My dude- I am literally the person who said that, and no where in there is a question. I think I know what I meant.

The people that day dressed in body armor and literally thought they were are war. Their goal was to overturn the election and the will of the people, thus destroying democracy. They would have killed Pence, Pelosi, etc...had they caught them. They had weapons. they were violent, they were dressed in tactical gear. Just because they were too stupid and disorganized to pull it off doesn't change what they were trying to do.

This may sound harsh, but you need to stop approaching everything like it is a thesis for your PHD. Instead of trying to use word salad or warp definitions to show you are on some higher level of thinking just accept sometimes a spade is a spade. This is one of those times.

They brought industrial strength zipties that are used to handcuff and legcuffs people

They shouted about hanging people
They grabbed flagpoles and hit cops with them. They broke windows to enter.
They harassed cops. They smothered cops. THey pinned cops behind shields. They threw things at cops. They dragged one into the crowd so he could be beaten.

What? The election had not been certified, they knew the election was not yet certified, and they broke into the building to stop the certification. Case closed.

And for the record, I am not suggesting that they should be facing the death penalty or even treason charges. But to suggest these people had no idea what they were there to attempt to do is just ludicrous.

Correct, but that doesn't change the fact that there's a huge difference in trying to stop a certification for the rightful winner, and trying to stop one for the wrong one.

Imagine if Trump had been successful in getting some of the states to throw out Biden votes or whatever and certify the results in his favor, and the military had to come in to enforce the right outcome. How would that action be evaluated? It all depends on who you think the rightful winner is.


I'm not trying to do that, and I don't question what you meant. I'm responding to what appears to me to be the clear meaning of what you said, and also what appears to me to be a lot of bad logic in applying the law.

I don't consider myself to be on a higher level of thinking. I just think the arguments put forward by some people in this discussion are clearly bad, incorrect, and ones that they themselves would laugh at if the same thought process were applied in different circumstances.

People just disagree sometimes. That doesn't require bad faith, word salad, or presumptions of superiority. People just look at the same set of facts and come to radically different conclusions. That's human nature.

Edit: From my perspective, what happens quite a bit around here is there are certain perspectives than particular posters think are just unassailable and beyond question. A number of them I don't agree with, and every so often I decide to wade in and question them. Whether I'm right or wrong, though I'm not putting on an act and truly believe what I post, what tends to result is what I view as an illogical and incredulous disgusted response. It feels to me like it's a forum devoted to discussing important contemporary issues, but only a fairly narrow range of views are actually welcomed for discussion. I just don't see it as calling a spade a spade. I see it as calling a flower a spade, and then considering it absurd that anyone could possibly seriously entertain the idea that it might, in fact, be a flower and dare to say so.

Lol. I don’t think I’m on a higher level of thinking, it’s just that I’m right and you all are wrong isn’t really a great argument.

If that's what you mean by that, what's different between what I say and what you and others say? I mean, you obviously think you're right and I'm wrong, and since that's the case more power to you for arguing for your point of view. If all 'higher plane of thinking' means is simply believing your correct on a particular issue ... I mean, isn't that true of everybody who bothers voicing their opinion here on any issue, ever?

You’re doing it now.

I am lost at what you are even discussing. If my aunt had nuts, she would be my uncle. I am not talking in hypotheticals. I am talking about reality. Or are you suggesting that these people are right in what they did? Because I believe you don't have even a little basis in law for that.

I wasn't talking about hypotheticals either. I will stand behind what I said earlier in the discussion; I don't think the charges and sentences have been adequate for what they did. I don't in any way defend the violence they committed.

The point I was making is that when you talk about overthrowing government, overturning an election, etc, a central element of that is whether they thought that was what they were doing, or whether they thought they were preventing an election from being overturned. Whether they believed the Big Lie or not is crucial to motive, and to establishing appropriate charges.

No it doesn't. Criminals often justify their actions. It doesn't change the fact they committed the crime. Whether they felt it was the right thing to do is immaterial to criminal charges.

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It does when motive and intent are elements of the crime. For crimes where that is not the case, no it doesn't matter. That's why there are multiple degrees of many crimes. Not every killing is first-degree murder; other degrees exist, manslaughter exists, negligent homicide exists, justifiable homicide exists, and so on depending on the jurisdiction and specific laws in it of course, but throughout the legal system there are differences in crimes and punishments for them based on motive and intent.

But in this case, they had motive and intent. Whether they thought they were righting a wrong is immaterial. They wanted to stop the election from being certified. The end. Their belief that the election was faulty is irrelevant. They knew what they were doing, the why does not change or justify that.
Are you suggesting that people should be allowed to take the law into their own hands?

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It's way more complicated than that, as I stated in my comment above. There's a reason no one has been charged with treason.

I just found this from an Atlantic article from 2022. I think this is a pretty good summary of the complexities surrounding these facts as supporting treason. The 4th paragraph down is exactly the scenario I was thinking about in my comment above. I guess I could still pass a law school exam anyway.

