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[Maximum Spin]

... it's harder to organize a storming of Congress when you're NOT in the White House.

Not really?

[Robsoie]

From what i read of the various rebellions in your country, they didn't all need a guy in the white house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States

[Random_Dragon]

It need not be throwing a gaggle of drunken morons at the capital in an attempted coup, either. Could be an attempt to just get the electoral college to ignore the popular vote. Not to mention the usual voter suppression and gerrymandering in the first place.

[bloop_bleep]

... it's harder to organize a storming of Congress when you're NOT in the White House.

Not really?

Yes really. Someone else is in control of the National Guard in that case, as well as all the other many executive powers of the President. I mean, it seems common sense?

[hector13]

... it's harder to organize a storming of Congress when you're NOT in the White House.

Not really?

Yes really. Someone else is in control of the National Guard in that case, as well as all the other many executive powers of the President. I mean, it seems common sense?

It’s a publicly accessible building on publicly accessible streets, and the public have the right to protest enshrined in law.

[bloop_bleep]

... it's harder to organize a storming of Congress when you're NOT in the White House.

Not really?

Yes really. Someone else is in control of the National Guard in that case, as well as all the other many executive powers of the President. I mean, it seems common sense?

It’s a publicly accessible building on publicly accessible streets, and the public have the right to protest enshrined in law.

I'm sorry, I don't see your point?

[hector13]

... it's harder to organize a storming of Congress when you're NOT in the White House.

Not really?

Yes really. Someone else is in control of the National Guard in that case, as well as all the other many executive powers of the President. I mean, it seems common sense?

It’s a publicly accessible building on publicly accessible streets, and the public have the right to protest enshrined in law.

I'm sorry, I don't see your point?

In much the same way I don’t see your own.

People are allowed to be there, and they’re allowed to be there in angry groups. The NG’s presence won’t change that. Biden also is not going to make an executive order saying people aren’t allowed to protest; that would be patently ridiculous.

Beyond that, there was advance knowledge by federal agencies of what may happen on January 6th, to the point there were federal agents in the crowd. That didn’t stop the storming of the capitol, nor did the presence of the capitol police, and I can’t imagine that would be any different should it happen again, with additional agencies present.

Further from that, you have the likes of Fox “News” shitting themselves over losing viewership to other right-wing outlets that they were willing to broadcast what they knew was utter bullshit about elections being stolen to avoid that, stoking further division.

Common sense doesn’t enter the equation because common sense dictates Trump is a selfish narcissistic loon whose only selling point is his name, supported by media outlets owned and anchored by other narcissistic loons trying to make money and maintain relevance in a market with increasing competition.

If you think your country is being stolen, and the only man who is able to stop that is being persecuted by the establishment he says is trying to keep you down, what are you going to do?

[Max™]

From what i read of the various rebellions in your country, they didn't all need a guy in the white house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States

That list should be broken down in clearer categories: anti-racists and slaves do not rebel for the exact same reasons as anti-capitalists usually, but they never rebel for the same reason as white supremacist losers like the confederates and J6 fuckos did.

Like literally that list charts out the popular support/current government position on whether black people are property, and when the people who don't feel entitled to own slaves are out of power you start to see other types of actions treated as rebellion.

With everything involving US history it is good to look at it and ask yourself "what did this have to do with racism?"

Just because it isn't obvious that doesn't mean it is absent.

[EuchreJack]

From what i read of the various rebellions in your country, they didn't all need a guy in the white house
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rebellions_in_the_United_States

That list should be broken down in clearer categories: anti-racists and slaves do not rebel for the exact same reasons as anti-capitalists usually, but they never rebel for the same reason as white supremacist losers like the confederates and J6 fuckos did.

Like literally that list charts out the popular support/current government position on whether black people are property, and when the people who don't feel entitled to own slaves are out of power you start to see other types of actions treated as rebellion.

With everything involving US history it is good to look at it and ask yourself "what did this have to do with racism?"

Just because it isn't obvious that doesn't mean it is absent.

It's a Wikipedia link. If you don't like it, change it!

[Strife26]

It'd make almost as much sense as organizing based on if the number of participants was odd or even!

[Duuvian]

So the RESTRICT Act has made it to the floor of the Senate while everyone was paying attention to Trump. Here is a better if late rebuttal to Shonus's (EDIT: removed unnecessarily critical choice of words) information than I could have provided, and an example of how things like this will most certainly be used for purposes other than the (untrustworthy) statements of Warner.

https://www.techradar.com/features/restrict-act-introduced-in-us-senate-to-fast-track-tiktok-ban
RESTRICT Act introduced in US Senate to fast-track TikTok ban

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

A spokesperson for well-known VPN provider Private Internet Access reached out to TechRadar, stating that "the RESTRICT Act would impose unacceptable restrictions on citizens' digital freedom and raises serious questions over how far the government is willing to compromise the privacy rights of its citizens.

"Prohibiting the use of certain technologies or social media sites bleakly opposes the vision of an open and free digital world and raises serious concerns over the future of digital freedom in the US."

