breathless best-selling account of "The Day Trump Tried to Overthrow the Government", or a Netflix docudrama. Any such work with a pretense of accuracy would have to depict, well, not much beyond 150 idiots invading a public space, refusing to obey Capitol Police's orders, and causing some mayhem until one unarmed rioter is finally shot after an inexplicable delay. No grenades/pipe bombs being detonated, no politicians being lynched, no policemen being fatally beaten by a mob.)
As I wrote elsewhere:
> Had Capitol Police as a whole done their job and used their training and weapons to stop the invaders in the first place, a great deal of trouble would have been avoided while more rioters would have been shot (which I have no problem with). Why they did not do their job is something that I trust will be answered one day.
Of course the Pentagon's reluctance to send in the National Guard until there was an > 0% chance that the governor of Virginia would order an "invasion" (with the consent of the city mayor) was pretty concerning but incompetence rather than some conspiracy seems like more likely explanation.
Can you elaborate on that?
The most important ones are the fake electors scheme, the phone call to Brian Kemp, and numerous attempts to steal or tamper with voting machines.
Both of them were ultimately political protests and yet everyone seems to have forgotten about the actually violent one.
Give me a break.
Citation, please?
https://www.thewrap.com/hollywood-stars-donald-trump-violent...
‘I hope Trump is assassinated’
- Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal
I was honestly at first reading what you said thinking "oh really, I didn't know that. I need to look into this, sounds like it was way worse than portrayed" until you said that. Somebody having a stroke is not the same thing as someone being beaten to death or shot. Even saying "several people died" demonstrates a disingenuous disposition, you have to deliberately avoid going into detail to make your point. The only person that died as a result of the actions there was a woman named Ashley Babbit who was shot by US capitol police.
Given that, I ask you, with all these firearms and pipe bombs and a real attempt at insurrection, how come nobody fired or detonated them?
A generous to the other side reading of events would be it was a suggestive display of power, that he could rally even more later. Kind of like his perfect phone call being pitched as a thinly-veiled mafioso threat.
Real coups attempts involve officers rally elements to decapitate attentive movements, leaders, non-supporters.
In no honest reality was the mob action on the Capitol anything other than a nuisance. A police department from a city the size of DC could put down a majority unarmed mob with less-than-lethal and more-than-lethal assets.
And even if the mob magically overpowers the police department, the Nasty Girls would put them down and the inauguration ceremony would proceed as normal or be ignored and Biden installed as needed.
Your anonymous account and dishonest retelling (the pipe bombs were not at the Capitol) are nothing but a thinly veiled political troll. Go away.
It's like, in Rome, Caesar wasn't the first violation of norms. The Gracchi were. Then came Marius and Sulla. Sulla restored the norms and retired - but the precedent of violating the norms had already been set. 19 years later came the first triumvirate. 11 years after that came the civil war.
JFC.
No. That's false-dichotomy thinking, along the lines of, "It HAS to be either A or B, and it's not B, so it MUST be A."
> Or because they were far left terrorist its nothing to worry about?
No. They're both bad. But:
1. The BLM rioting was mostly spontaneous and rag-tag, whereas Jan. 6 was orchestrated by the then-Commander in Chief of the U.S. armed forces, aided and abetted by his acolytes in and out of government (including outsiders such as the Proud Boys); and
2. The societal risks to democratic governance differed enormously. Unlike the BLM rioting, Jan. 6 could conceivably have played out like the October Revolution in the Russia of 1917, where an armed Leninist minority seized power and displaced the Kerensky provisional government that had itself taken control in the wake of the February Revolution. [0]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Revolution
Sure they were. I wonder why they are otherwise organized and have leadership and full approval of the party which is currently in power?
>> The societal risks to democratic governance differed enormously. Unlike the BLM rioting
Unlike BLM rioting or bombing of the capitol by the far left terrorist they didn't do any property damage or attack other people on the street.
I don't think you can support that contention with, y'know, evidence. Keep in mind that some — not all — of the so-called BLM arson incidents were later found to have been done as false-flag operations by far-right extremist types [0] or as plain old insurance fraud. [1]
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/23/texas-boogaloo...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/minnesota-trump-support...
EDIT: From a 2020 Trump Administration report: "President Donald Trump has blamed leftwing extremist groups for instigating nights of looting and violence in cities across the United States, but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil. [¶] In part of a June 1 internal intelligence assessment of the protests seen by Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said most of the violence appears to have been driven by opportunists." [0]
[0] https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN23A1MZ/
And you don't see yourself doing the same to the "other" side?
>> but an intelligence assessment offers limited evidence that organized extremists are behind the turmoil
"limited evidence"
If you have ever read a book about communist revolutions or by chance even lived in a a country which had a violent leftist takeover of power, you would have recognized the tactics and methods of those takeovers in BLM protests.
No — I'm making specific accusations about Donald Trump and some of his followers in and out of government.
Oh. I guess that makes it OK for the armed right-wing mob to try to seize control of the national government — and to go looking for the sitting VP and Speaker of the House, seemingly with lynching in mind.
