Huh?

Trump is one of the worst politicians America has seen in a long time. Organizations like the Proud Boys are a real and growing threat and would surely be making legitimate moves to attack the government given the opportunity and needed support, and similar groups have done so before. The remaining bulk of the mob were malicious assholes with a handful of braincells between them, and the fact that that they vote is enough to make me gag. But when the overwhelming majority of them simply wandered around, mindlessly vandalizing the capitol building before leaving, I have an incredibly hard time seeing them as an inssurectionary force hell bent on the destruction of the United States of America.

I'm not saying January 6th wasn't a horrifying display of the effects of propaganda and the influence a populist strongman can generate. I'm not saying it was remotely acceptable, let alone positive. I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished as harshly as the law permits. And if I'm being entirely, brutally honest, I think the response from capitol security should have been much, much more forceful--if the capitol was under siege by a mob of a thousand or more terrorists, all committed to slaughtering congress and installing a dictator, then there should be far more than one person from that mob with "gunshot wound" written on their autopsy report. But that's not the case. The security response was milquetoast, the capitol was stormed, and the grand result was...significant property damage. If you can point me to another major insurrectionary force that accomplished its goals through terroristic acts of vandalism, then I'd be more inclined to see the label as fitting. Without that, though, calling these idiots inssurectionists gives them far more credit and legitimacy than they deserve.

Not really. Deffering to someone with expertise and allowing them to oversee and organize an effort pertaining to their specialty doesn't necessarily mean that you're forming a hierarchical system. If people voluntarily elect to listen to this temporary leader's advice in order to better achieve their collective goals, and the leader doesn't have some mechanism to enforce their wishes, then the leader's station isn't higher than anyone else's. If the process is fluid, like with the sheep in the article, then it's simply a matter of people choosing to give someone increased capacity to manage the group while their knowledge and experience is relevant before shifting that limited authority (distinct from power) to someone whose abilities are more relevant.

While commonly characterized as being chaotic, anarchism doesn't require a total lack of any structure, order, and/or organization. The main caveat is that any system of organization is a matter of voluntary association, and that anyone in a leadership role isn't granted undue authority or presumed inherent legitimacy and the ability to impress their will upon others.

>That was the plain, unembellished description. The biased one was "riot."

Ah yes, they were all there to literally "destroy the nation." My bad.

>I don't have to justify a plain, factual description. It's literally just what happened. I would never say they are "on par" with terrorists--they are literally, objectively, actual terrorists. It's only wild because the truth is wild, and that is most certainly not my fault.

You're right. You wouldn't have to justify an objective, factual description. I'd advise looking up the definition of terrorism: the guy they have planting homemade bombs by the convention buildings is a terrorist; the people who yelled really loud and then wandered around breaking things were not. If you think those two examples are the same, and that the latter belongs in the category that organizations and people like ISIS, LRA, The Order, Kaczynski, and McVeigh fall into, then I think you have fundamental misunderstandings about what terrorism is.

I don't know about you, but I think the security response to action taken by those groups would have been very different than what happened on the 6th. The government response was surprisingly gentle for being faced with hundreds of terrorists storming the Capitol, all of whom had the intent of annihilating the entire country. Miraculously, we survived in spite of it.

>You are not entitled to your own facts. You may not disagree with the facts. There are no alternative facts. These facts do not care about your feelings. Etc.

I agree wholeheartedly!

The former weren't even riots, as you said. Characterizing the latter as

>a terrorist attack against their own nation in an attempt to destroy said nation so that they can install as dictator

is pretty hard to justify unless you're referring specifically to groups like the Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, etc. They're absolutely interested in acting as you describe given the opportunity. The majority of the people there, though, were gullible idiots following along with the mob--malicious and deserving of punishment, but not on par with actual terrorists.

When the primary consequence of the event was significant vandalism, calling it an insurrection seems like a pretty big stretch. Aside from the obvious implications for the intelligence of the American electorate the fact that people believed something Donald Trump said has, I'm honestly more concerned that capitol security was pathetic enough that the building was breached in the first place. A single "insurrectionist" was killed by security; if that's how the government handles an insurrection, we might have problems beyond the insurrection itself.

Dumb people who actually had an intent to destroy the government; most of the assholes rioting around the capitol did not. Stupid, reprehensible, and threatening, but not on par with a real insurrectionary force.

Calling a bunch of morons running around vandalizing shit an uprising gives them more credit than they deserve. Some of them of them went in there with a legitimate belief that they were going to depose the government, and those people are insurrectionists, but the vast majority of people participating in the riot were just stupid and followed the person in front of them. They deserve to be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, but let's not act like most of these people were revolutionaries.