Blanket bans of any online service always carry with them the scent of censorship, and rarely stop at a single restriction. A huge number of daily applications and services are based in China, or owned by Chinese companies, and while TikTok is the by far and away the hottest current topic, in time further smaller apps may suffer the same fate.
The domino effect

It's quite possible to imagine how this bill could set off a chain reaction in the US. With the power to ban not only mobile applications, but any organization that permits transactions of data between the US and its adversaries, any Chinese- or Russian-owned business will be sweating.

Simple examples are TikTok and Huawei telecoms devices, but look a little deeper and this has the potential to affect more than that. For example, Volvo and Lotus cars are owned by the Chinese company Zhejiang Geely Holding Group. Should sales of US-made cars begin to dwindle, there’s a possibility that the government could leverage this legislation to remove the competition from the market.

It's important to note that this example is just that—an example. However, it serves to show the knock-on effect of hasty legislation, and the importance of understanding how laws can serve a far wider purpose than initially intended.

https://theintercept.com/2023/04/05/colorado-student-gun-violence-protest/
Tasked With Stopping Terror, Colorado’s Intel Agency Monitors Students Protesting Gun Violence

In an related note, going after VPNs is directly harmful to US foreign policy. This is because they are an avenue for citizens of authoritarian nations to connect outside of the interests of their governments to at least some degree. This Act will hinder that by extension, something it appears the leadership driving this bill is too incompetent or selfish to understand. I can not stress enough how this is contrary to it's objectives due to the structure of the bill.

A serious problem is that some of our aged democrats appear quite willing to carry water for advisors engaged in a near unilateral culture war AGAINST them and their supporters and the foreign policy goals of the country. Seriously, in foreign policy you are winning like CRAZY on this small front due to the open internet (and failing on the domestic front because of the same people's selective inclinations), why would you fuck that up? (see popular protests in various countries you don't like) Is it because winning despite these advising interests make them very angry? Do they have interests contrary to the country? Fix problems with narrow and targetted bills, not sweeping government power grabs that obviously run afoul of the 1st Amendment and depend on a public scare to have even lukewarm public support.

A reminder that the penalty is up to 20 years in prison and/or up to a one million dollar fine. So I guess your criminal justice reform is to make more petty criminals to punish draconically for things that aught not be a crime in the first place? How's that been working out? Perhaps listening to people who profit from such things is not the way to go, tried and tested though it may be.

[Lord Shonus]

In much the same way I don’t see your own.

People are allowed to be there, and they’re allowed to be there in angry groups. The NG’s presence won’t change that. Biden also is not going to make an executive order saying people aren’t allowed to protest; that would be patently ridiculous.

Beyond that, there was advance knowledge by federal agencies of what may happen on January 6th, to the point there were federal agents in the crowd. That didn’t stop the storming of the capitol, nor did the presence of the capitol police, and I can’t imagine that would be any different should it happen again, with additional agencies present.

Nobody wants or expects the right to protest to be restricted. That would be, as you say, patently ridiculous. Preventing a protest from turning into a riot, and preventing a mob from forcing entry into a building, however, are generally solved problems with sufficient manpower.

Two major factors allowed the January 6 incident to happen the way it did. First, Capitol Police was not there in significant numbers - primarily because the people in charge of their deployment deliberately reduced deployment. Second, when requests for additional manpower from the National Guard started coming through, Trump (the sitting POTUS has the final say on DC's NG) flatly refused. This meant that the security forces did not have enough manpower to contain the crowd by any means whatsoever. A stronger force almost certainly would have been able to contain it.


More importantly, there was no major advance notice of what was going to happen on Jan 6th, because the majority of the mob didn't know what was going to happen. Most of the participants pretty blatantly were going with the mob mind when they breached the building - that's why most of them didn't do much besides mill about and commit vandalism. If there was intelligence that groups like the Proud Boys were planning to turn it into more (which I haven't seen evidence of), that only makes the point stronger, because that can be dealt with preemptively. Nothing in our legal system requires you to actually launch a planned insurrection before it becomes a crime, and the failure to do so in the case of Jan 6 either means that there wasn't sufficient intel to do so (which could be a problem again, but it is less likely now) or that the people in charge (the Executive branch oversees Federal police, which means POTUS) prevented it (which won't be a factor this time around).

[EuchreJack]

So I guess I won't be able to play my video games made by Russians, or chat on Discord with foreign nationals, and we can expect certain members of this forum to be banned due to the policies of their government, that they don't agree with.
Good job protecting Democracy across the World, USA.

[Maximum Spin]

So I guess I won't be able to play my video games made by Russians, or chat on Discord with foreign nationals, and we can expect certain members of this forum to be banned due to the policies of their government, that they don't agree with.
Good job protecting Democracy across the World, USA.

That's why the right to unilaterally withdraw from a government that fails to protect your interests is so important and fundamental to the concept of sovereignty worldwide.

"[I]t is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."

[MorleyDev]

But in a working Democracy you do that by voting them out.