(Leftist bombing? You mean by the Weather Underground in 1971, at the height of the Vietnam War? That doesn't excuse it by any means, course, but it's so old as to be irrelevant to today's discussion.)
https://www.history.com/news/us-capitol-building-violence-fi...
>> That doesn't excuse it by any means, course, but it's so old as to be irrelevant to today's discussion.
You must be kidding. Should we also not talk about people and ideology that brought us world war 2, since it has been even longer then the Vietnam war?
* Separatist movements from Antifa and the Left set up autonomous zones within US cities[1].
* Multiple calls for violence from prominent Democrats and other Leftists towards Republican politicians, judges, and a sitting US President [2]
* Billions of damage and looting by Antifa and BLM [3]
* Multiple Antifa and BLM attacks on Federal buildings, including courthouses [4]
I could go on for quite a while, but my point is that any of these events alone is comparable to January 6th. It would have been unimaginable to a 2000s American that any of these things not only take place, but were allowed and even encouraged by a major US political party.
All of these were more violent, damaging, and should carry much stronger legal consequences for the separatists, terrorists, and perpetrators; but because the Democrat-backed groups did it, it is barely even remembered.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Hill_Occupied_Protest
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG5BcU1ZGiA
[3] https://www.axios.com/2020/09/16/riots-cost-property-damage - this is just for the May to June of 2020 time period.
[4] https://www.justice.gov/usao-nv/pr/five-individuals-face-fed... and https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/12/protesters-vandalize-... but there are more.
It's another thing entirely when the President does it.
(Which I'm sure you'd be braying from the hilltops, had the President in question been named Clinton or Biden or Obama.)
But yeah, to your point, stochastic terrorism is indeed a thing. Ask your favorite right-wing politician about that, they're the actual experts.
The gentleman doeth protest too much. The Whataboutisn here is the ridiculous talking points the right wing has had to instill fear & terror in their base. Telling a people they are under attack, that their way of life is in danger, that the cities are all burning & awful: that's propaganda, fear to get folks afraid and concerned and glued to the TV. As known bad guy stated, "All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country.
Some of these protests & situations have been tense & ugly & unruly; yes. Their cost wasn't nothing. But there's just so little to fear here. These were mild inconveniences in any broad scope. More generally the false equivalence at large here doesn't sit right with me at all, seems wild. The decorum on the right has severely degraded, to where the party can't even whip itself. The presence of violent & extremist rhetoric is shockingly prevalent & ongoing, from a wide cross section of elected & nominated people. It's inconceivable to imagine a threat from the left now, to see a cycle where the left is broadly working themselves up towards a crisis point. There is no left threat. We've already experienced a major attack from the right & many seem to be campaigning on a platform of only further extremism.
Possibly. But the Beer Hall Putsch was a (relatively) highly organized attempt by a militarized organization to a achieve some very specific goals (even though the coup attempt itself was a complete failure since it only took the army a couple of hours to stop it). It wasn't even necessarily such a big deal at the time, the nazis remained an insufficient fringe party for years (until the Great Depression hit).
IMHO Jan 6th was a lot closer to something like the "13 Vendémiaire" just of course with no Napoleon, much lower scale and a lot less violent. In the sense that it was a generic insurrection than an actual coup attempt.
It seems like you meant to start that sentence with "And" rather than "But." January 6 was organized at the highest levels of the executive branch, which is in command of the US military. We can thank our lucky stars that the executive branch was populated by bumbling fools at the time, and that no major economic crisis was in play. But these factors won't always work in our favor as Americans.
It's hard to avoid seeing a disturbing resemblance between the Brown Shirts and groups like the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. Enrique Tarrio and Ernst Röhm would have a lot to talk about if you locked them in the same cell. They were both betrayed by the personality cults they fought for... which, after all, were chartered to eliminate people like them.
of all the things happening around that same time-frame, the Jan 6th events seem to have been some of the least impactful, aside from just being a huge talking point in these type of "world is decaying" conversations
the media decided to report on that event in such a way as to draw more outrage than the other stuff -- but looking back the other stuff seems to have created a larger last impact; BLM/lock-down/pandemic/WFH/disaster-recession/George Floyd/Rittenhouse/social-distancing, just about any affect of that time period seems to have created deeper scars than the Jan 6th stuff.
now, Jan 6th stuff drew a lot of public outrage -- the sanctity of the office and so on and so fourth -- but real social and physical trauma that has lasted into today? There were more important events during that time-frame in that regard, personal opinion.
If you're just counting physical violence/death/injury then there are more severe events to consider unless we're weighing stuff like "a politician's life is more valuable than a bystander" type rationalization.
and to be clear : i'm not even debating the whole fall-of-Rome premise, i'm just saying that as an individual that witnessed this whole history it feels as if there was greater chinks in the armor than the Jan 6th events.
You should listen to some Constitutional law folks talk about this stuff. We are crashing headlong into a legitimate constitutional crisis because of January 6 and the resultant cases.
