completely agree and i have been vociferous in my criticism of police in the past, especially in this last year.
imagine one single person getting shot in a situation like that and declaring it 'an opportunity for cross-party support on police brutality'.
that is the absolute worst take i have seen from this entire event. risk of being shot is attendant on EVERY person who enters ANY federal-level facility in the united states (and, for that matter, the same in the UK and EU; try and force entry to a military base or sitting court session). the fact that so many people were allowed to mill around the centre of power, smearing shit on walls (wow, white people do it too, dilbert) and murdering police, and mostly only seemed to bring harm to themselves (1 stroke, 1 heart attack), is a small miracle.
the fact is these people are dangerous, they are rabid, and they are behaving like domestic terrorists. the authorities thus far have given them an extremely soft touch. no other fringe and extremist political group would be allowed to storm the Capitol building.
Babbitt’s Twitter account shows a woman deeply engaged for months with a conspiracy theory that painted Democratic lawmakers as evil pedophiles, and then persuaded, and infuriated, by Trump and his allies’ lies about election fraud.
For weeks before she joined the mob in Washington, Babbitt had been retweeting false claims from Trump himself, as well as the pro-Trump lawyers Lin Wood and Sidney Powell, alleging massive voter fraud and asserting that Trump had won the 2020 election.
Many of Babbitt’s tweets, according to extremism experts, also marked her as a believer in QAnon, a conspiracy theory that claims Donald Trump has been trying to save the world from a cabal of satanic pedophiles, including Democratic politicians like Biden and Hollywood celebrities, and that he will soon bring his enemies to justice.
[...]
Her social media also showed posts skeptical of masks and public health measures. She had responded with fury to an alert in early December that California public health officials were reinstating a stay-at-home order to prevent the spread of coronavirus, which was surging in southern California: “This is that commie bullshit.”
The QAnon conspiracy theory, although lurid in its claims about the torture of children, is very much a political movement, not just a personal delusion, experts say.
“The people that went to the Capitol weren’t just trying to save Trump, they were trying to stop the coming multiracial democracy” which they believed would institute “a radical leftist globalist agenda”, Joan Donovan, the research director at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, said.
[...]
Babbitt also had a history of confrontational behavior. In 2016, she was charged with reckless endangerment, dangerous driving and malicious property damage in Maryland, but she was later acquitted, according to court records. A former girlfriend of Babbitt’s husband wrote in the application for a protection order against Babbitt that Babbitt had followed her in a car and rear-ended her three times, multiple news outlets reported.
“She was screaming at me and verbally threatening,” the complaint states.
Attempts to reach Babbitt’s family were unsuccessful.
Babbitt wrote that she believed the 6 January protest she was joining would be a pivotal moment for the country, and a fulfillment of some of the key events that QAnon believers had been expecting: “Nothing will stop us....they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours....dark to light!” she tweeted the day before the rally, referencing key QAnon slogans.
it's amazing how much overlap dilbert has with these people, in his views and his rhetoric. and yet he distances himself from them as soon as any of them act on their bizarro worldview. typical lickspittle.
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