I'm personally not talking about treason, just to be clear.

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No. I don't know how to be any clearer than I already have been on that point.

Agree with KSyrup, but also perhaps may be useful to add a thought experiment to what he quoted. Suppose that Trump had been successful in getting the election wrongly certified for him. Whether that was strongarming Pence, getting votes thrown out in Georgia/Michigan/wherever. You get a nuclear constitutional crisis scenario where both Biden and Trump show up to the inauguration expecting to be sworn in. The military steps in and overrules the corrupt certification, enforcing the correct result of Biden becoming President.

What just happened in that scenario? Was it a coup by the military? An attempted one by Trump and his cronies? It all depends on where the facts lie. If you know the certification was wrong, your conclusion is different than if you don't think it was, and who gets charged with what in the fallout will be determined by that.

It would be a coup by the military, because there is no legal instrument under the law for the military to remove the president.

And to add, your scenario is exactly why what these people did was so terrible and they all should get harsher sentences than they are. They came inches from creating a constitutional crisis that would have been catastrophic for our country. And that was exactly their goal.

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I get what you are saying Brian, actually

But the fact remains that there is an objective right or wrong side

It seems your thinking comes at this from an "all reality is relative and could theoretically be correct" angle and I don't agree with that at all

That's a very reasonable post, although I admit to being very confused about how anyone could come to the conclusion that


I think I'm just repeating myself here, but ...

- I completely agree that there is an objectively correct side
- I am not at all saying reality is relative

What I'm talking about is state of mind. I disagree with GrantDawg that motive and intent are obvious here; the only way that could possibly be the case is if everyone was in agreement on the facts and that's not the situation. Somebody believing something false does not in any way change what the truth is. It does change their appropriate legal culpability.

So you are saying they were not going in the Capital to stop the certification of the election? Even when in court they have shown the texts, social media posts, and videos proving they were intent to do that just that?

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Further, can you show me the law I suggested these people were guilty of that you believe they are not legally culpable of? I will save you time, I never have mentioned any such law.

Good article. I don't believe it was treason (the bar is rightfully high) but it was definitely something, and egregious participants should be prosecuted for.

And I also do agree intent is a factor, there are different "degrees" and that should be part of the charges, trial and sentence.

No problem tossing them in jail for a long time.

Agree. I wasn't intending imply otherwise, but I understand how it could have appeared that way given the sequence of statements.


No. I agree that one of their goals was to stop the certification. I'm saying that in doing that, there's a relevant question about whether they were attempting to overturn an election/overthrow the government/rebel/etc. or whether they were attempting to prevent a wrongful certification from happening.


This I agree with also, but I would say under that scenario the military option would be less of a coup than permitting installing a clearly fraudulent result of an election.

Can you point to the law that allows the military to do that? If the military removes a president to supplant him with another, that is a coup. And that is also the death of our Republic. It really is immaterial whether we think it was justified. It would destroy the rule of law and make us a military junta.
Btw, MAGA had wanted just that. When the military took over Myanmar, there were many MAGA heads wistfully wishing our military would do the same for Trump.

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MAGA, both voters and politicians, think our military is something it isn't and was never meant to be.

No. I also can't point to the law that allows a President to lose an election and retain power anyway by getting corrupt public officials to call him the winner.

It would also be a coup. That would also be the end of our Constitutional Republic. We would then be an Autocracy. Another real danger going forward.

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I don't know how you can be confused about their state of mind when there are countless texts, videos, and social media posts where they talk about it themselves

This isn't something we need to call in a psychic to figure out man

I agree that there's a lot of evidence about what the state of mind was and that it points to a clear conclusion. I don't agree with the characterization of that evidence and conclusion by some in this thread.

Or the courts.

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I can't think of many major criminal cases where we had as much information about the criminals state of mind as we did in these. Almost all of them had social media posts and text messages talking about what they wanted to do and what they were trying to accomplish. There are countless videos where they are in the Capitol telling others what their intentions are. Heck, many of them bragged about it afterwards.

Hey hey hey. Let’s not jump to conclusions now.

It feels like it's over for them and their future is of a regional party. They were already hanging on as a minority party that got to be the majority due to antiquated undemocratic aspects of the government like the electoral college and senate.

All they have left is unpopular culture war issues that most normal people think are crazy. There are no ideas on how to better the economy or lives of people. Just getting frothing mad at a movie about dolls made for little girls and thinking people are going to run out to the polls and vote for you.

Yeah, speaking of the basic meaning of the language, if you're going to a) quote me and b) draw conclusions about what I was saying, maybe don't selectively quote me, OK? Here's what I wrote:


I fully understand why these people aren't being charged with treason, which boils down to it being very difficult to get such a charge to stick in our judicial system.

I'm just expressing incredulity that these people literally tried to overthrow our entire democratic process by violent means (as others have detailed) and apparently the best our legal system allows us to do is a bunch of these single-digit-year sentences.