YGBSM
Also maybe let’s break that toxic cycle instead of continuing it
Certainly the native populations and black slaves didn’t have much voice here.
Debt forgiveness was a common in such cases because back then government didn't really have any other monetary policy tools or ways to stimulate the economy.
Specifically the Roman Republic ~100BC had massive issues which were not necessarily directly related to some "Sovereign Debt Crisis" at the time. Which conveniently the article hasn't described at all jumping to the civil war which it allegedly caused (even though it was the other way around). The Social War was mainly fought over land redistribution, civil rights, equality before the law and the right to vote...
And in any case the debt crisis they are referring wasn't about "sovereign" debt (not really a thing back then) as much as about personal debt and it was a direct outcome of both the devastation during the civil war in Italy and the semi-genocidal Mithridatic war in Asia Minor which began with the rebels executing every single Italian they could fine (which was a bit of a disaster for Italian commerce..).
Modern would just print massive amounts of money during such situations (e.g. Covid) Romans obviously couldn't, so they ended up abolishing 75% of all debt held by anyone which would've achieved the same result, stimulating the economy.
It was supposed to be a comment on https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/history/ancient-economies...
Because the most important thing for a state is to make sure it does what it promises to. As soon as you let the IMF in, they will force you to break promises and gut public spending. This weakens the country and makes it easier to exploit.
Debts just need to be cancelled. It's all accounting in the end.
Everything comes back to flows, and debt is simply a symptom of a political system unwilling or unable to balance their books. If you start "cancelling" debt, first of all you just cancelled the Federal Reserve so you cancelled yourself. Second of all, you just stole a bunch of money from a bunch of people some of whom may have a standing army ready to ask for it back. Third, you just required yourself to do the budget-balancing you refused or were unwilling to do that got you in this mess in the first place-- because no one will lend to you ever again. Fourth, where does the cancelling end? Social Security? Medicare? Government pensions? No, "just cancel the debts" is not a solution.
Not so sure that's a great idea
AFAIK that's unconstitutional in the US at least.
Cancelling US debt without consent of the lenders would likely be unconstitutional, but the article seemed to be discussing IMF loans, and I don't think the US has taken any of those.
If I loan you $20 and a day later you let me know it won't be paid back what will I do?
Retrospectively nothing. The money's gone and I'm not getting it back.
Prospectively? I'm either not lending you $20 again or I'm changing the terms of any future loan to better take care of myself.
Read David Graeber’s book - it's a great chance to think through the possibilities and nature of debt. Mind that Graeber himself does none of that so it's a bit on the reader.
I don't know when the US said it's unnecessary, but it certainly is unfeasible. Normally, when you are not solvent, you go to a bankruptcy court. The deal is that you accept the court's rulings and the creditors accept them too, and if anyone's unhappy, they can argue within the confines of the judiciary system, and the law enforcement is always present to make sure everyone plays nice.
None of these things exist in an international setting. And the most important missing piece is the law enforcement. If we set a bankruptcy court in Hague, let's say, and one of the parties does not respect its rulings, what exactly is the consequence? You can set up such a court, but it would lose its legitimacy in no time as more an more parties will disregard what it says.
As long as the disputes are small enough to not call into question the entire trade agreement/framework, you can have a backstop that makes this enforceable. The countries that are signatories agree to comply with the decisions so that they remain in good standing wrt the trade agreements.
And a bankruptcy court does not have to write off debts entirely; it could force new interest rate agreements, fractional haircuts, etc.
I think the bigger question is really if people want such a system or not: would the EU be willing to put tariffs on Chinese goods because they were refusing to restructure Argentinian debt? Would China ever sign on to such an agreement?
I do not think they would, but the issue is not that such a system is impossible, it is that people have to want it and be willing to stake something larger as collateral (i.e. trade) in the first place.
Time to implement Warren Buffett's proposal: passing a law that says anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP, all sitting members of Congress are ineligible for re-election. This would realign incentives - politicians who seek power will need to be fiscally responsible to attain it.
Historically this was almost always a terrible idea under most circumstances.
This would be even worse due to perfectly obvious reasons (just like the debt limit nonsense).
Abolish reserve banking or make interest rates so high as to make it redundant.
Make national currencies be backed by gold or crypto to constrain supply. If that approach is not feasible, then I'd advocate for UBI to even out the playing field and opportunities until we are in an economic position to transition to a hard money system.
Increase penalties and liability of corporate directors who break the law.
Make it harder for corporations to operate. Roll back corporate personhood.
Implement a more granular way to allocate liability in our legal system with a focus on partial liability.
Reduce income taxes.
Regulate social media algorithms to prevent discrimination when it comes to reach (both positive and negative discrimination).
Everyday users (not government or big tech or anything) are down voting you because of your grandiose tone and unoriginal point of view.
It looks like you are having some issues with delusions and maybe even paranoia. Take it easy. Maybe go talk to a professional.
Best of luck.