I think I prefer “The Apophany”.
Except this is about normal people really “getting it”—normal Americans actually realizing that we have serious traitors among us and they don’t just babble on social media, they will actually take up arms and rebel against our country.
It is a brisk wake-up call. A Revelation.
An Epiphany.
By 2030, QAnon or its successor conspiracy theory will be Republican orthodoxy, elected Republicans will be supporting violence, and many Republicans will openly call themselves white supremacists.
Have we though? I mean, “we” as in you and me, probably. Most of the members of this messageboard, in fact.
But “we” as in the normal people of this country? I dunno.
And the day that we hit the snooze button, and went back to bed until the next insurrection.
I admire your optimism, and I wish I were not too cynical to share in it.
On no. I’m totally pessimistic. I’m only optimistic about “The Epiphany” being the best name to hang on this tragedy. I’m only offering reasons why that name works. I don’t think anything will change because of it.
Why wait for 2030 when they can start now?
“Nobody knew I was going to do that. I came in on Monday, and I’ve been reading so much news and so much controversy, I just decided to do it,” Lopez explained. “I started getting a lot of calls; I started getting people coming here, yelling at me, calling me a racist. They came for me; I didn’t come for them. I took a stand, and I’m paying the consequences for it, and that’s okay. I’m proud of what I did. I will never ever, ever, bow down to the pressures of anybody.”
She didn’t get fired over the White Pride month sign, but lost her job of 4 years over the pedo rapist one. That gas station used to be a U-haul center as well. I feel the station owner is also responsible, Lopez has done this sort of stuff often and should have been stopped. I stopped using that gas station several years ago and will never go back.
I think the places to really pay attention are at the state level – watch what the state and local level republican parties are doing and what they evolve into. I see some very disturbing signs that some of these parties are willing to take the next steps, legitimizing extremism via ties with law enforcement and unofficial paramilitaries that essentially act as the American equivalent of the SA.
This is not to say that the national party doesn’t matter, but the national leadership at least appeared to be testing the waters to see if they couldn’t possibly use the momentum against Trump to somehow dislodge him, and the state parties in multiple states seem to be pushing right back.
It all goes back to something we’ve talked about before: it’s not so much that Trump created Trumpism; it’s that Trumpism existed within the party well before 2015, and it was Trump who simply had the willingness to say what he knew people were thinking. Those thoughts, those feelings, have not subsided. The sense of victimization and entitlement that white Americans have is still there, and it’s something that state-level parties are organizing around.
It’s not 100% about race. In some cases, it’s about things like land management rights and a whole host of other ‘freedumz’ shit, but even within the context of these issues, racism is interwoven and embedded.
Fair enough, but, as you said, the day is already known as the Epiphany for other reasons.
I like it as a bit of a play on words, as it’s very similar in sound and spelling, and it is specifically about crazy people believing in conspiracy theories.
While we’re talking fallout, Wired has an article (I’m not going to link to it) about a site that hacked into Parler and found some 800+ videos posted of what happened in Washington on January 6th. “thousands of images of unmasked faces, many of whom participated in the Capitol riot.” They say they have isolated every single face in those videos and de-duplicated them, and are now publishing them online.
No doubt many of those folks are guilty as hell. But almost certainly not all of them are. What happens when they are identified? Are they all given careful protection of their rights until they are proved guilty of something? Or do they lose their jobs, and maybe get arrested, because they might have been in the area, or they went along for a while but didn’t enter the Capitol? I don’t like it.
IMO there’s really only one good name for it: Insurrection Day.
It’s factually accurate and brutally non-euphemistic.
Insurrection Day: The Apophony.
Now we just need Jeff Goldblum to make some vaguely inspirational but factually incorrect slogans.
The site is ProPublica, I believe.
Their videos are organized into three broad groups …inside the Capitol, outside the Capitol, and other locations around DC.
Anyone caught on video inside the Capitol is guilty of at least a couple of crimes, and I don’t believe they’d arrest anyone based on the videos taken outside the Capitol unless they were taped committing other illegal acts.
I just don’t get the concern for the “privacy” of a protester. They very act of attending a public protest means you are publicly supporting whatever cause you are protesting in service of. I participated in several anti-Trump marches in NY, and I’d have been thrilled if my picture ended up on the front page of the paper - I wore a hat designed to attract attention and I posed for multiple photos and videos with random people.
On the other hand, although the route went past several Trump buildings, no one attempted to breach the lightly guarded lobbies and storm the buildings. No one set up a gallows on 5th Ave, no one went running through the halls of Trump Tower looking to execute the Trump family. No one had any delusion that we could change the results of the election, we were just expressing our displeasure with the results.
I mean, if you’re a conservative and believe God wanted Trump to win but was unable to prevent people defying his wishes and voting for Biden so that’s fraud and Trump should win anyway, and you bought a plane ticket to DC and wrapped yourself in an American flag and went to the DC rally but stayed clear of the Capitol…OWN IT!
Unless you know deep down inside that you hold repulsive views that you don’t want anyone to know about…
If they aren’t guilty of a crime, then the evidence will make that clear once the investigations are over.
But they are guilty by association, and I don’t give a damn what happens to their reputations as a result of that. Perhaps they can learn a lesson from it, though I won’t hold my breath.
I missed that fact, thank you. It does put my mind more at ease.
And in the meantime, what? If they are in the third group, “other locations around DC,” what should they suffer for that while the investigation is proceeding on its thorough and plodding way? People caught in those videos could be completely unrelated to the events at the Capitol, they could be sight-seers or counter-protesters. Those people probably won’t be investigated, but they can still suffer undeserved consequences. If they were that far removed from the events, then it would be better if their photos were not published.
I guess I would have to see for myself what faces are depicted, and what they depict, and how their likeness is being contextualized. If I found my face among on a website telling people I was a rioter, I would threaten them with defamation. That’s probably an option for those who are truly innocent and had absolutely no connection to the Capitol riot.
But if they were at a “stop the steal” rally and are complaining because of bad optics, tough shit.
But no one on the ProPublilca website is claiming that any of the participants are rioters. They aren’t claiming anything about anyone shown in the videos.
The videos are published unedited and without comment. Every video on the website was originally posted to social media. A lot of the videos show people that are clearly doing nothing illegal, and some are exculpatory in that they show people objecting to the breaching of barriers, actively refusing to participate and urging others to stop.
Now there are some selfie videos featuring very violent and specific rhetoric that might be actionable in the “Around DC” section. BTW, the “Around DC” videos all seem to be of the rally or the march itself.
The videos are actually very informative in terms of communicating what it was like to be there, you can really feel how jacked up everyone was, and how much they truly believed.
But I just don’t think anyone has any expectation of privacy at a large public event, especially a controversial one like Stop the Steal. If you are going to be embarrassed if your friends, family or employer find out you believe Trump really won the election, maybe you should examine your beliefs instead of whining about your non-existent right to privacy in a public place.
Tell that to the approx 20,000 innocent people currently in prison.
I doubt that these are candidates for wrongful conviction; they’re not poor black men.
Putting your faith in the American criminal justice system is naive at best.
Well then, that settles it: let’s punish no one.