I'm saying that in a rational world if you try to violently overthrow the entire democratic process of our country the penalty should start with hanging and work back.

Not to channel Jon, but to channel Jon, it honestly would have been a lot more healthy for our country if, on January 7th, we constructed a real gallows on capitol hill and as these people were identified and arrested, they were just transported there and hung. Instead, all of this pussy-footing around has merely made a bunch of them celebrities and strengthened their resolve and belief that they did the right thing. That's not good for our country's future.

And before someone goes all "won't someone think of the rule of law" in response, guess what, these folks didn't believe in the rule of law that day, and still don't. And if they succeeded in what they were trying to do, we wouldn't have a "rule of law" today (at least in any meaningful sense).

No dog in this fight as I don't want to be that guy that jumps into the middle of a discussion without first reading everything for context ...

But specifically only to above ... great quote, we should all strive to live to that ideal and push back (with the "complete" quotes) if we feel we have been misquoted/understood.

I wasn't trying to be selective, I was trying to be appropriately brief. I accept that you didn't mean what it looked to me like you meant, but I don't think the broader quote changes the part I used at all. Re-reading it now, I would still say the way I responded to it was appropriate to the full quote, but it's definitely always easy to misunderstand statements on the internet and clearly there was some degree of that going on here.


Except they didn't. The Harvard study is a good stand-in for the rest of the larger body of evidence which leads to the same place, and stated that they had two primary goals. One of which was election integrity/preventing a wrongful certification of an election - the other being basically blind Trump cultism. This really has been the main 'round and round the mulberry bush' issue in this discussion for a while, in which people have been saying 'it's obvious what they were doing', to which my response is 'I agree, and it's not what you're claiming it is'.

I'm just not the kind of person to roll over and agree that 2+2=5 just because it's fashionable to say that it's not 4. That's basically what this whole situation has been from my perspective.

No, they literally tried to overthrow our democratic process by violent means.

You're suggesting that they thought they were doing something else, which, while true, doesn't change the fact that they literally tried to overthrow our democratic process by violent means.

Executing them would serve to send a message that maybe people should get their facts straight before engaging in violent activity.

Your argument, for instance, makes it OK for an abortion clinic protestor to shoot an abortion clinic worker dead because they (the protestor) believe that they (the worker) are about to kill a baby.

I mean, we don't even let the following of illegal orders be legal, but it's ok to act on unverified propaganda?

No it doesn't.

I never said it was ok. I have repeatedly said it was not ok. If you would like and would find it helpful, I will quote those times when I said that in this discussion in this thread.

What I have said is, the motivation and intent impacts which crimes they are guilty of and should be charged with. It doesn't mean they shouldn't be charged with anything. It does mean that crimes requiring a motive/intent to overthrow the government/wage war/similar are, at the very minimum, not provable here. Crimes that don't require that are ones that they are very much still guilty of and should be prosecuted for, to a greater degree than they have been IMO.

My point, to be clear, is that some beliefs are objectively wrong. And if your belief is objectively wrong and you still act upon it, you should be held responsible for your actions, not your beliefs. I concede that this is not necessarily how our judicial system works, and certainly not in this case, but that is not my point, as I pointed out.

This then is the core of what we're talking about. I'll respectfully disagree and say that, at least in a sizable amount of situations, motivation and intent are important factors.

Brian did you not read this:


You continue to assume that I am making an argument about how I think the legal system works now, when I have now said, explicitly and several times, that I am not making that argument.

I'm willing to give you some grace here, but you are basically strawmanning me.

Brian did you not read this:

I'm not strawmanning. From my perspective you are strawmanning. You flat-out said this:


Which is just plain not true and which I've contradicted as my position many times. I don't want to belabor this beyond the point of frustration for anyone, or make it personal, or any such thing. But all I did in the portion you claim is me strawmanning you is defend and clarify my own position, since it was being at best distorted.

I did, several times before wading into the discussion. When I read someone say 'the trials should start with the supposition', I assume they are basing that on current law. Clearly that assumption turned out to be incorrect in this case, but I stand by the reasonableness of reading it that way. The alternative is basically to think that we should try someone based on a set of punishments that the laws don't prescribe, which I am not accusing you of meaning, but that's the only other way I can read that statement and think I'm being accurate to it.

If someone says 'I think our laws should say this instead', that's an entirely other discussion and apparently the one you were aiming at.

Well, we'll agree to disagree, then.

You're literally doing the opposite. We are all saying 2+2=4 and you're saying you agree it is but if these other people believe it is 5 we aren't allowed to tell them they are wrong.

What a shock that this conversation evolved into absolute garbage.

Nope. I've repeatedly said they are wrong myself.

You have basically claimed if they didn't' think they were wrong that must be factored in, which is nonsense.

Either way we can agree to disagree.

You just like arguing for the sake of arguing. You just HAVE to have someone to disagree with, even if it is yourself.