I was listening to NPR yesterday and they had some former general (or someone) talking about how the capitol riots are similar to Iraq. They compared the IEDs at the capitol to the IEDs that NATO troops faced in Iraq and how various right-wing groups could be considered "insurgents" not unlike the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Of course, we might expect NPR and other media outlets to be sensationalist. Blah blah blah about the digital media environment and its market incentives. But otherwise intelligent people parrot this sort of thing as well, calling them terrorists and insurrectionists (and yeah, I'm sure some technical argument can be made for these things, just like critics of the BLM riots made technical arguments for why those rioters were terrorists, but questionable technicalities don't merit responses in proportion to bonafide terrorism or insurrection).
There's a lot of stuff to actually criticize here: a violent riot incited by the POTUS over false pretenses, directed at the capitol, leaving several dead. It's already bad, but we can't seem to content ourselves with reality, we have to go further. We have to compare a bunch of MAGA rioters with actual insurgents.
Man, I really don't like this sort of race-to-the-bottom-ism, where whatever reprehensible thing the other side does becomes permission for our side to lower our own moral bar ("Why are you criticizing us?! Can't you see that what they're doing is worse?!"--never mind that I'm criticizing 'them' as well, and in proportion). At some point we have to come up from our outrage binger and realize that we can't just steamroll half the country; we have to figure out how to get along (and if you find yourself about to type, "get along with literal Nazis?!", you've missed the point).
Of course, we might expect NPR and other media outlets to be sensationalist. Blah blah blah about the digital media environment and its market incentives. But otherwise intelligent people parrot this sort of thing as well, calling them terrorists and insurrectionists (and yeah, I'm sure some technical argument can be made for these things, just like critics of the BLM riots made technical arguments for why those rioters were terrorists, but questionable technicalities don't merit responses in proportion to bonafide terrorism or insurrection).
There's a lot of stuff to actually criticize here: a violent riot incited by the POTUS over false pretenses, directed at the capitol, leaving several dead. It's already bad, but we can't seem to content ourselves with reality, we have to go further. We have to compare a bunch of MAGA rioters with actual insurgents.
Man, I really don't like this sort of race-to-the-bottom-ism, where whatever reprehensible thing the other side does becomes permission for our side to lower our own moral bar ("Why are you criticizing us?! Can't you see that what they're doing is worse?!"--never mind that I'm criticizing 'them' as well, and in proportion). At some point we have to come up from our outrage binger and realize that we can't just steamroll half the country; we have to figure out how to get along (and if you find yourself about to type, "get along with literal Nazis?!", you've missed the point).